LL-L: "Orthography" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 05.OCT.1999 (02)

[Alfred Brothers]

Jason Childers wrote:

> I had found a site called "Repertoires of characters used to write the
> indigenous languages of Europe". (http://www.indigo.ie/egt/alphabets/ ).
> When I looked at the English site, I found a couple letters that I had not
> encountered before.  Besides "ash" (Æ), "thorn", "eth", and ‘ (is there a
> name for this letter?), I saw two others: "yogh" (sort of a 3 with a front
> tail), and a letter that looks like a modified "eth".  Does anyone know how
> these letters were used, and why and when they left the English languages?
> Are there any other characters that are used in other languages using the
> Latin alphabet?

The "yogh" (the letter similar to a 3) was used in Middle English texts to
represent the sounds now usually written "y", "w" or "gh". Examples are ME
"3ong, dra3en, dou3ter, 3e, 3if, fi3ten" (young, draw, daughter, ye, if,
fight). It was also occasionally used by scribes for voiced /s/ [z] at the end
of words out of confusion with the letter z. It probably dropped out of use as
these sounds changed in pronunciation and fell in line with sounds represented
by symbols already in use (y, w, etc.). (I believe the IPA symbol used for the
"s" in "pleasure" was borrowed from this source.)

Re the symbol resembling a modified "thorn" -- I agree with John Feather that
it's probably the "wynn" symbol, originally a rune, which was used in OE and
occurred occasionally in ME through the end of the 13th century.

Alfred Brothers
alfredb at erols.com