How many letters are in the Alphabet is among the very first subjects you learn in schools.
There are many letters (defined in a somewhat loose manner) that English generally ignored when the language evolved and you may not ever knew about them (though in some instances fossils of their remains can be found).
1. Thorn
Have you ever been to any place that advertises as “ye olde” whatever? It’s not a Y. Or at the very least, wasn’t intended to be. It was originally an entirely distinct letter called thorn. It originated in it’s counterpart in the Old English runic alphabet, Futhorc. The thorn was replaced with TH as time went by, and it went out of fashion in large part due to Gothic-style scripting created those letters, Y as well as thorn appear nearly the same. Additionally, because Continental printing presses didn’t come with thorn , it was commonplace to substitute it with a the letter Y. This practice was also dropped, with the exception of old signs.
2. Wynn
Another relic of the Futhorc running alphabet. wynn had been added for the Latin alphabet since there wasn’t an alphabet that was quite right for with the “w” sound that was popular in English. It was possible to (and there was a way to) join two Us together, but it was not exactly the right way to go. However, over time the idea of gluing two Us together became well-known, to the point that they were literally connected and transformed into the letter W.
3. Yogh
Yogh is one of the most popular sound that were used in Middle English. In English expert Dennis Freeborn’s From Old English to Standard English which is a single passage in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it could be a reference to the “y” sound in but not only the “ch” sound in German Bach or Scottish loch and many more.
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However, as time progressed, scholars began changing all instances of yogh using the letters Y, G, or GH, in their texts. Then, the newly created GH alphabets, through various linguistic processes, split into the broad variety of sounds that are associated with “gh” today (though not all of them–the GH that you can find in ghosts is believed to originate originated from Dutch printers for example.). This wasn’t an easy processit was a slow process According to the linguistics professor Kate Burridge, “in the 1600s the word daughter was pronounced three ways: ‘dauter’, ‘dauchter’ and ‘daufter.'”
The yogh remained in Scotland and its shape changed to look like an cursive Z. So when printing presses came along, Scottish printers just replaced the missing yoghs using readily accessible Zs. In the past this led to the fact that people began to mispronounce names. Today, the name of the UK politicians Menzies Campbell has to be said to be “MING-iss” rather than “Men-zees,” though some Menzies pronounce it by using the letter Z.
4. Ash
You’re likely familiar with the letter in old-fashioned texts particularly the type that is found in churches. It’s also used in contemporary words, such as the words aether and aeon. What you might not be aware of however is that the word ae was a common English word back in the times in the days of Old English; it was named aesc or ash following the Ash Futhorc rune, and it was used as a substitute for transcribing the rune into Latin letters. The letter vanished in the 13th century, later, according to author Stephen Webb, it discovered its use during the sixteenth century the Latin form of a few Greek words. It it was used in the pluralization of Latinate terms which ended in A which means it vanished but was reappearing throughout the alphabet (though in the present, it’s still to its former position).
5. Eth
Th is a bit like the thorn’s little brother. It is derived in Irish, today it is a slightly distinct pronunciation for the “th” sound than is normally associated with thorn. with the eth sound being an alternative spelling for the “th” sound in the words”this or that” while thorn is an alternative spelling for the “th” sound in the word thorn.
However, all evidence suggests this distinction in pronunciation did not exist in Old English. They were frequently utilized in a similar way in an identical manuscript. As per British the linguist David Crystal, a general absence in Old English manuscripts makes it difficult to pinpoint the reason why either a thorn or an eth could be utilized in a specific manuscript. However, it may be because of an accent difference between the scribe’s accent, or the variants were enjoyable, the person writing the manuscript thought that one was better or was more readable or perhaps they didn’t realize. Then both eth and thorn were substituted for TH, but thorn was able to stay for a while.
6. Ampersand
Nowadays, we use it to make a statement however, the ampersand has a long, lengthy background in English and was often used as an 27th letter in the alphabet even as as recently since the 18th century.
In reality, it’s due to its position within an alphabetic system that has its name. The character was initially just called and sometimes even et (from it being the Latin word meaning and, which is what the ampersand is often used stylistically to look like). When teaching children about the alphabet the & was typically put at the end of the alphabet, following Z and was recited as “and per se and,” meaning “and in and of itself” or “and standing on its own” (and wasn’t completely distinct from this, as people often used to pronounce “A per se A,” “I per se I,” and “O per se O,” particularly when writing out words to show that these letters functioned as words of their own).
Then you’d have “w, x, y, z, and, per se, and.” In time the final part changed into an ampersand and was a constant even after we had stopped teaching it as a part of an alphabet.
7. Insular G
The letter (referred as an insular G (or Irish G) is the father of”yogh,” which is the Middle English version of yogh. It was originally an Irish letter which was used for sounds such as “zhyah,” “jhah,” and “gah.” Then came the more well-known design that is the Carolingian G, that took over the “g” sound.
In the course of time, as Old English transformed into Middle English Insular g was transformed into yogh, and like I mentioned was replaced slowly mostly by the GH that is now standard among Scribes. At this point, insular g and yogh were no longer required in the first place, and Carolingian G stood alone (though the Carolingian G related descendant is still visible in contemporary Ireland).
8. That
Similar to the way that we use the symbol for the word “and,” we had similar issues with (or it was for that matter, in Old English, thaet) it was a letter that had a stroke at the top. It was originally just a shorthand, an amalgamation of thorn and T (so more like “tht”), but it eventually caught on and got somewhat popular in its own right–according to Unicode, the letter could even be used as a stand-in for Old English words that contained thaet, so oththaet (“until“) could be spelled O, thorn, thorn-with-stroke-in-ascender [PDF]. and the letter Yt (with the Y representing an evocative old fashioned thorn, similar to the thorn in Ye) survived as shorthand for it until late in the day, it was spotted through the 18th century.
9. Tironian “Et”
It’s been said that a long time back, Marcus Tullius Tiro (who was essentially Roman Cicero’s stateman P.A.) created a shorthand system known as Tironian notes. It was a simple system that could be easily extended, and was used by scribes for centuries following Tiro’s death . PDFTiro.
Source :
What are the English consonants?
A very effective symbol was the et symbol, a easy way to throw into the word “and.” It was often drawn in a style that is now a fashion-conscious method of drawing 7. and English Scribes could be very clever using it. If they wrote”b&,” it could mean “band” or “bond” or whatever spelling the Scribe employed (this was prior to the spelling contests). The Tironian Et is still seen on signs, for instance, in Ireland however it’s mostly gone to the ampersand.
10. Long S
It’s possible to have seen this in older books or documents. Sometimes, the letter S can be replaced with an image that appears similar to one that resembles an F. It’s called a long S that was an early variant of lowercase S. Yet, the current lowercase S (then called”the shorter S) was utilized as per the complex rulebook (but typically, it appears near the beginning of words) and caused a number of word forms (especially plurals) which used both. For instance, superstitious is what the word superstitious is when it would have appeared in print. It was just a fashion writing style and didn’t alter pronunciation much at all. It was also bizarre and odd, as there were no other letters that behaved this in the same way. Around the 18th century this usage was generally abandoned and the new lowercase S was crowned the king. However, it is still in use in an area that may be surprising the calculus homework. This symbol can be believed to come from the long S symbolizing Latin summa.