Ye olde

History

The use of the term ye to mean "the" derives from Early Modern English, in which the was written , employing the Old English letter thorn, . During the Tudor period, the scribal abbreviation for was or ; here, the letter is combined with the letter . With the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of for became ubiquitous, leading to the common ye as in "Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe". One major reason for this was that existed in the blackletter types that William Caxton and his contemporaries imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while did not, resulting in [[File:EME ye.svg|10px|class=skin-invert]] (yͤ) as well as ye. The connection became less obvious after the letter thorn was discontinued in favour of the digraph . Today, ye is often incorrectly pronounced as the archaic pronoun of the same spelling.

References

References

1. (15 January 2015). ""Ye Olde" Is Fake Old English (And You're Mispronouncing It Anyway)".
2. ''Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary'', [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ye%5B2%5D]{{Webarchive. link. (2012-10-20 ye[2] retrieved February 1, 2009)
3. Hill, Will. (30 June 2020). "The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System".