Conference thebay::joyoflex

    And also why the "s" at the end (or middle, I forget which) of words
    closely resembles a lower case "f"?
 
    Jon Reckard

    RE: .0 --
    
    You're absolutely right. 
    
    The symbol called "thorn" represented the voiced 'th' sound, as in
    "the".  A different symbol, called "ash", represented the unvoiced
    'th'  of words like "thought." 
    
    The thorn symbol originally looked like a cross between a d and a y --
    a circle with a stem that curved back and had a crossbar (wish I had a
    chalkboard to show you!).  The symbol dropped out of the language
    around the renaissance.  
    
    There was a medieval revival in the 1700's in which enthusiasts for
    things Gothic misread the old letter and replaced it with the 'y' it
    closely resembled. 
    
    I'm less sure about the 's' that looks like an 'f'.  For one thing, it
    dates from much later, after the invention of printing.  I had always
    been under the impression that it was simply a printer's convention. 

    --bonnie

You'll see the 'f' thing in hand-written script as well as printing, and 
in fact, it is a script 's' with the curl at the top and bottom 
shortened, and the descending part made long and straight.  If you look 
at original documents, you'll see that the 'f'-looking thing isn't 
crossed in the middle like a real 'f' is.  Somewhere along the line the 
diftinction vanifhed, and in old typset documents I've seen the 
lower-case s with a cross bar.

Note that the 'f'-thing only appears interior to a word.  An 's' at
either end is always made as an 's'. 

I heard once that it was really borrowed from a German letter, but I 
can't remember the remark entirely.

					>>>==>PStJTT

    One of the books I consult occasionally is a facsimilie of a book
    printed when the long-s [near-"f"] was in vogue.  It's something
    of a strain to read with that convention.
    
    Oddly, the firft word of the following page was included near the
    bottom of each page.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Re .4:
    
    > Oddly, the firft word of the following page was included near the
    > bottom of each page.
    
    That helps the printer in case the pages get out of order.
    
    
    				-- edp

    re .5
    
    It also helps when the book is read aloud--you have a word to say
    while you are turning the page.
    
    Icelandic still uses thorn, and anther rune-based letter called
    "edh" which looks like a "d" with a cross-bar.  "Edh" is the voiced
    version, "thorn" the unvoiced (respectively as in either and ether).
    
    			-John Bishop

    Re: .4
    
    I think the convention of duplicating words at page-turns was
    only dropped quite recently in English printing circles.  I've
    got an edition of Jane Austen's Minor Works printed like that,
    and it can't have been out of print much longer than 20 years.
    
    (Of course, I guess it didn't sell too quickly - so the edition
    itself could be pretty old).

    re:.6
    
    It would seem more logical for thorn to be the unvoiced "th",
    since, after all, the "th" in "thorn" is unvoiced.
    
    If memory serves, the International Phonetic Alphabet uses "th"
    for the unvoiced phoneme and "dh" as the voiced.
    
    --- jerry

    Hmmmm...I was under the impression that the IPA uses the cross-bar
    d for the voiced phoneme, and the "theta" symbol for the unvoiced
    phoneme.
    
    -- Mike

    Okay, I looked it up in my history of language text (Myers, quoted
    extensively and frequently by me) --
    
    The IPA symbols are theta for the unvoiced 'th' and eth, which we have
    been calling thorn, for the voiced 'th'.  Thorn was the old english
    name for the letter representing the unvoiced 'th'. So I had that
    backwards. 
    
    The long 's' in IPA represents the unvoiced 'sh' (as in fish).  The
    voiced version of this sound is found in the middle of 'vision' and is
    represented by a symbol that looks sort of like a squashed cursive 'z'. 
    
    Myers doesn't seem to mention how the long 's' was used in English,
    much less discuss whether it represents a historic pronunciation
    difference.  
    
    --bonnie 
    
    --bonnie

re: .0

The use of 'y' for voiced-th is a printers convention dating back to
the introduction of moveable type in England.  The first type faces
(made in Germany) lacked a symbol for voiced-th, so the printers chose
the little-used 'y'.  Subsequently, the language changed, essentially
eliminating the distinction between voiced- and unvoiced-th.
(Voiced-th survives in English only in the extremely stable function
words, such as "the", "that".)

Martin.

    MLNOIS::HARBIG
                  Re .11
                  Are you sure ?
                  The reason I ask is that the explanation was given
                  to me in the context of studying Chaucer who ,correct
                  me if I'm wrong, pre-dates Caxton and the introduction
                  of printing into Britain.
                  Bonnie's explanation seemed to be more in line with
                  what I had heard.
                                        Max                          

    Re: .11
    
    >Subsequently, the language changed, essentially
    >eliminating the distinction between voiced- and unvoiced-th.

    Interesting point. Evidence of this change can be quite pragmatic: if I
    spelled out a nonsense word beginning with th- and said it was a noun
    or an adjective or an adverb or a verb, I can't imagine any native
    speaker of English (mainstream current English, I mean) pronouncing it
    with a voiced 'th'. 
    
    The only pair of words where the voicing distinction is necessary (as
    far as I can see) is thy/thigh; and no one I know uses 'thy' except in
    jest (or maybe in prayers). I can see the voicing distinction dying
    out.
    
    In a hundred years maybe some noter will start a topic about the
    history of how 'th' was spoken, rather than how it was written.
    
    b

    Another minimal pair for "th":
    
    	either (voice)
    	ether  (voiceless)
    
    Voiced/Voiceless (with vowel difference):
    
    	bath	(noun, voiceless)
    	bathe	(verb, voice)
    
    There are other phonemes for which finding minimal pairs is
    hard:  "sh" and "zh" for example:
    
    	glaizer	allusion (voice)
    	glacier Aleutian (voiceless)

    The existence of a strong voiced/unvoiced distinction for most
    phonemes makes maintenance of separate voiced and unvoiced forms
    of "th" easier.
    
    As for nonsense words:  how would you pronouce "wathe" or "nothies"?
    
    				-John Bishop

    Whoops.
    
    I meant 'th' at the beginning of words - to compare on equal terms
    with voiced 'th' in words like the, this, that, there etc.

    mother	: someone who nurtures brats.
    mother	: someone who catches moths