Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: French Ampersand

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Friday, October 31, 2003, 5:51
On Thursday, October 30, 2003, at 05:45 AM, Tristan McLeay wrote:


> Reading <http://french.about.com/library/writing/bl-symbols.htm>, I was
> told that the French name for & is 'une esperluette, un et commercial, un
> et anglais'. The last one means 'an English and', doesn't it? How come
> they call it that? I thought we stole it from the French? Do the French
> not like ampersands or something?

I don't know about the French attitude to the ampersand, but we didn't
nick it from the French. It arose simply from a cursive form of _Latin_
'et'.  Some forms of ampersand still look very much like 'e' and 't' run
together.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================