Letters removed from the English alphabet

[Dingbat]

Roman scribes wrote in cursive, so when they wrote et which means "and" they linked the e and t and the combined letters came to signify the word "and" in English as well.

In the early 1800s, the ampersand was the 27th letter of the alphabet.; school children reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the &. It would have been confusing to say "X, Y, Z, and." Rather, the students said, "and per se and." "Per se" means "by itself," so the students were essentially saying, "X, Y, Z, and by itself and." Over time, "and per se and" was slurred together into the word we use today:ampersand. When a word comes about from a mistaken pronunciation, it's called a mondegreen.

(The ampersand is also used in an unusual configuration where it appears as "&c" and means etc. The ampersand does double work as the e and t.)

http://blog.dictionary.com/ampersand/


The ampersand isn't the only former letter of the alphabet.

"ye," as in "Ye Olde Booke Shoppe," is an archaic spelling of "the." In the Old English runic alphabet, was the letter thorn for this sound. On conversion to the Latin alphabet, it was replaced with y, introducing confusion as to whether a y is a consonant or vowel. This confusion was duly resolved by introducing the digraph 'th'. The Old English letter "wynn" was replaced by "uu," which eventually developed into the modern w (but still called a double u.)

http://blog.dictionary.com/letters-alphabet/

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:

> Roman scribes wrote in cursive,

No, they didn't.

> so when they wrote et which means "and" they linked the e and t and the

No, they didn't. The hundreds of ligatures used for economy of writing materials
and for speed were developed by medieval scribes all over Europe.

> combined letters came to signify the word "and" in English as well.
>
> In the early 1800s, the ampersand was the 27th letter of the alphabet.;

In the early 1800s, the alphabet counted 24 letters (I/J and U/V had not yet
been separated, though the two shapes of each had had different functions in
English since the later 17th century [a bit earlier in French]), and ampersand
did not count as a letter, although it was usually found in lists after Z.

> school children reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the &. It would have been confusing to say "X, Y, Z, and." Rather, the students said, "and per se and." "Per se" means "by itself," so the students were essentially saying, "X, Y, Z, and by itself and." Over time, "and per se and" was slurred together into the word we use today:ampersand. When a word comes about from a mistaken pronunciation, it's called a mondegreen.

No, it isn't. That's a very late 20th or early 21st century nonce jocularism.

> (The ampersand is also used in an unusual configuration where it appears as "&c" and means etc. The ampersand does double work as the e and t.)
>
> http://blog.dictionary.com/ampersand/
>
> The ampersand isn't the only former letter of the alphabet.
>
> "ye," as in "Ye Olde Booke Shoppe," is an archaic spelling of "the." In the

No, it isn't. "The" was never spelled with a Y or even with the letter "Wynn"
that resembled a y.

Old English runic alphabet, was the letter thorn for this sound. On conversion to the Latin alphabet, it was replaced with y, introducing

No, it wasn't. It was replaced with the digraph <th>, just as several other
English letters and a few digraphs were replaced with digraphs familiar to
the Norman scribes accustomed to writing Latin, where combinations with h
had long been used to represent certain Greek letters in loanwords.

confusion as to whether a y is a consonant or vowel. This confusion was duly

Nonsense. [i[ and [j] were allophones of a single phoneme.

resolved by introducing the digraph 'th'. The Old English letter "wynn" was replaced by "uu," which eventually developed into the modern w (but still called a double u.)
>
> http://blog.dictionary.com/letters-alphabet/

And people wonder why accurate sources on the history of the alphabet are needed.

[Jerry Friedman]

Nothing about the edh and the yogh?

--
Jerry Friedman

[Whiskers]

On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
>
>> Roman scribes wrote in cursive,
>
> No, they didn't.

Except when they did

‘Old Roman Cursive’ was the script used for documents and
letters written in the Roman world in the first three centuries
AD. The characters are often small and sometimes resemble modern
capital (upper-case) letters more than lower-case letters. They
are joined by ligatures, but are more usually written
separately, unlike modern handwriting.

<http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/paleo-1.shtml>

So 'cursive' but not necessarily 'joined-up'.

[...]

I'm inclined to agree with you that ampersand (&) thorn (þ) and wynn (ƿ)
were never part of the 'English alphabet' we now use. Thorn and wynn
were of course part of the 'old English alphabet'. The ampersand falls
into the category of non-alphabet symbols in normal use - along with the
numerals 0 to 9, special symbols such as pound (£) dollar ($) Euro (€),
and so on.

The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
or 'heritage' is meant.

Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Dingbat]

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:04:33 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
>
> The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
> commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
> persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
> or 'heritage' is meant.
>
> Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
> above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
> its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with.
>

The KJV would be English scribes' work, wouldn't it?
Michael Everson is quoted here as saying that using y this way was an error made by foreign scribes:

Foreign scribes wrote <þ> as <y> and <yogh> as <z>. This was an error on their part, which has left us with modern erroneous pronunciations as /ji/ for ye (really þe 'the') and /makinzi/ for Mac Coinnich
http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/ezhyogh.html

[R H Draney]

Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:mrsdum$70p$3...@news.albasani.net:

Why are you overlooking the aesc?...r

[Dingbat]

My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at hand:
In &c, & is et and c is cetera.
'th' replaces both thorn and edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet.
yogh, used by the Scots, was replaced with 'ch' where unvoiced (eg. loch) and 'gh' where voiced but retained in proper names where it was later replaced with typographically similar z which is why McKenzie is no longer pronounced McKenghie.
i and u are modern additions to the alphabet; it was actually 'vv' that was replaced with 'w'.
Ligature oe was once used in modern English but has nothing corresponding in Old English since it comes from Latin respelling of Koine pronunciation of Greek oi.
ash/ aesc, the ligature æ, still in the Danish alphabet, is limited in English to linguistic use for referencing both Old English and Greco-Latin, and for an Irish writer's pseudonym Æ.

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:04:33 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:

> On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:

> >> Roman scribes wrote in cursive,
> > No, they didn't.
>
> Except when they did
>
> ‘Old Roman Cursive’

That's its name, used to distinguish it from "Monumental." It simply means
'running [hand]'.

> was the script used for documents and
> letters written in the Roman world in the first three centuries
> AD. The characters are often small and sometimes resemble modern
> capital (upper-case) letters more than lower-case letters. They

(that might be because minuscules hadn't developed yet)

> are joined by ligatures, but are more usually written
> separately, unlike modern handwriting.
>
> <http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/paleo-1.shtml>
>
> So 'cursive' but not necessarily 'joined-up'.

But, referring to (modern roman) handwriting, "cursive" means 'joined-up'
(an anglicism not used in paleography). "Roman Cursive," which is attested
mostly on wax tablets and graffiti from Pompeii, is, as the cited description
says, not "joined-up" but "_written separately_, unlike modern handwriting"
[emphasis added].

> [...]
>
> I'm inclined to agree with you that ampersand (&) thorn (þ) and wynn (ƿ)
> were never part of the 'English alphabet' we now use. Thorn and wynn
> were of course part of the 'old English alphabet'. The ampersand falls
> into the category of non-alphabet symbols in normal use - along with the
> numerals 0 to 9, special symbols such as pound (£) dollar ($) Euro (€),
> and so on.
>
> The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
> commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
> persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
> or 'heritage' is meant.

This would come as a surprise to those who have written extensively on the
history of English orthography.

> Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
> above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
> its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with.

I wonder whether you can find an example of that in the 1611 text?

http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/

The use of i/j/y and u/v was not arbitrary.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:42:20 PM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
> On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:04:33 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:

> > The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
> > commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
> > persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
> > or 'heritage' is meant.
> >
> > Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
> > above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
> > its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with.
>
> The KJV would be English scribes' work, wouldn't it?

No, it would be English printers' work.

