While listening to Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship: A Human History, I was enormously distracted by the reader's continued mispronunciation of the thorn ("y^e") as "YEE." I've always assumed that "y^e" is pronounced "the" and that the "YEE" pronunciation was part of the joke when used in the phrase "ye olde." Just as I would pronounce "y^t" as "that" and "y^r" as "their," I would say "the" unless I were dictating and needed to distinguish the thorn from regular old "the."
But now I'm doubting myself. Ever since I listened to this book, I have been paying attention to the times when I've heard others read the thorn aloud (surprisingly, it has come up rather often — I suppose I travel in strange circles). More than half of the people reading old documents said "YEE" instead of "the" and now I'm all turned around. I was sure I was right, but now I'm not.
I'm putting a poll up in the sidebar. Since many of you are skilled in the ways of Early Modern English, I trust your judgment to set me straight.
5 comments:
Part of the problem is that we do have an old-fashioned word spelled and pronounced “ye,” nicely seasonal in “God rest ye, merry gentlemen.”
I think the thorn should be pronounced as “th,” except when making fun of touristy shops, in which case the introductory sounds “yee oldie” are perfectly appropriate.
See also: Alphabet Updated with 15 Exciting New Letters.
Those are all good points.
I'll keep my eyes open for any evidence of people saying "ye" in the 19th century.
The point about "yee" as an archaic pronoun is a good one too. What do we make of "gather ye rosebuds while ye may"? Is that one article and one pronoun? Or can "ye" be both a possessive and a subjective pronoun?
All I know of Noah Webster comes from Jill Lepore's A Is For American. I haven't found any dates later than those, but I consider it a challenge now!
The long-s change mentioned by RJO was occurring around the world at this time. For more info, see these blog posts:
http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/01/long-s.html
http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2006/06/rules-for-long-s.html
Both authors say that the demise of the long s was spurred by the creation of "modern face" type fonts which, in addition to stylistic changes, omitted the long s and its many ligature combinations. The first such typeface was created in Paris around 1781; one of the first British publications to omit the long s was a London newspaper published in 1787 by a John Bell. (J. L., are you reading this?) In British printed publications, the turning point was about 1800, after which the long s became increasingly rare.
Presumably, manuscript and gravestone use of the long s would have continued for some time after its use had ended in printing. But the long-s changes were independent of Noah Webster.
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