[Ads-l] Happy Þornsday!

[Mark Mandel]

ALAS


On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 10:07 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> So then it’s *not* true that Þornhub.com, the online platform for amateur
> and professional video sharing of materials on Old English, Gothic, Old
> Norse, and Icelandic, has over 25 million registered users?  I knew it was
> too good to be true.
>
> > On Jun 9, 2020, at 8:23 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > Curse my uncorrected astigmatism! I nearly deleted this very interesting
> > thread because I, at first glance, took it to be spam entitled, "Happy
> > _Pornsday_."
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:13 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=ampersand
> >> ampersand (n.)
> >> 1837, contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by
> itself
> >> is 'and' " (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English). An
> >> earlier form of it was colloquial ampassy (1706). The distinction is to
> >> avoid confusion with & in such formations as &c., a once common way of
> >> writing etc. (the et in et cetera is Latin for "and"). The letters a, I,
> >> and o also formerly (15c.-16c.) were written a per se, etc., especially
> >> when standing alone as words.
> >>
> >> The symbol is based on the Latin word et "and," and comes from an old
> Roman
> >> system of shorthand signs (ligatures) attested in Pompeiian graffiti,
> and
> >> not (as sometimes stated) from the Tironian Notes, which was a different
> >> form of shorthand, probably invented by Cicero's companion Marcus
> Tullius
> >> Tiro, which used a different symbol, something like a reversed capital
> >> gamma, to indicate et. This Tironian symbol was maintained by some
> medieval
> >> scribes, including Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, who sprinkled their works
> with
> >> a symbol like a numeral 7 to indicate the word and.
> >>
> >> In old schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet
> and
> >> thus by 1880s the word ampersand had acquired a slang sense of
> "posterior,
> >> rear end, hindquarters."
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 6:50 PM Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Is "and per se 'and'" an eggcorn for "ampersand"? Or vice versa?
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020, 3:20 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Yes, "X, Y, Z, and per-se *and*". I've known of its place in the
> >> alphabet
> >>>> almost since I could read. My parents had, and I think I've kept it, a
> >>>> Peter Piper book, with the original rhymes (
> >>>> https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25027/25027-h/25027-h.htm) and
> modern,
> >>>> i.e.
> >>>> ca. 1930's illustrations based on the originals you can see at the
> >> link.
> >>>> But it had an extra page, for *&*, whose rhyme as I recall was not in
> >> the
> >>>> pattern of the others, and which ended
> >>>>
> >>>> So we have had to print this page on *&*paper.
> >>>>
> >>>> And they did!
> >>>>
> >>>> It's not English in origin AFAIK, but rather a Latin ligature for
> *et*.
> >>>>
> >>>> MAM
> >>>> Order of Palindromic and Self-Reflective Initials
> >>>>
> >>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:08 PM Jonathan Lighter <
> >> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> According to no less a source than an old Ripley's Believe It or Not
> >>>>> cartoon, "&" was formerly the "twenty-seventh letter of the
> >> alphabet."
> >>>>> (Makes sense when you consider the old form "&c.").
> >>>>>
> >>>>> JL
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 2:31 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I don't understand. What about Ƿ & Ᵹ, and "quantity"?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> MAM
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020, 10:18 AM Michael Everson <
> >> everson at evertype.com>
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Hi Mark! Thanks for celebrating.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> It is still there. I don’t know how you got the “wynnyogh"
> >>>> transformed
> >>>>>>> into “quantity” though.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Michael Everson
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 9 Jun 2020, at 12:56, Mark Mandel <markamandel at GMAIL.COM>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On Þornsday, 1994-06-09, CEN/TC304 resolved that in a default
> >>>>>>> multilingual European sort, ÞORN shall be sorted as a separate
> >>> letter
> >>>>>> after
> >>>>>>> Z. Subsequently, ISO/TC37/SC2/WG3 resolved that in its work on
> >>>>>> alphabetical
> >>>>>>> ordering, ÞORN shall be sorted as a separate letter after Z. Most
> >>>>>> recently,
> >>>>>>> JTC1/SC22/WG20 resolved that in its work of producing a default
> >>>>>>> multilingual sort for ISO/IEC 10646, ÞORN shall be sorted as a
> >>>> separate
> >>>>>>> letter after Z.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Copied years ago from
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> http://www.evertype.com/standards/quantity/thorn.html
> >>>>>>>> <http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> which is now *404 Not found*.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Mark Mandel
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> >>>> truth."
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > -Wilson
> > -----
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -Mark Twain
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org