> Michael Everson is quoted here as saying that using y this way was an error made by foreign scribes:

As far as I've been able to tell, Michael Everson isn't an authority on _any_
of the scripts that writeups of in Unicode documents bear his name as coauthor.

[I think that parses.]

[Peter T. Daniels]

It's never really gone away, but it's never been counted as a letter -- it's
simply a thoroughly optional ligature.

[David Kleinecke]

I couldn't find any exmples in my KJV 1611 facsimile - which I suspect
is exactly the same as the online version.

The thorn character was alive and well before around 1400 but not used
by every scribe. Judging by Piers Plowman MS it was about half and half.
Then, rather abruptly, it disappears.

I can't put a finger on any cause for it's disappearance. French
influence had almost vanished and printing was still almost a century
away. Perhaps I should blame the Great Vowel Shift.

[Whiskers]

I think it's more likely that printers getting their type from Germany
would make use of 'the nearest' letter they could find for those English
(or Norse or Gaelic) letters they didn't have. Once people were used to
reading printed books with such substitutions the same substitutions
would start to appear in handwriting too; this would be well entrenched
by the time the Bible was being printed in English.

[Whiskers]

On 2015-08-29, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at
> hand: In &c, & is et and c is cetera. 'th' replaces both thorn and
> edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet. yogh, used by the Scots, was
> replaced with 'ch' where unvoiced (eg. loch) and 'gh' where voiced but
> retained in proper names where it was later replaced with
> typographically similar z which is why McKenzie is no longer
> pronounced McKenghie.

The High Street and railway station book sellers 'Menzies' managed to
hang on to the 'Mengheez' pronunciation, just, although it does seem to
be a losing fight for others of that name. I'm sure the MacCoinneach
clan could have insisted on 'MacConghee' or whatever was correct if
'MacKenzie' didn't sound right.

> i and u are modern additions to the alphabet;

I think the Romans and Greeks had the letter i. A flourished i became
our letter j and double i written as ij lead to our y. The rounded u
may have evolved from both v and ii; there are certainly examples
aplenty for the use of u where v would be expected, eg in Roman
numerals.

> it was actually 'vv' that was replaced with 'w'. Ligature oe was once
> used in modern English but has nothing corresponding in Old English
> since it comes from Latin respelling of Koine pronunciation of Greek
> oi. ash/ aesc, the ligature æ, still in the Danish alphabet, is
> limited in English to linguistic use for referencing both Old English
> and Greco-Latin, and for an Irish writer's pseudonym Æ.

I have seen 'Ægypt' and 'pædiatrician' but they seem to be affectations.
A ligature doesn't count as a letter in its own right, it's just a way
of joining two letters that happen to be adjacent.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Caxton learned his trade in Bruges; his employees were Flemish. He didn't
import punch-cutters to London in 1475, just typesetters, and they didn't
have those outlandish letters. They also spelled [g] with <gh>, because
that was how Dutch did it.

But there wasn't a notion of authoritative standard spelling before Johnson
in 1755.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 7:04:03 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
> On 2015-08-29, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at
> > hand: In &c, & is et and c is cetera. 'th' replaces both thorn and
> > edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet. yogh, used by the Scots, was
> > replaced with 'ch' where unvoiced (eg. loch) and 'gh' where voiced but
> > retained in proper names where it was later replaced with
> > typographically similar z which is why McKenzie is no longer
> > pronounced McKenghie.
>
> The High Street and railway station book sellers 'Menzies' managed to
> hang on to the 'Mengheez' pronunciation, just, although it does seem to
> be a losing fight for others of that name. I'm sure the MacCoinneach
> clan could have insisted on 'MacConghee' or whatever was correct if
> 'MacKenzie' didn't sound right.
>
> > i and u are modern additions to the alphabet;
>
> I think the Romans and Greeks had the letter i. A flourished i became
> our letter j and double i written as ij lead to our y. The rounded u
> may have evolved from both v and ii; there are certainly examples
> aplenty for the use of u where v would be expected, eg in Roman
> numerals.

Our Y is Greek Upsilon and comes from Latin. Until the later 17th century,
<v> was used word-initially, <u> word-internally: <vpon>, <loue>.

[Peter Moylan]

On 2015-Aug-30 09:03, Whiskers wrote:

> The High Street and railway station book sellers 'Menzies' managed to
> hang on to the 'Mengheez' pronunciation, just, although it does seem to
> be a losing fight for others of that name.

The former Australian Prime Minister Menzies pronounced his name with a
[z], but that didn't stop his critics from referring to the Ming dynasty.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[GordonD]

On 30/08/2015 06:14, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 2015-Aug-30 09:03, Whiskers wrote:
>
>> The High Street and railway station book sellers 'Menzies' managed to
>> hang on to the 'Mengheez' pronunciation, just, although it does seem to
>> be a losing fight for others of that name.
>
> The former Australian Prime Minister Menzies pronounced his name with a
> [z], but that didn't stop his critics from referring to the Ming dynasty.
>

Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, was the
opposite - he did pronounce his name "Mingis", and was called "Ming" by
his friends.

Which gives us this limerick:

There wis a young lassie named Menzies,
That askit her aunt whit this thenzies.
Said her aunt wi a gasp,
"Ma dear, it's a wasp,
An you're haudin the end whaur the stenzies!"
--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

[Anders D. Nygaard]

On 29-08-2015 21:16, Dingbat wrote:
> My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at hand:
> In &c, & is et and c is cetera.
> 'th' replaces both thorn and edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet.
> yogh, used by the Scots, was replaced with 'ch' where unvoiced (eg. loch) and 'gh'
> where voiced but retained in proper names where it was later replaced
with
> typographically similar z which is why McKenzie is no longer
pronounced McKenghie.
> i and u are modern additions to the alphabet; it was actually 'vv' that was replaced with 'w'.
> Ligature oe was once used in modern English but has nothing corresponding in
> Old English since it comes from Latin respelling of Koine
pronunciation of Greek oi.
> ash/ aesc, the ligature æ, still in the Danish alphabet,

Æ/æ may have originated as a ligature, but is considered a proper letter
(the 27th, after Z/z and before Ø/ø and Å/å) in the Danish alphabet.
I seem to remember a discussion on the subject some 20 years ago
in some international standardization context, which ended
in acceptance of Æ/æ as a letter, but I can't dig up a reference.

/Anders, Denmark

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2015-08-29 23:03:59 +0000, Whiskers said:

> On 2015-08-29, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at
>> hand: In &c, & is et and c is cetera. 'th' replaces both thorn and
>> edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet.

I could spell my name Æđel, but I don't (though if I did it would make
it more difficult to make juvenile jokes of).

--
athel

[Whiskers]

On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:04:33 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
>> On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
>
>> >> Roman scribes wrote in cursive,
>> > No, they didn't.
>>
>> Except when they did
>>
>> ‘Old Roman Cursive’
>
> That's its name, used to distinguish it from "Monumental." It simply means
> 'running [hand]'.

Agreed.

>> was the script used for documents and
>> letters written in the Roman world in the first three centuries
>> AD. The characters are often small and sometimes resemble modern
>> capital (upper-case) letters more than lower-case letters. They
>
> (that might be because minuscules hadn't developed yet)
>
>> are joined by ligatures, but are more usually written
>> separately, unlike modern handwriting.
>>
>> <http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/paleo-1.shtml>
>>
>> So 'cursive' but not necessarily 'joined-up'.
>
> But, referring to (modern roman) handwriting, "cursive" means 'joined-up'
> (an anglicism not used in paleography). "Roman Cursive," which is attested
> mostly on wax tablets and graffiti from Pompeii, is, as the cited description
> says, not "joined-up" but "_written separately_, unlike modern handwriting"
> [emphasis added].

