Ye Olde Debunking
Have you ever wondered where "Ye Olde" spelling comes from? Today we unravel this thorny linguistic issue. minutephysics is now on Google+ - http://bit.ly/qzEwc6 And facebook - http://facebook...
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This has nothing to do with physics, but you know how sometimes kitschy shops have signswhere "the" is spelled with a "Y"? Ever wonder where that came from? Ancient runes.When people started writing in old English, the sounds [þ] and [ð] were representedby a symbol called thorn. As in, "thorn-O-R-N". The use of a digraph, that is, two separateletters, to represent thorn was only introduced by the French and their crazy "way-more-letters-than-necessary-spellings"after the Norman invasion.So English scribes started using "T-H" to spell newfangled French words like "theatre","Esther," and "neanderthal", and in the meanwhile be...
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This has nothing to do with physics, but you know how sometimes kitschy shops have signswhere "the" is spelled with a "Y"? Ever wonder where that came from? Ancient runes.When people started writing in old English, the sounds [þ] and [ð] were representedby a symbol called thorn. As in, "thorn-O-R-N". The use of a digraph, that is, two separateletters, to represent thorn was only introduced by the French and their crazy "way-more-letters-than-necessary-spellings"after the Norman invasion.So English scribes started using "T-H" to spell newfangled French words like "theatre","Esther," and "neanderthal", and in the meanwhile be...
