There have been various changes made throughout the history of the English language. Most notable of which lie in its alphabet. English actually started out as a language known as West Proto-Germanic, which evolved into Frisian and English. In its early history, English used to be written in Futhorc or the Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet before the Roman Empire reached Britain and introduced the Latin alphabet to them, which we still use to this very day. Despite that, there were additional letters that were taken from the runes, such as þ (thorn) and ƿ (wynn).
But in the history of English alphabets, there are other letters that used to exist as well, such as æ/æsc (ash), œ (ethel), ȝ (yogh), ſ (long s), ŋ (eng), ⁊ (tironian et), and ð (eth).
þe Olde Or ðe Olde Or Ye Olde?
Have you ever heard the phrase “Ye Olde English”? That’s actually used to be written as “þe olde English.” This happened because during the early adoption of the Latin alphabet there was no dedicated “th” letter. Because of that, the Anglo-Saxon adopted the letter “þ” (thorn) to represent the “th” sound. Another reason why the Anglo-Saxon adopted thorn was their belief that it had its own pronunciation, rather than being merely a combination of “t” and “h”.
But, as English grew, the Anglo-Saxons also used ð or eth for the “th” sound and this letter became popular in the 8ð century alongside thorn. The reason why there are both thorn and eth despite having the same function have to do with the churches. In the old English days, there were two types of churches in Britain. The first is the Roman Church and the other is the Irish Chruch.
These two churches use two different letters for the “th” sound. The Roman Church tended to use thorn, while eth was more commonly used by the Irish Church. Because of that, you can find both thorn and eth used interchangeably in the old English manuscripts.
þe ƿindy ƿinter
Like the sound “th,” there was no letter w in the original Latin alphabet so the Anglo-Saxon adopted the rune ƿ or wynn (which actually means joy) to represent the “w” sound. But in modern English, that “wuh” sound got represented with the letter “w” which never existed in the original Latin alphabet. (Funfact: the original Latin alphabet did not include the letter j, u, and w).
The Æsc Tree.
Æ or æsc or ash, according to Stephen Webb, is one of the native letters, letters that are derived from Futhorc, that got carried over when they still tried to adapt to the Latin alphabet. This alphabet was used to represent the short “a” sound, such as Apples, Nap, Cat, etc, while the letter “a” could represent a longer vowel sound like the word father.
Nœd For Spœd
Œ or œthel or ethel (pronounced as EE-thel) is a letter adapted from the rune ᛟ or odal. In addition, œ was also used in Latin to represent certain Greek-derived vowel sounds.
Ethel functions as a way to pronounce the long e in a word, like in the word need. Oddly enough, you can actually see some words still have ethel despite it’s just the phrase “oe” such words include Subpoena, Phoenix, etc.
Yogh with its double function
Yogh or ȝ began to appear in middle English (circa 13th to 14th century). It was used for replacing “y” or “gh.” A prime example of which is in the word ȝet, niȝt, and so on. According to Robwords, there are two reasons why yogh began to disappear. First is due to european typists prefer the Latin alphabet over runes and second is ȝ is very similar to a fancy Z making it difficult to distinguish between the two.
The Shuſh Of The Long S.
The long s or ſ is actually an alternative from the lowercase s with specific usage rules, according to Jessie Kratz. With these rules are: applicable to lower case s, used in the beginning and the middle of the word, double long s can be used to replace a double s except in the end of the word or it uses the lowercase s (for example is poſſeſs and not poſſeſſ), and the long s will not used when the s is at of the word.
Briŋ Back The Roses, Please…
Eng is one of the words that was invented and used for a brief period during the 1600’s. This enigmatic letter was used to replace “ng” at the end of a letter. Although it eventually fell out of use in standard English, it was later adopted into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the same sound.
⁊ Finally
⁊ or tironian “et” is one of the letters that was not created by the Anglo-Saxons but by a Roman scribe named Tiro. It functioned similarly to the ampersand (&), which is to replace the word “and.” Aside from archaic ampersand, tironian “et” czn also be used to replace AND and OND, for example London become L⁊on, Andy become ⁊y, etc.
SOURCES
Watts, R. (2021). LOST LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET: 9 Letters We Stopped Using [Review of LOST LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET: 9 Letters We Stopped Using]. https://youtu.be/wJxKyh9e5_A?si=QApDdCDWIL9mgwG6
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