Ah, so when you say no they didn't in response to the statement that
Roman scribes wrote in cursive, what you really mean is that the cursive
the Roman scribes indisputably did write in isn't what you mean by the
word cursive when applied to modern English writing. I do hope you
accept that Roman scribes using Roman Cursive might have been Romans who
knew what they were doing, and that 'Roman cursive' is an accepted name
for the sort of writing they did.

>> [...]
>>
>> I'm inclined to agree with you that ampersand (&) thorn (þ) and wynn (ƿ)
>> were never part of the 'English alphabet' we now use. Thorn and wynn
>> were of course part of the 'old English alphabet'. The ampersand falls
>> into the category of non-alphabet symbols in normal use - along with the
>> numerals 0 to 9, special symbols such as pound (£) dollar ($) Euro (€),
>> and so on.
>>
>> The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
>> commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
>> persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
>> or 'heritage' is meant.
>
> This would come as a surprise to those who have written extensively on the
> history of English orthography.

Only those who haven't looked at the monuments and inscriptions in
English churches and grave-yards and documents of all sorts dating from
the 18th century (or indeed slightly earlier or even somewhat later).

>> Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
>> above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
>> its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with.
>
> I wonder whether you can find an example of that in the 1611 text?
>
> http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/

Look at the images of the pages themselves, not at the modern transcript
alongside, where the superscript characters are not shown accurately and
the thorn character is depicted in a 'correct' modern form (not like the
y character in the original).

Job 1:9
Then Satan answered þe Lord, and sayd, Doeth Iob feare God for
nought?

John 15:1
I am the true vine, and my Father is þe husbandman.

Romans 15:29
And I am sure that when I come vnto you, I shall come in the
fulnes of the blessing of þe Gospel of Christ.

2 Corinthians 13:7
Now I pray to God, that ye doe no euill, not that we should
appeare approued, but that ye should doe þt which is honest,
though we be as reprobates.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Middle_and_Early_Modern_English>

> The use of i/j/y and u/v was not arbitrary.

Indeed not! But the rationale behind usage was not always clear, and is
not always consistent even in a single document.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 4:48:07 AM UTC-4, GordonD wrote:
> On 30/08/2015 06:14, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > On 2015-Aug-30 09:03, Whiskers wrote:
> >
> >> The High Street and railway station book sellers 'Menzies' managed to
> >> hang on to the 'Mengheez' pronunciation, just, although it does seem to
> >> be a losing fight for others of that name.
> >
> > The former Australian Prime Minister Menzies pronounced his name with a
> > [z], but that didn't stop his critics from referring to the Ming dynasty.
> >
>
> Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, was the
> opposite - he did pronounce his name "Mingis", and was called "Ming" by
> his friends.

And Ming the Merciless by his enemies?

> Which gives us this limerick:
>
> There wis a young lassie named Menzies,
> That askit her aunt whit this thenzies.
> Said her aunt wi a gasp,
> "Ma dear, it's a wasp,
> An you're haudin the end whaur the stenzies!"

So "gasp" and "wasp" rhyme Up There? Curious.

We have /g&sp/ and /wasp/ (the exact phonetics of the two vowels vary, as
infinitely discussed here, but they're always different.)

[Peter T. Daniels]

No, the name for it is Old Roman Cursive (capitalized like the names of all
paleographic hands), and it is not "cursive" in the modern sense that Ranjit
("dingbat") used above; in fact you got the name right but by appearing to
correct me you implied that Old Roman Cursive is written "in cursive."

> >> [...]
> >>
> >> I'm inclined to agree with you that ampersand (&) thorn (þ) and wynn (ƿ)
> >> were never part of the 'English alphabet' we now use. Thorn and wynn
> >> were of course part of the 'old English alphabet'. The ampersand falls
> >> into the category of non-alphabet symbols in normal use - along with the
> >> numerals 0 to 9, special symbols such as pound (£) dollar ($) Euro (€),
> >> and so on.
> >>
> >> The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
> >> commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
> >> persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
> >> or 'heritage' is meant.
> >
> > This would come as a surprise to those who have written extensively on the
> > history of English orthography.
>
> Only those who haven't looked at the monuments and inscriptions in
> English churches and grave-yards and documents of all sorts dating from
> the 18th century (or indeed slightly earlier or even somewhat later).

This is where you might insert a photograph or a facsimile of a document.

> >> Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
> >> above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
> >> its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with.
> >
> > I wonder whether you can find an example of that in the 1611 text?
> >
> > http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/
>
> Look at the images of the pages themselves, not at the modern transcript

That is what I asked you to do. That is why I gave you the link to the facsimile.

> alongside, where the superscript characters are not shown accurately and
> the thorn character is depicted in a 'correct' modern form (not like the
> y character in the original).
>
> Job 1:9
> Then Satan answered þe Lord, and sayd, Doeth Iob feare God for
> nought?
>
> John 15:1
> I am the true vine, and my Father is þe husbandman.
>
> Romans 15:29
> And I am sure that when I come vnto you, I shall come in the
> fulnes of the blessing of þe Gospel of Christ.
>
> 2 Corinthians 13:7
> Now I pray to God, that ye doe no euill, not that we should
> appeare approued, but that ye should doe þt which is honest,
> though we be as reprobates.
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Middle_and_Early_Modern_English>

And how many _thousands_ of examples did you have to comb through to come up
with just four cases where in deep desperation of how to squeeze a passage
too long to fit on a line they used the archaisms?

There _are_ thousands of examples of "extra" letters being inserted to fill
out a line, because that was much easier to do than to somehow remove letters.

> > The use of i/j/y and u/v was not arbitrary.
>
> Indeed not! But the rationale behind usage was not always clear, and is
> not always consistent even in a single document.

See E. J. Dobson, *English Pronunciation 1500–1700* (1957).

[Dingbat]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 9:20:09 AM UTC-4, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 8:28:04 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
> > On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:04:33 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
> > >> On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > >> > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
> > >
> > >> >> Roman scribes wrote in cursive,
> > >> > No, they didn't.
> > >>
> > >> Except when they did
> > >>
> >

> > I do hope you
> > accept that Roman scribes using Roman Cursive might have been Romans who
> > knew what they were doing, and that 'Roman cursive' is an accepted name
> > for the sort of writing they did.
>
> No, the name for it is Old Roman Cursive (capitalized like the names of all
> paleographic hands), and it is not "cursive" in the modern sense that Ranjit
> ("dingbat") used above;

I was quoting someone verbatim but I had assumed from the modern meaning of cursive (I didn't know any other meaning of cursive) that it must mean letters were connected, and also since it indicated that the digraph 'et' turned into the monograph '&' due to the letters being connected.

[GordonD]

On 30/08/2015 13:57, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 4:48:07 AM UTC-4, GordonD wrote:
>> On 30/08/2015 06:14, Peter Moylan wrote:
>>> On 2015-Aug-30 09:03, Whiskers wrote:
>>>
>>>> The High Street and railway station book sellers 'Menzies' managed to
>>>> hang on to the 'Mengheez' pronunciation, just, although it does seem to
>>>> be a losing fight for others of that name.
>>>
>>> The former Australian Prime Minister Menzies pronounced his name with a
>>> [z], but that didn't stop his critics from referring to the Ming dynasty.
>>>
>>
>> Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, was the
>> opposite - he did pronounce his name "Mingis", and was called "Ming" by
>> his friends.
>
> And Ming the Merciless by his enemies?

That was used in the papers on occasion.

>
>> Which gives us this limerick:
>>
>> There wis a young lassie named Menzies,
>> That askit her aunt whit this thenzies.
>> Said her aunt wi a gasp,
>> "Ma dear, it's a wasp,
>> An you're haudin the end whaur the stenzies!"
>
> So "gasp" and "wasp" rhyme Up There? Curious.

In an exaggerated Glasgow accent, yes. It's stretching a point for the
sake of the rhyme, not exactly an unknown concept.

[Dingbat]

If I remember right, Athol Guy's name is pronounced with [T] rather than the [D] you appear to use.

