[Sca-cooks] eths and thorns, oh my

[chirhart_1]

Wow I tore my ligatures once! Chirhart (Limping to the ship)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pixel, Goddess and Queen" <pixel at hundred-acre-wood.com>
To: "SCA-Cooks maillist" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2001 1:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] eths and thorns, oh my


> 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
>
>
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