Re: USAGE: OE pt was Re: USAGE:Yet another few questions about Welsh.

Ray Brown scripsit:

> Caxton & other early printers, using fonts produced on the continent,
> lacked symbol thorn and substituted |y| instead. Hence we find spellings
> like _ye_ (the), _yat_ (that), wiy (with) etc. The first still lingers
> on - and is almost always mispronounced - in pseudo-archaic spellings
> like "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe" (lots of tea shops in medieval England,
> of course  :)
Right up there with the marinara sauce in mediaeval Italy.

In fact the þ/y confusion predates printing.  From Michael Everson's
paper "Sorting the letter ÞORN", section 3.1.6:

 1.MEng.1986. McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin,
 eds. 1986. A linguistic atlas of late mediaeval English. Volume 4:
 County dictionary. Aberdeen; New York: Aberdeen University Press.

    [On p. xi, explaining editorial practice, the editors state:

        “6.5 Treatment of þ and y. For reasons connected with the
        development of handwriting in the late 12th and 13th centuries,
        the letters ‘þ’ and ‘y’ came to be written identically in some
        modes of script. By the later Middle Ages, insular practice
        was regionally coherent: south of a line running roughly from
        the Mersey to the Wash, but excluding much of East Anglia,
        ‘þ’ and ‘y’ were represented by the same (usually y-like)
        symbol.... [Here], the use of implies a systematic distinction
        between the two letters in the manuscript at issue, regardless of
        the letter-shapes used to effect it. If the letters are confused,
        then y is used throughout, regardless of whether the mediaeval
        symbol is þ-like or y-like. Renderings like mþkþll, corresponding
        to the familiar mykyll, are hence not to be found, but appear
        with y; and in a manuscript where þ is so used, other þ-spellings
        are likewise reported as y (so þe ‘the’ appears as ye). The
        system of transcription, which attends to functional distinction
        rather than to form, is not ideal; but it is a practical means of
        reporting, in outline, an important facet of the written language,
        and it cuts through the taxonomic problems that would otherwise
        be presented by the many cases in which þ-like, y-like, and
        indeterminately þ ~ y-like symbols are used interchangeably....”

    In the body of the dictionary, ÞORN is a separate letter following
    Y (and presumably Z) and preceding YOGH (ISO name EZH). Thus the
    dictionary sorts thousand, thowsande, yhousand, yousande, yowsant,
    þosent, þousand, þousend, þusand, þousand, þowsond (pp. 265-66).]

> Clearly, the writing of thorn as |y| was not desirable. But, alas, rather
> than create new fonts for thorn, the printers printers simply adopted the
> Norman _th_ digraph which we use till today. Only the Icelanders AFAIK now
> use eth and thorn.
Faroese uses ð but not þ.

--
What is the sound of Perl?  Is it not the       John Cowan
sound of a [Ww]all that people have stopped     cowan@ccil.org
banging their head against?  --Larry            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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