[Dingbat]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 8:57:54 AM UTC-4, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 4:48:07 AM UTC-4, GordonD wrote:

> > ... Which gives us this limerick:

> >
> > There wis a young lassie named Menzies,
> > That askit her aunt whit this thenzies.
> > Said her aunt wi a gasp,
> > "Ma dear, it's a wasp,
> > An you're haudin the end whaur the stenzies!"
>
> So "gasp" and "wasp" rhyme Up There? Curious.
>

Conversely, mall (Westminster) and mall (Washington, DC) don't rhyme.

[Dingbat]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 5:03:34 AM UTC-4, Anders D. Nygaard wrote:
> On 29-08-2015 21:16, Dingbat wrote:
> > My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at hand:
> > In &c, & is et and c is cetera.
> > 'th' replaces both thorn and edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet.
> > yogh, used by the Scots, was replaced with 'ch' where unvoiced (eg. loch) and 'gh'
> > where voiced but retained in proper names where it was later replaced
> with
> > typographically similar z which is why McKenzie is no longer
> pronounced McKenghie.
> > i and u are modern additions to the alphabet; it was actually 'vv' that was replaced with 'w'.
> > Ligature oe was once used in modern English but has nothing corresponding in
> > Old English since it comes from Latin respelling of Koine
> pronunciation of Greek oi.
> > ash/ aesc, the ligature æ, still in the Danish alphabet,
>
> Æ/æ may have originated as a ligature, but is considered a proper letter
> (the 27th, after Z/z and before Ø/ø and Å/å) in the Danish alphabet.

Is æ used in respelling German names for Danish readers?

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I pronounce it with a /T/, and was surprised to see it spelt with đ
rather than with þ. However, although modern Icelandic uses đ for /D/
and þ fot /T/, I don't think Old English was equally systematic and
used both letters for both sounds. However, we have people here who
know much more about Old English than I do. For what it's worth, the
cognate in modern German has d, not t: "edel".

I don't know where the name Athol, as in Athol Guy or Athol Fugard,
comes from, but I've always supposed that it's from the Scottish
Atholl, which is Gaelic in origin, not English.


--
athel

[Peter T. Daniels]

Ligatures occur in lots of scripts that aren't connected, including Roman
Monumental (the source of our capital letters).

BTW it's nice to see you again!

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 10:46:33 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2015-08-30 14:24:50 +0000, Dingbat said:
> > On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 5:24:47 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> >>> On 2015-08-29, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> >>>> My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at
> >>>> hand: In &c, & is et and c is cetera. 'th' replaces both thorn and
> >>>> edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet.
> >> I could spell my name Æđel, but I don't (though if I did it would make>
> >> it more difficult to make juvenile jokes of).
> > If I remember right, Athol Guy's name is pronounced with [T] rather
> > than the [D] you appear to use.
>
> I pronounce it with a /T/, and was surprised to see it spelt with đ
> rather than with þ.

Not a problem: the letters edh and thorn were not used for voiced and
voiceless sounds as they are in modern phonetic notation. Either letter
could represent either the voiced or the voiceless interdental, and there
are even manuscripts that intermingle both letters with both readings.

In the case of "Athel," the th would have been voiced, because it's a
continuant in intervocalic position, but the voicing distinction was not
phonemic in English until words borrowed from Norman French introduced
a contrast that superseded the complementary distribution. (Which is why
there was no need to assign one of the letters to the voiced allophone
and the other to the other.)

[Whiskers]

On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 8:28:04 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel
> wrote:
>> On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:04:33 PM UTC-4, Whiskers
>> > Catwheezel wrote:
>> >> On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> >> > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:

[...]

> No, the name for it is Old Roman Cursive (capitalized like the names of all
> paleographic hands), and it is not "cursive" in the modern sense that Ranjit
> ("dingbat") used above; in fact you got the name right but by appearing to
> correct me you implied that Old Roman Cursive is written "in cursive."

Feeling dizzy yet?

>> >> [...]
>> >>
>> >> I'm inclined to agree with you that ampersand (&) thorn (þ) and wynn (ƿ)
>> >> were never part of the 'English alphabet' we now use. Thorn and wynn
>> >> were of course part of the 'old English alphabet'. The ampersand falls
>> >> into the category of non-alphabet symbols in normal use - along with the
>> >> numerals 0 to 9, special symbols such as pound (£) dollar ($) Euro (€),
>> >> and so on.
>> >>
>> >> The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
>> >> commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
>> >> persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
>> >> or 'heritage' is meant.
>> >
>> > This would come as a surprise to those who have written extensively on the
>> > history of English orthography.
>>
>> Only those who haven't looked at the monuments and inscriptions in
>> English churches and grave-yards and documents of all sorts dating from
>> the 18th century (or indeed slightly earlier or even somewhat later).
>
> This is where you might insert a photograph or a facsimile of a document.

Lower Heyford, Oxfordshire; Myrry monument 1684 - posted by Martin Beek.
13th image in that post.

Turville, Buckinghamshire; Perry monument 1740 - posted by Eric Hardy.
5th image in that post.

Quanton, Bucks; Winwood monument 1693 - same post by Eric Hardy.
7th image in that post. Also following images. I like the verse on the
Plaistow monument at The Lee dated 1715:

Stay Reader Stand & spend a tear
Upon ye Dust that slumbers here
And now thou readst ye State of me
Think on ye Glass yt runs for thee

with superscript e and t over the y.

<https://www.flickr.com/groups/englishbaroque/discuss/72157600345434750/>

Not to mention W Shakespeare's famous curse, on his tomb in Stratford

GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE,
TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE.
BLESE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES,
AND CVRST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_grave_-Stratford-upon-Avon_-3June2007.jpg>

From the time of The Reformation in England, when 'graven images' were
commanded to be destroyed, 'Decalogue boards' painted or carved in
English were required to be displayed in all churches. A few survive
from the 17th century or earlier but dating them is tricky and they are
seldom given the care or prominence they deserve so good photos are also
hard to find. This one is at least mostly legible and shows the usual y
plus superscript contractions for the and that. Originally there would
have been a paternoster and a crede to be shown alongside the ten
commandments. The boards fell into disuse as the Puritan ethos faded
after the Restoration but many churches of sufficient age have them
'around somewhere' even if not on display.
<http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1695695>

The great majority of old documents and inscriptions have not been
photographed and put on line.

>> >> Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
>> >> above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
>> >> its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with.
>> >
>> > I wonder whether you can find an example of that in the 1611 text?
>> >
>> > http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/
>>
>> Look at the images of the pages themselves, not at the modern transcript
>
> That is what I asked you to do. That is why I gave you the link to the facsimile.

<sigh> I did. You can too.

>> alongside, where the superscript characters are not shown accurately and
>> the thorn character is depicted in a 'correct' modern form (not like the
>> y character in the original).
>>
>> Job 1:9
>> Then Satan answered þe Lord, and sayd, Doeth Iob feare God for
>> nought?
>>
>> John 15:1
>> I am the true vine, and my Father is þe husbandman.
>>
>> Romans 15:29
>> And I am sure that when I come vnto you, I shall come in the
>> fulnes of the blessing of þe Gospel of Christ.
>>
>> 2 Corinthians 13:7
>> Now I pray to God, that ye doe no euill, not that we should
>> appeare approued, but that ye should doe þt which is honest,
>> though we be as reprobates.
>>
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Middle_and_Early_Modern_English>
>
> And how many _thousands_ of examples did you have to comb through to come up
> with just four cases where in deep desperation of how to squeeze a passage
> too long to fit on a line they used the archaisms?

Someone beat me to it and put the information into the public arena in
Wikipedia for anyone to find. I cannot comment on the motives of the
printer who chose to set the type that way; later editions were set
differently.

