Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 16:03:28 -0700 (MST) From: Reed Loefgren <rloef@forethought.net> To: Gary Kline <kline@tao.thought.org> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>, Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> Subject: Re: digression: There is no "ye" (was Re: what happened to groff?!!) Message-ID: <20061104160219.Y71984@auden.jmla.com> In-Reply-To: <20061104213621.GA11067@thought.org> References: <20061104045607.GA5653@thought.org> <20061104205321.d309c51c.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> <20061104213621.GA11067@thought.org>
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On Sat, 4 Nov 2006, 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@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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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" > "Word origins is a hobby of mine, and I found it pretty difficult to figure out where "ye" came from, because it never existed." Errol Flynn? r
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