Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 13:36:21 -0800 From: Gary Kline <kline@tao.thought.org> To: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: digression: There is no "ye" (was Re: what happened to groff?!!) Message-ID: <20061104213621.GA11067@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <20061104205321.d309c51c.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> References: <20061104045607.GA5653@thought.org> <20061104205321.d309c51c.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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@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 > -Bill > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org www.thought.org Public service Unix
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20061104213621.GA11067>