Ye Olde Letter “Y”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there, how are you?

Super, who’s this?

My name is Alex Burton.

Hi, Alex, where are you calling from?

Dallas.

Oh, well, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, you may not realize it, but you’re talking with the founder and the sole member of the Society for the Protection of the Definite Article.

Oh!

And in a lot of cute publications, they use Y-E instead of the.

And it’s never been pronounced ye any time in the past.

It’s only in the present that they pronounce it ye.

And so I’m here to tell you that it should be, if you see ye old shoppy or whatever, it should be pronounced the, not ye.

-huh. Very good.

You’re exactly right.

100% right.

And you’re the sole member of this society?

Well, I’m the sole member up to now, but I would guess that maybe I’ve got two more members.

I don’t know.

There’s no meetings.

There’s no fees.

There’s no election of officers or anything like that.

You just have to stop one in three as they pass you on the road and tell them about proper pronunciation.

Roadblocks about definite articles.

It’s sure to be a hit.

So, in other words, if we go to a tourist trap, go to Gatlinburg or someplace, and it says, ye oldie coffee shoppie, what do you want us to do?

I want you to go up there and raise some kind of a fuss.

You know, say, what on earth is this?

You know, in high dudgeon, at least.

And explain to them that ye would, it was a printer’s convention because it was an Anglo-Saxon sound.

The th sounds that we have in the common words like this and that and those were Anglo-Saxon words.

And there was one symbol in Anglo-Saxon for the voiced and one for the unvoiced.

The unvoiced was an O with a horizontal line through it, so it would be th.

And the other one was a T that sort of lay on its side.

And that was pronounced th, a voiced th.

And it was a printer’s convention because it looked so much like a Y that they began to use the Y with a little E beside it.

Well, you’re right. Now, how do you know all this?

Because I’m a really smart guy and I’m the founder and sole member of the Society for the Protection of the Definite Article.

You’ve got to have some history if you’re going to belong to an organization.

That’s a great summary of the history of the thorn and the F.

And the letter that we’re talking about is the thorn.

It looks kind of like a lowercase p and a lowercase b put on top one another.

That is, there’s a belly and an ascender and an ascender, right?

Yeah, it looks like a pregnant vertical line, sort of.

Yeah, and they…

I’ve never heard it described that way.

Well, I just thought of that.

And then the f looks a little like a…

Well, what is that letter in Greek with…

It looks like an o with a line to it.

Well, it’s sort of like a theta, but there’s…

Theta.

Yeah, but it sort of looks like a lowercase d and a slash to it, right?

Yeah, with a crossbar, right?

Right, and you’ll see that in Old English.

But you’re exactly right that the Y in Ye Olde Coffee Shop is a vestige of a letter that we no longer use.

And it should be the.

In our language.

Well, there’s no reason why we can’t.

Right.

Okay.

Well, so you’re members number two and three now.

Martha, you can be number two.

I’ll be three.

All right.

Give you the honor of being the.

Both of you are number one with me.

Fantastic.

I motion that the society close this meeting.

Okay.

Can I get a second?

A second.

Yeah, I’ll give you a second on that.

All in favor, say aye.

And we’ll set the date of our next meeting for the next time you want to give us a call, Alex.

Whenever.

All right.

Who’s going to be the treasurer?

Thanks for your time.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Wow, he’s right.

Boy, he had something he had to get off his chest.

He formed a committee, even.

This is the place to do that.

It’s funny.

In Congress, committees never seem to get anywhere, but he got right to the point.

He probably got a whole lot more members, too.

The Society for the Protection of the Definite Article.

Now, wait.

How is he spelling the in that?

Very good.

-oh.

Yee Definite Article.

He’s spelling it with a thorn.

That’s what the letter is called.

But he’s exactly right.

The yee has nothing to do with yee like you.

It’s thee.

We’ll post some links to some reputable sources on the subject, and you’ll find out that if you’ve been pronouncing it yee, you’ve been just being silly for no reason whatsoever.

If you’ve got something that’s been bugging you, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And don’t forget, we’re on Facebook.