A Catalogue of Useless Facts

Ye Olde Article

Ye Olde Article
- linguistics -

​​​​The article "ye" (as in "Ye Olde Something Something Shoppe") is actually pronounced the same as "the". In Early Modern English, the digraph "th" was represented with a single letter called a "thorn". Due to an absence of the thorn on imported European printing presses and the similarity of the thorn to the letter "y", "the" was often represented as "ye", with the proper pronunciation implied in context.

The thorn eventually became obsolete in English and "th" became the standard replacement, but "Ye Olde" remains as a pseudo-Old English trope.

Any resemblance of the article "ye" (of "Ye Olde") to the pronoun "ye" (an archaic plural form of "you") is coincidental.

#014

Sources ▼

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https://io9.gizmodo.com/ye-old-is-fake-english-and-youre-mispronouncing-16797805...