Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9410284:


Nothing is Perfect 1 10, 8:04am

@Kyno50
This isn't entirely correct. In the 14th century, "th" started to gain popularity, and thorn started being written less like the original thorn; it eventually got to the point where the shape of it changed into looking like a "Y." By the time that happened, "th" was pretty standard, with thorn only being used in certain abbreviations for common words. There are actually examples of printed English from the time that use thorn, but only for common abbreviations, such as "the" or "this." It isn't that the letter was too tall so we got rid of it, it's that German and Italian printing presses had "y" but no thorn, so in those common abbreviations, thorn became "y" since written thorn looked like a "y" anyway. Though "th" was in standard use, "the" was one of the commonly abbreviated words that still used "y," which is the reason that "ye" isn't written "the" - were it pretty much any other word with that sound, it would have been written with a "th."