'Just four cases' is more than enough to support my statement that it
was done. There may well be others. Perhaps someone will have a
computer search the entire transcript looking for instances of a thorn,
assuming that the transcript uses a thorn for every instance of a y plus
superscript in the actual text.

> There _are_ thousands of examples of "extra" letters being inserted to fill
> out a line, because that was much easier to do than to somehow remove letters.

That's a different subject.

>> > The use of i/j/y and u/v was not arbitrary.
>>
>> Indeed not! But the rationale behind usage was not always clear, and is
>> not always consistent even in a single document.
>
> See E. J. Dobson, *English Pronunciation 1500–1700* (1957).

I know how to pronounce a thorn when I see one even if it's disguised as
a y.

[Dingbat]

Thank you, kind sir, and thanks for the insights.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 3:07:02 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
> On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 8:28:04 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel
> > wrote:
> >> On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 1:04:33 PM UTC-4, Whiskers
> >> > Catwheezel wrote:
> >> >> On 2015-08-29, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> >> > On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:13:28 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > No, the name for it is Old Roman Cursive (capitalized like the names of all
> > paleographic hands), and it is not "cursive" in the modern sense that Ranjit
> > ("dingbat") used above; in fact you got the name right but by appearing to
> > correct me you implied that Old Roman Cursive is written "in cursive."
>
> Feeling dizzy yet?

Not in the slightest. You misinterpreted Ranjit's comment, or else you were
overeager to contradict me about something.

> >> >> I'm inclined to agree with you that ampersand (&) thorn (þ) and wynn (ƿ)
> >> >> were never part of the 'English alphabet' we now use. Thorn and wynn
> >> >> were of course part of the 'old English alphabet'. The ampersand falls
> >> >> into the category of non-alphabet symbols in normal use - along with the
> >> >> numerals 0 to 9, special symbols such as pound (£) dollar ($) Euro (€),
> >> >> and so on.
> >> >>
> >> >> The use of a 'deformed thorn' or letter y instead of the th digraph was
> >> >> commonplace in 18th century inscriptions and documents, and has
> >> >> persisted in commercial sign-writing where some indication of antiquity
> >> >> or 'heritage' is meant.
> >> >
> >> > This would come as a surprise to those who have written extensively on the
> >> > history of English orthography.
> >>
> >> Only those who haven't looked at the monuments and inscriptions in
> >> English churches and grave-yards and documents of all sorts dating from
> >> the 18th century (or indeed slightly earlier or even somewhat later).
> >
> > This is where you might insert a photograph or a facsimile of a document.
>
> Lower Heyford, Oxfordshire; Myrry monument 1684 - posted by Martin Beek.
> 13th image in that post.

What is "that post"?

> Turville, Buckinghamshire; Perry monument 1740 - posted by Eric Hardy.
> 5th image in that post.
>
> Quanton, Bucks; Winwood monument 1693 - same post by Eric Hardy.
> 7th image in that post. Also following images. I like the verse on the
> Plaistow monument at The Lee dated 1715:
>
> Stay Reader Stand & spend a tear
> Upon ye Dust that slumbers here
> And now thou readst ye State of me
> Think on ye Glass yt runs for thee
>
> with superscript e and t over the y.
>
> <https://www.flickr.com/groups/englishbaroque/discuss/72157600345434750/>

(Still waiting for that link to open up.)

> Not to mention W Shakespeare's famous curse, on his tomb in Stratford
>
> GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE,
> TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE.
> BLESE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES,
> AND CVRST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES.
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_grave_-Stratford-upon-Avon_-3June2007.jpg>

If the signboard is an accurate representation of what is carven in the
stone below, isn't it convenient that you overlook all the other devices
used to squeeze the inscription into too small a space? Such as two TH
ligatures, and HE ligated in one line, not in another? Those are expedients
of desperation, not orthographic usages.

I can. It's very obvious from simply looking at those references.

> 'Just four cases' is more than enough to support my statement that it
> was done. There may well be others. Perhaps someone will have a
> computer search the entire transcript looking for instances of a thorn,
> assuming that the transcript uses a thorn for every instance of a y plus
> superscript in the actual text.

So you say that when you wrote

> "Early editions of the 'King James' Bible (1611) used y with a small e or t
> "above it to mean 'the' or 'that' respectively - as well as using y on
> "its own as the consonant or vowel we're still familiar with."

You didn't mean readers to believe that that was the general usage of its
printer?

You forgot to mention that that happened just four times among the thousands
of occurrences of those words?

> > There _are_ thousands of examples of "extra" letters being inserted to fill
> > out a line, because that was much easier to do than to somehow remove letters.
>
> That's a different subject.

No, it's the same subject: achieving an even right margin without unsightly
gaps between words or omitting wordspacing entirely.

> >> > The use of i/j/y and u/v was not arbitrary.
> >>
> >> Indeed not! But the rationale behind usage was not always clear, and is
> >> not always consistent even in a single document.
> >
> > See E. J. Dobson, *English Pronunciation 1500–1700* (1957).
>
> I know how to pronounce a thorn when I see one even if it's disguised as
> a y.

Dobson will give you guidance on when to use, or when they used, i/j/y and u/v.

[Whiskers]

When the URL completely opens for you you'll see that it's a web forum
with embedded images inside the posts. Crazy, and a real pain, but some
people seem to prefer that sort of thing to the efficiency of usenet. I
tried to find a way to get a direct URL to just each of the images of
interest but the site seems to be designed to thwart any such effort.

>> Turville, Buckinghamshire; Perry monument 1740 - posted by Eric Hardy.
>> 5th image in that post.
>>
>> Quanton, Bucks; Winwood monument 1693 - same post by Eric Hardy.
>> 7th image in that post. Also following images. I like the verse on the
>> Plaistow monument at The Lee dated 1715:
>>
>> Stay Reader Stand & spend a tear
>> Upon ye Dust that slumbers here
>> And now thou readst ye State of me
>> Think on ye Glass yt runs for thee
>>
>> with superscript e and t over the y.
>>
>> <https://www.flickr.com/groups/englishbaroque/discuss/72157600345434750/>
>
> (Still waiting for that link to open up.)

Whoever designed that web forum should be made to load it over dial-up.

>> Not to mention W Shakespeare's famous curse, on his tomb in Stratford
>>
>> GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE,
>> TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE.
>> BLESE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES,
>> AND CVRST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES.
>>
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_grave_-Stratford-upon-Avon_-3June2007.jpg>
>
> If the signboard is an accurate representation of what is carven in the
> stone below, isn't it convenient that you overlook all the other devices
> used to squeeze the inscription into too small a space? Such as two TH
> ligatures, and HE ligated in one line, not in another? Those are expedients
> of desperation, not orthographic usages.

I think those were affectations or quirks of the stone carver, as they
don't save any space that couldn't be saved more sensibly by making each
letter just a little bit smaller. They clearly aren't desperate
expedients responding to lack of foresight in laying out the inscription or
the customer demanding more words when the job was almost finished. Or
perhaps they are part of a secret message for the conspiracy theorists
to play with?

I said that it was done, not that it was done always or often in the
Bible. The Bible is one of the places it was done. It was possible and
permissible and one of the available ways of spelling those words which
readers could be expected to understand correctly.

>> > There _are_ thousands of examples of "extra" letters being inserted to fill
>> > out a line, because that was much easier to do than to somehow remove letters.
>>
>> That's a different subject.
>
> No, it's the same subject: achieving an even right margin without unsightly
> gaps between words or omitting wordspacing entirely.

Then we should identify and enumerate all the instances where a space
between words or letters was wider or narrower than usual for the same
reason. Someone might even find meaningless symbols or blobs inserted
at the end of some lines just for the sake of 'evening up the margin'.

