Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott
I was at my local library tonight and while I was on my break from harassing the pages there [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img], I read up some more on the thorn and esh (I also found it as eth...?) signs. And basically, some interesting side notes on them are that the thorn sign was derived from a very popular runic sign and the only reason it and it's counterpart were stricken from English writing was because when the first printing presses were being made on the continent, there was no font for them. In it's (for the thorn, the more popular of the two) place, a "y" was added. So when you see "ye olde inne", or somehting of the sort, you should be saying "the" olde inne. A bit off topic, I know, but pretty interesting.
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As a little aside, "eth" or "edh" is the correct name of the letter. "Esh" is the symbol which looks like the integral sign in Calculus, and is used in the IPA to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative (as in
Sharky).