[PW] Ye equals The?

[swguardian-wombat at yahoo.com]

There is more too it then that. "Ye" did come to mean "the" 

ye (article) 
old or quaintly archaic way of writing the, in which the -y- is a 16c. 
graphic alteration of þ, an O.E. character (generally called "thorn," 
originally a Gmc. rune; see th-) that represented the "hard" -th- sound 
at the beginning of the. Early printers, whose types were founded on the 
continent, did not have a þ, so they substituted y as the letter that 
looked most like it. But in such usages it was not pronounced "y." Ye for 
the (and yt for that) continued in manuscripts through 18c. Revived 19c. 
as a deliberate antiquarianism; the Ye Olde _____ construction was being 
mocked by 1896.

Karen Lofstrom <klofstrom at gmail.com> wrote: On 10/2/07, Jeanne Schramm  wrote:

> Recently on an episode of Jeopardy! a contestant lost in the final round for
> giving the answer "Ye Old Curiosity Shop" (instead of "The Old Curiosity
> Shop").  Before I send a letter of protest (!!) to Alex Trebek, does anyone
> know of a reason why "Ye" should not be considered an alternate spelling of
> "The"?

Because the Y is just an inexact rendering of the letter "thorn",
representing "th", which looks a bit like a Y. "Ye" is just scribal
shorthand for "the".

-- 
Karen Lofstrom
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