>> >> > The use of i/j/y and u/v was not arbitrary.
>> >>
>> >> Indeed not! But the rationale behind usage was not always clear, and is
>> >> not always consistent even in a single document.
>> >
>> > See E. J. Dobson, *English Pronunciation 1500–1700* (1957).
>>
>> I know how to pronounce a thorn when I see one even if it's disguised as
>> a y.
>
> Dobson will give you guidance on when to use, or when they used, i/j/y and u/v.

I'm sure they appreciated the guidance. Odd title if that's what the
book's about though.

[Will Parsons]

On Sunday, 30 Aug 2015 1:48 PM -0400, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 10:46:33 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> On 2015-08-30 14:24:50 +0000, Dingbat said:
>> > On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 5:24:47 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> >>> On 2015-08-29, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> >>>> My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at
>> >>>> hand: In &c, & is et and c is cetera. 'th' replaces both thorn and
>> >>>> edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet.
>> >> I could spell my name Æđel, but I don't (though if I did it would make>
>> >> it more difficult to make juvenile jokes of).
>> > If I remember right, Athol Guy's name is pronounced with [T] rather
>> > than the [D] you appear to use.
>>
>> I pronounce it with a /T/, and was surprised to see it spelt with đ
>> rather than with þ.
>
> Not a problem: the letters edh and thorn were not used for voiced and
> voiceless sounds as they are in modern phonetic notation. Either letter
> could represent either the voiced or the voiceless interdental, and there
> are even manuscripts that intermingle both letters with both readings.
>
> In the case of "Athel," the th would have been voiced, because it's a
> continuant in intervocalic position, but the voicing distinction was not
> phonemic in English

All true.

> until words borrowed from Norman French introduced
> a contrast that superseded the complementary distribution.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. In Old English, the letters þ and
ð were used indifferently for /θ/, which could be realized as [θ] or
[ð]. The spelling <th> replaced both, but how did it "supersede the
complementary distribution"?

> (Which is why
> there was no need to assign one of the letters to the voiced allophone
> and the other to the other.)
>
>> However, although modern Icelandic uses đ for /D/
>> and þ fot /T/, I don't think Old English was equally systematic and
>> used both letters for both sounds. However, we have people here who
>> know much more about Old English than I do. For what it's worth, the
>> cognate in modern German has d, not t: "edel".
>>
>> I don't know where the name Athol, as in Athol Guy or Athol Fugard,
>> comes from, but I've always supposed that it's from the Scottish
>> Atholl, which is Gaelic in origin, not English.

That's my impression, too.

All the Old English names beginning with Æðel-, like Æðelræd (or
nowadays Ethelred) should be historically pronounced with a voiced
[ð]. They're usually pronounced now with a voiceless [θ], due to a
spelling pronunciation.

--
Will

[Robert Bannister]

And in London "The Mall" and "Pall Mall" never used to rhyme, but today
I'm told they do (for some people anyway).

--
Robert Bannister
Perth, Western Australia

[Robert Bannister]

It always struck me as odd that of the names Dumas chose for his
musketeers, two contained "th" so that in English they have always been
/aTos/, /pO(r)Tos/ and /aramIs/, which I imagine would be unrecognisable
to a French person.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 7:55:05 PM UTC-4, Will Parsons wrote:
> On Sunday, 30 Aug 2015 1:48 PM -0400, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 10:46:33 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> >> On 2015-08-30 14:24:50 +0000, Dingbat said:

> >> > If I remember right, Athol Guy's name is pronounced with [T] rather
> >> > than the [D] you appear to use.
> >> I pronounce it with a /T/, and was surprised to see it spelt with đ
> >> rather than with þ.
> > Not a problem: the letters edh and thorn were not used for voiced and
> > voiceless sounds as they are in modern phonetic notation. Either letter
> > could represent either the voiced or the voiceless interdental, and there
> > are even manuscripts that intermingle both letters with both readings.
> > In the case of "Athel," the th would have been voiced, because it's a
> > continuant in intervocalic position, but the voicing distinction was not
> > phonemic in English
>
> All true.
>
> > until words borrowed from Norman French introduced
> > a contrast that superseded the complementary distribution.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by this. In Old English, the letters þ and
> ð were used indifferently for /θ/, which could be realized as [θ] or
> [ð]. The spelling <th> replaced both, but how did it "supersede the
> complementary distribution"?

The complementary distribution of [T] and [D] was superseded by the
phonemic distinction of /T/ and /D/, but the functional load of that
distinction was so low that no orthographic distinction was needed.
Similarly for /S/ and /Z/.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 10:21:51 PM UTC-4, Robert Bannister wrote:

> It always struck me as odd that of the names Dumas chose for his
> musketeers, two contained "th" so that in English they have always been
> /aTos/, /pO(r)Tos/ and /aramIs/, which I imagine would be unrecognisable
> to a French person.

Because they don't use cologne?

(Aramis is a men's fragrance.)

[Adam Funk]

On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 4:48:07 AM UTC-4, GordonD wrote:
>> On 30/08/2015 06:14, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> > On 2015-Aug-30 09:03, Whiskers wrote:
>> >
>> >> The High Street and railway station book sellers 'Menzies' managed to
>> >> hang on to the 'Mengheez' pronunciation, just, although it does seem to
>> >> be a losing fight for others of that name.
>> >
>> > The former Australian Prime Minister Menzies pronounced his name with a
>> > [z], but that didn't stop his critics from referring to the Ming dynasty.
>> >
>>
>> Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, was the
>> opposite - he did pronounce his name "Mingis", and was called "Ming" by
>> his friends.
>
> And Ming the Merciless by his enemies?

"Klytus, I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?"


--
Our function calls do not have parameters --- they have
arguments --- and they always win them.
--- Klingon Programmer's Guide

[Adam Funk]

On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 10:46:33 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> On 2015-08-30 14:24:50 +0000, Dingbat said:
>> > On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 5:24:47 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> >>> On 2015-08-29, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> >>>> My comments are from recollections or references I no longer have at
>> >>>> hand: In &c, & is et and c is cetera. 'th' replaces both thorn and
>> >>>> edh, still in the Icelandic alphabet.
>> >> I could spell my name Æđel, but I don't (though if I did it would make>
>> >> it more difficult to make juvenile jokes of).
>> > If I remember right, Athol Guy's name is pronounced with [T] rather
>> > than the [D] you appear to use.
>>
>> I pronounce it with a /T/, and was surprised to see it spelt with đ
>> rather than with þ.
>
> Not a problem: the letters edh and thorn were not used for voiced and
> voiceless sounds as they are in modern phonetic notation. Either letter
> could represent either the voiced or the voiceless interdental, and there
> are even manuscripts that intermingle both letters with both readings.
>
> In the case of "Athel," the th would have been voiced, because it's a
> continuant in intervocalic position, but the voicing distinction was not
> phonemic in English until words borrowed from Norman French introduced
> a contrast that superseded the complementary distribution. (Which is why
> there was no need to assign one of the letters to the voiced allophone
> and the other to the other.)

Yay, I remember something correctly from my undergraduate OE class!
Thanks.


--
"Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water,
or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol?" [Dr Strangelove]

[Adam Funk]

On 2015-08-29, R H Draney wrote:

> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote in
> news:mrsdum$70p$3...@news.albasani.net:
>
>> On 8/29/15 7:13 AM, Dingbat wrote:
>
>>> The ampersand isn't the only former letter of the alphabet.
>>>
>>> "ye," as in "Ye Olde Booke Shoppe," is an archaic spelling of "the."
>>> In the Old English runic alphabet, was the letter thorn for this
>>> sound. On conversion to the Latin alphabet, it was replaced with y,
>>> introducing confusion as to whether a y is a consonant or vowel. This
>>> confusion was duly resolved by introducing the digraph 'th'. The Old
>>> English letter "wynn" was replaced by "uu," which eventually
>>> developed into the modern w (but still called a double u.)
>>>
>>> http://blog.dictionary.com/letters-alphabet/
>>
>> Nothing about the edh and the yogh?
>
> Why are you overlooking the aesc?...r

Hey, I support their restitution ... but I also think the
Germanophones should change "Mittwoch" to "Wotanstag".


