On Nov 4, 2006, at 2:36 PM, Gary Kline wrote:
On Sat, Nov 04, 2006 at 08:53:21PM +0000, Bill Moran wrote:
On Fri, 3 Nov 2006 20:56:07 -0800
Gary Kline <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Guys,
This roff script is in a directory with ye-olden-English font,
There is no word "ye", and there never was.
Word origins is a hobby of mine, and I found it pretty difficult
to figure
out where "ye" came from, because it never existed.
What _did_ exist, was a letter in old English called a "thorne".
The thorne
looked a lot like a capital "Y" (with a horizontal line through
it) and had
the sound of "th". When the thorne fell into disuse, later
readers would
think sentences said "we went to Ye bar to drink wiY friends".
Since "the" is liable to be the most common word in the English
language, this
fell into a more general belief that in olden times, the word "ye"
was used
instead of "the".
Anyway, it's a bit of non-BSD trivia. Sorry for the noise to
those who aren't
interested, and sorry that I don't know enough about groff to help
fix your
problem.
Well, maybe the gurus will be back on Monday. I'm no scholar of
the English language, but yeah, you're right on the money re the
thorn character. [ Ever watch Bergan Evans' broadcasts circa
late-1950's? ]
gary
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_%28letter%29>
---
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