[Sca-cooks] eths and thorns, oh my

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Mark.S Harris wrote:

> Margaret, renegade scribe said:
> > It's called an "eth", with a hard "th" as in "the" rather than a soft
> > "th" as in "eigth", which would be a thorn. A thorn, depending on the
> > script, either looks like somebody drew a b on top of a p, or sometimes
> > (and mostly later) a 'y'. Thus, "ye" in "ye olde whatever" is actually
> > *the*, with a soft "th".
>
> Huh? I'm confused.
>
> You first said 'with a hard "th" as in "the"', then later you
> said 'Thus, "ye" in "ye olde whatever" is actually *the*, with
>  soft "th".'
>
> I assume 'the' is pronounced the same since it is given as the
> example. Yet, here first you say it is hard and then you say
> it is soft.

Because I jumped about 600 years of usage in one easy sentence, and
misspoke at the same time. Sigh.

>
> I think we have:
> eth     hard "th"    example: "the"
> thorn   soft "th"    example: "eight"
>
> Hmm. Maybe the problem is that I understood "ye olde whatever"
> translated to "the old whatever". Does it actually translate
> closer to "they old whatever"?

It *does* translate to "the old whatever", but a thorn is a soft
sound. It seems contradictory, yes. "The" in modern speech is a hard "th",
but, IIRC from my language history class, the eth fell out of use and the
thorn came to mean the "th" regardless of pronunciation. In earlier usage,
like in Beowulf, if it's a thorn, it's soft, if it's an eth, it's hard.

I *think*, although since the book is at home hiding in a bookshelf
somewhere, that the change happened when printing took off, as the
printers didn't want to have to remember which letter to use. I could, of
course, be totally wrong, too.

Sorry about that. I really ought to have someone proofread my email before
I send it. I'd get in much less trouble that way. ;-)

[OB food content: Knowing how the letterforms are pronounced makes reading
the early manuscripts much niftier. I have my resident anglo/saxon poet
read texts for me when I redact. ;-)]

 >
> > More than you ever wanted to know, probably. ;-)
>
> Maybe not, if I could keep all this straight. T'would be
> much easier just to stick to the 26 letter without all the
> squiggly lines and such over them. :-)
>
> Stefan li Rous

Try ligatures sometime. ;-)

When I'm in practice, I do a really lovely A/S miniscule. It's my favorite
hand.

Margaret