--
Master Foo said: "A man who mistakes secrets for knowledge is like
a man who, seeking light, hugs a candle so closely that he smothers
it and burns his hand." --- Eric Raymond

[Adam Funk]

On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> Caxton learned his trade in Bruges; his employees were Flemish. He didn't
> import punch-cutters to London in 1475, just typesetters, and they didn't
> have those outlandish letters. They also spelled [g] with <gh>, because
> that was how Dutch did it.

Didn't that son of a gun even admit that "I am not goode at spellinge"
or something to that effect?


--
By filing this bug report, you have challenged my
my honor. Prepare to die!

[Adam Funk]

On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 8:28:04 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:

>> Ah, so when you say no they didn't in response to the statement that
>> Roman scribes wrote in cursive, what you really mean is that the cursive
>> the Roman scribes indisputably did write in isn't what you mean by the
>> word cursive when applied to modern English writing. I do hope you
>> accept that Roman scribes using Roman Cursive might have been Romans who
>> knew what they were doing, and that 'Roman cursive' is an accepted name
>> for the sort of writing they did.
>
> No, the name for it is Old Roman Cursive (capitalized like the names of all
> paleographic hands), and it is not "cursive" in the modern sense that Ranjit
> ("dingbat") used above; in fact you got the name right but by appearing to
> correct me you implied that Old Roman Cursive is written "in cursive."

Is there a good reason why "cursive" in paleography doesn't meant the
same thing as "cursive" in Modern Vernacular English?


--
If hard data were the filtering criterion you could fit the entire
contents of the Internet on a floppy disk. --- Cecil Adams

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, September 1, 2015 at 2:15:09 PM UTC-4, Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > Caxton learned his trade in Bruges; his employees were Flemish. He didn't
> > import punch-cutters to London in 1475, just typesetters, and they didn't
> > have those outlandish letters. They also spelled [g] with <gh>, because
> > that was how Dutch did it.
>
> Didn't that son of a gun even admit that "I am not goode at spellinge"
> or something to that effect?

He did complain about dialect variation, but I don't remember that. They don't
make modern-spelling editions of the things other than the Morte d'Arthur
and it's too hard to figure out what he's saying. I have enough trouble
with the Essays of Francis Bacon, and he's a bit more modern in spelling than
KJV or First Folio.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, September 1, 2015 at 2:15:10 PM UTC-4, Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 8:28:04 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
>
> >> Ah, so when you say no they didn't in response to the statement that
> >> Roman scribes wrote in cursive, what you really mean is that the cursive
> >> the Roman scribes indisputably did write in isn't what you mean by the
> >> word cursive when applied to modern English writing. I do hope you
> >> accept that Roman scribes using Roman Cursive might have been Romans who
> >> knew what they were doing, and that 'Roman cursive' is an accepted name
> >> for the sort of writing they did.
> >
> > No, the name for it is Old Roman Cursive (capitalized like the names of all
> > paleographic hands), and it is not "cursive" in the modern sense that Ranjit
> > ("dingbat") used above; in fact you got the name right but by appearing to
> > correct me you implied that Old Roman Cursive is written "in cursive."
>
> Is there a good reason why "cursive" in paleography doesn't meant the
> same thing as "cursive" in Modern Vernacular English?

MVE-speakers never studied paleography?

[James Hogg]

Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>> Caxton learned his trade in Bruges; his employees were Flemish. He didn't
>> import punch-cutters to London in 1475, just typesetters, and they didn't
>> have those outlandish letters. They also spelled [g] with <gh>, because
>> that was how Dutch did it.
>
> Didn't that son of a gun even admit that "I am not goode at spellinge"
> or something to that effect?

How Caxton brought de Worde to England

When Johannes thought up a device
That could duplicate texts in a trice,
He gained fame and prosperity too
After changing his name – wouldn’t you?
Would The Gutenberg Galaxy sell
If he’d kept the name Gensfleisch? Like hell!

The discovery Gutenberg made
Was the start of a flourishing trade.
His new medium spread like a flash.
Lots of others saw ways to make cash,
Like the burghers of Antwerp and Ghent
And an expatriate English gent.

William Caxton’s first press was in Bruges
And it kept Mrs Caxton in rouge.
He was nourishing plans to expand,
Set up shop in his own native land.
The investment was well worth the risk
And soon business in London was brisk.

Caxton summoned assistance, I’ve heard,
From Alsace. Thus came Wynkyn de Worde,
Left his brothers, named Blynkyn and Nod,
Fast asleep and set off on his tod,
Feeling sure that the time was now ripe
For a man of the movable type.

As a businessman Caxton had flair,
With a hundred-percent market share,
And this entrepreneur’s great success
Was assured, for he had a good press.
When he finally curled up his toes;
Who succeeded him, do you suppose?

Why, his faithful Alsatian was there,
Although not the legitimate heir.
So the journeyman found himself boss,
Not quite English, but who gave a toss?
He took over old Caxton’s goodwill
And then managed the firm better still.

The scriptoria couldn’t compete
With what Wynkyn could print in Fleet Street,
Such as Whittington’s Latin for schools,
Polychronicon and Ship of Fools,
Geoffrey Chaucer, John Skelton (good guys),
Sir John Mandeville’s Travels (all lies),

And devotional books by the score,
Illustrated with woodcuts galore.
Wynkyn’s inking was great, say reports,
And he never was caught out of sorts.
He continued to print undeterred.
All true bibliophiles love de Worde.

--
James Hogg

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, September 1, 2015 at 4:33:53 PM UTC-4, James Hogg wrote:
> Adam Funk wrote:
> > On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> >> Caxton learned his trade in Bruges; his employees were Flemish. He didn't
> >> import punch-cutters to London in 1475, just typesetters, and they didn't
> >> have those outlandish letters. They also spelled [g] with <gh>, because
> >> that was how Dutch did it.
> > Didn't that son of a gun even admit that "I am not goode at spellinge"
> > or something to that effect?
>
> How Caxton brought de Worde to England
>
> When Johannes thought up a device
> That could duplicate texts in a trice,
> He gained fame and prosperity too

> After changing his name - wouldn't you?

And it was Good.

Since no source is given, I shall assume that was your own invention.

I sincerely hope it was not the work of two hours and eighteen minutes (the
elapsed time between the postings of the message it replied to and it), or
the Light Verse Trades Union will be up in arms.

I have stored away a copy for future admiration and I'd very much like to be
able to publicize it in appropriate channels.

[R H Draney]

Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote in
news:ot5hbcx...@news.ducksburg.com:

> Is there a good reason why "cursive" in paleography doesn't meant the
> same thing as "cursive" in Modern Vernacular English?

Synchronicty alert:

http://i.imgur.com/8TzFpra.png

....r

[snide...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 12:27:11 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 3:07:02 PM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
> > On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

> > > This is where you might insert a photograph or a facsimile of a document.
> >
> > Lower Heyford, Oxfordshire; Myrry monument 1684 - posted by Martin Beek.
> > 13th image in that post.
>
> What is "that post"?

Apparently this:

> > <https://www.flickr.com/groups/englishbaroque/discuss/72157600345434750/>
>
> (Still waiting for that link to open up.)

Took less than 3 seconds for me. Office-grade connection, of course.

/dps

[Robert Bannister]

So we curse more often than in the times studied by palaeographers?

