digression: There is no "ye" (was Re: what happened to groff?!!)

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

On Nov 4, 2006, at 2:36 PM, Gary Kline wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 04, 2006 at 08:53:21PM +0000, Bill Moran wrote:
>> On Fri, 3 Nov 2006 20:56:07 -0800
>> Gary Kline <kline at tao.thought.org> wrote:
>>
>>> 	Guys,
>>>
>>> 	This roff script is in a directory with ye-olden-English font,
>>
>> There is no word "ye", and there never was.
>>
>> Word origins is a hobby of mine, and I found it pretty difficult  
>> to figure
>> out where "ye" came from, because it never existed.
>>
>> What _did_ exist, was a letter in old English called a "thorne".   
>> The thorne
>> looked a lot like a capital "Y" (with a horizontal line through  
>> it) and had
>> the sound of "th".  When the thorne fell into disuse, later  
>> readers would
>> think sentences said "we went to Ye bar to drink wiY friends".
>>
>> Since "the" is liable to be the most common word in the English  
>> language, this
>> fell into a more general belief that in olden times, the word "ye"  
>> was used
>> instead of "the".
>>
>> Anyway, it's a bit of non-BSD trivia.  Sorry for the noise to  
>> those who aren't
>> interested, and sorry that I don't know enough about groff to help  
>> fix your
>> problem.
>>
>
> 	Well, maybe the gurus will be back on Monday.  I'm no scholar of
> 	the English language, but yeah, you're right on the money re the
> 	thorn character.  [ Ever watch Bergan Evans' broadcasts circa
> 	late-1950's?  ]
>
> 	gary
>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_%28letter%29>

---
Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC
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