[Ads-l] factoid or foolishness?

Amy West medievalist at W-STS.COM
Wed Jul 8 11:23:11 UTC 2015


On 7/8/15 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> Date:    Tue, 7 Jul 2015 07:28:20 -0400
> From:    Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: factoid or foolishness?
>
> Huffington Post:
>
> "The King James Version would make its debut in the year of 1611 (before
> the letter J existed, so the name 'Jesus' did not appear once)."
>
> We report, you decide.
>
> JL
Yep. When I worked at M-W I was sent these letters from the 
correspondents to answer: Why is there no letter J in the King James Bible?

The letter form was there: it was the i-longa. It just wasn't being used 
to represent the /j/ sound.

(On that note, this German reader/speaker was driven nuts by the 
spelling of the German soccer player's first name "Dszenifer". Yep: 
that's "Jennifer" auf Deutsch. Look at that cluster they have to use. 
"Dsch-" is what I think I've seen used before (as in "Dschungel" 
["jungle']).

---Amy West

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