On Friday 2004 July 16 12:13, David King wrote:
> "Ye" is the old English word for "you", not "the"; in old English they
> had an extra letter which looked a bit like a y but was not a y, but a
> th, thus the word was "the" in all old English texts, never "ye".
>
> David
That sounds like a thorny spelling problem to me, David.
From a quick little research, though, I find that "ye" was a usage that
occurred in Middle English (in the 15th century), not Old English, which used
<thorn><e> for "the". The substitution of y for thorn in a printed English
manuscript is accredited to Caxton about 1477 by
http://www.fact-index.com/t/th/thorn__linguistics_.html
though the authors of this page note that this substitution was seen in
manuscripts in the early 1400s. Apparently, when Caxton brought the first set
of type from continental Europe to England, it lacked a thorn (looks like a
"p" but with the stem going above as well as below the circle) and so he made
the substitution that had been made on occasion in handwritten documents
(literally, manuscripts) of y for thorn.
I didn't know this until your posting inspired me to rummage about. You
piqued my interest since I recently reviewed and edited the galley proofs of
the new IEEE Standard 260.1-2004, "Standard Letter Symbols for Units of
Measurement". As did Caxton, we wrestle today with problems of symbols not
being available in some "type sets". This new 260.1 addresses that issue,
among others. It, too, addresses substitution of symbols, for example u for Â
(mu, the symbol for the prefix micro).
So, kind sir, I thank you for your posting. It presented me with a dodge for
mentioning our new IEEE publication. Naturally, the SI is well represented
therein!
Sorry, dear friends. Copyright laws forbid me from passing out or posting
copies. You might be interested in looking at
http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj/lowtech.htm
though, since I wrote that also.
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
Senior Member, IEEE
http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj
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