[Robert Bannister]

On 2/09/2015 2:05 am, Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2015-08-29, R H Draney wrote:
>
>> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote in
>> news:mrsdum$70p$3...@news.albasani.net:
>>
>>> On 8/29/15 7:13 AM, Dingbat wrote:
>>
>>>> The ampersand isn't the only former letter of the alphabet.
>>>>
>>>> "ye," as in "Ye Olde Booke Shoppe," is an archaic spelling of "the."
>>>> In the Old English runic alphabet, was the letter thorn for this
>>>> sound. On conversion to the Latin alphabet, it was replaced with y,
>>>> introducing confusion as to whether a y is a consonant or vowel. This
>>>> confusion was duly resolved by introducing the digraph 'th'. The Old
>>>> English letter "wynn" was replaced by "uu," which eventually
>>>> developed into the modern w (but still called a double u.)
>>>>
>>>> http://blog.dictionary.com/letters-alphabet/
>>>
>>> Nothing about the edh and the yogh?
>>
>> Why are you overlooking the aesc?...r
>
> Hey, I support their restitution ... but I also think the
> Germanophones should change "Mittwoch" to "Wotanstag".
>
>

Saturday is a problem too in English and German - in North Germany, it
is "sun eve", but in the south, the word is probably related to Saturn
too despite theories by Jakob Grimm. We should rename it to Ymirsday or
perhaps Lokisday.

[Peter Moylan]

On 2015-Sep-02 06:33, James Hogg wrote:
>
> How Caxton brought de Worde to England

[snip excellent stuff]

Word!

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[Whiskers]

On 2015-09-01, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2015-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>> Caxton learned his trade in Bruges; his employees were Flemish. He didn't
>> import punch-cutters to London in 1475, just typesetters, and they didn't
>> have those outlandish letters. They also spelled [g] with <gh>, because
>> that was how Dutch did it.
>
> Didn't that son of a gun even admit that "I am not goode at spellinge"
> or something to that effect?

Spelin' woz a flewidde perceonall matterr in thoze dayze/

The regional accents and dialects of English in his day were far more
varied than they are now; even people from adjoining villages might
struggle to understand each other (and where the Normans had planted
their own folk to replace recalcitrant Welsh-speaking locals there were
even villages where neighbours on opposite sides of the main street
spoke different languages). The early printers naturally catered for
the customers who paid, which mostly meant the 'middle sort' in and
around London and the royal court.

Shakespeare almost certainly had to modify his English to make any
headway in London - and he is said to have spelt even his own name
inconsistently.

[Whiskers]

<Applause>

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Wednesday, September 2, 2015 at 6:12:54 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:

> Shakespeare almost certainly had to modify his English to make any
> headway in London - and he is said to have spelt even his own name
> inconsistently.

That would be because the handful of his autographs aren't all spelled the same way.

[Whiskers]

That's certainly the sort of thing that can spread rumours.

[Robert Bannister]

It would probably be OK today when nobody seems to look at the signature
you wrote on the back of the card because of the warning about it being
invalid without.

[Adam Funk]

Excellent. By a strange coïncidence I've just been to Prague, where I
accidentally chanced on an alchemy museum: I was looking for a
geocache during a lunch break, saw the museum, went back to a
conference, & suddenly remembered that Dee & Kelley had worked here
for Rudolf II. It turns out that the museum is in the building where
Kelley lived, & was interesting & fun (not so much an "educational"
museum).


--
svn ci -m 'come back make, all is forgiven!' build.xml

[Adam Funk]

On 2015-09-02, Whiskers wrote:

> On 2015-09-02, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On Wednesday, September 2, 2015 at 6:12:54 AM UTC-4, Whiskers
>> Catwheezel wrote:
>>
>>> Shakespeare almost certainly had to modify his English to make any
>>> headway in London - and he is said to have spelt even his own name
>>> inconsistently.
>>
>> That would be because the handful of his autographs aren't all spelled
>> the same way.

ISTR that his own don't even include the contemporary canonical
spelling --- is that right?

> That's certainly the sort of thing that can spread rumours.

Is this a Fleetwood Mac joke that I've missed?


--
Some say the world will end in fire; some say in segfaults.
[XKCD 312]

[Whiskers]

On 2015-09-04, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2015-09-02, Whiskers wrote:
>
>> On 2015-09-02, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, September 2, 2015 at 6:12:54 AM UTC-4, Whiskers
>>> Catwheezel wrote:
>>>
>>>> Shakespeare almost certainly had to modify his English to make any
>>>> headway in London - and he is said to have spelt even his own name
>>>> inconsistently.
>>>
>>> That would be because the handful of his autographs aren't all spelled
>>> the same way.
>
> ISTR that his own don't even include the contemporary canonical
> spelling --- is that right?

If Wikipedia can be believed
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_handwriting#Shakespeare.27s_signatures>

>> That's certainly the sort of thing that can spread rumours.
>
> Is this a Fleetwood Mac joke that I've missed?

If so I missed it too.

[snide...@gmail.com]

A problem with bi-pondial music?

/dps

[musika]

"Rumours" is a Fleetwood Mac album.

--
Ray
UK

[Whiskers]

I don't think I've ever knowingly chosen to listen to a Fleetwood Mac
performance. I don't know what their pondial placing might be.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, September 5, 2015 at 9:16:23 AM UTC-4, Whiskers Catwheezel wrote:
> On 2015-09-04, snide...@gmail.com <snide...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Friday, September 4, 2015 at 3:03:40 PM UTC-7, Whiskers Catwheezel
> > wrote:
> >> On 2015-09-04, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >> > On 2015-09-02, Whiskers wrote:

> >> >> That's certainly the sort of thing that can spread rumours.
> >> > Is this a Fleetwood Mac joke that I've missed?
> >> If so I missed it too.

[it was stated that it/they had an album called *Rumours*]

> > A problem with bi-pondial music?
>

> I don't think I've ever knowingly chosen to listen to a Fleetwood Mac
> performance. I don't know what their pondial placing might be.

I first heard of it/them when Bill Clinton chose its/their "Don't Stop
Thinkin' About Tomorrow" as his campaign theme song in 1992. It was said
to be an odd choice because it was an "oldie." I kinda liked it.

[Robert Bannister]

You just can't persuade some Windows people to try Mac in any form.

[RH Draney]

On 9/5/2015 6:16 AM, Whiskers wrote:
>
> I don't think I've ever knowingly chosen to listen to a Fleetwood Mac
> performance. I don't know what their pondial placing might be.

They appear to be the occidental equivalent of the Taiwan band F.I.R....r

[Anders D. Nygaard]

On 30-08-2015 16:39, Dingbat wrote:
> On Sunday, August 30, 2015 at 5:03:34 AM UTC-4, Anders D. Nygaard wrote:
>> [...]
>> Æ/æ may have originated as a ligature, but is considered a proper letter
>> (the 27th, after Z/z and before Ø/ø and Å/å) in the Danish alphabet.
>
> Is æ used in respelling German names for Danish readers?

No, we are happy to use ä.
But when using foreign keyboards, ae is a workable substitute for both.

/Anders, Denmark

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2015-09-04 22:28:43 +0200, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> said:

> On 2015-09-02, Whiskers wrote:
>
>> On 2015-09-02, Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, September 2, 2015 at 6:12:54 AM UTC-4, Whiskers
>>> Catwheezel wrote:
>>>
>>>> Shakespeare almost certainly had to modify his English to make any
>>>> headway in London - and he is said to have spelt even his own name
>>>> inconsistently.
>>>
>>> That would be because the handful of his autographs aren't all spelled
>>> the same way.
>
> ISTR that his own don't even include the contemporary canonical
> spelling --- is that right?

ISTR the same, but I don't know if it's right. The only William
Shakespeare I knew spelt his name the way you expect. He was very keen
on printing, and used to print the programmes for school plays, which
could legitimately say things like "Coriolanus//Play by William
Shakespeare//Printed by William Shakespeare".
--
athel

[Sam Plusnet]

In article <dbrdo0...@mid.individual.net>, athe...@yahoo.co.uk
says...

He should have offered to sign copies of the script for a modest
consideration.

--
Sam