What does this mean?

[Legendxp]

So lately I've been seeing some weird things pop up when looking through certain texts.

Such as this: fi
and this: æ

Notice, these are singular characters. They are not f,i or a,e.

Any ideas what these characters normally mean? Are there any other weird characters that you've had no idea about? How would we go about pronouncing these?

[Togath]

æ is pronounced Ae/Aay, but I'm not sure about the other.

[Nix Nihila]

They are ligatures.

Interestingly, if memory serves, the ampersand is also a ligature derived from the latin "et".

[Excession]

See Typographic ligature (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_ligature). They're pronounced the same as the component letters. Note that "ae" doesn't really have a consistent pronunciation anyway, it depends on the word.

[erikun]

Interestingly enough, ß in German is a ligature as well. However, while it superficially looks like a B, it is actually ss or sz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F) and pronounced just the same. (An old style of writing "s" is much like writing "f" but without crossing the letter. The result looks something like "fs" together, which is where the ß character comes from.)

Unlike ligatures, thorn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)) (Þ) and eth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%90) (Ð) are actual letters that have fallen out of use in English.

[Jay R]

So lately I've been seeing some weird things pop up when looking through certain texts.

Such as this: fi
and this: æ

Notice, these are singular characters. They are not f,i or a,e.

Any ideas what these characters normally mean? Are there any other weird characters that you've had no idea about? How would we go about pronouncing these?

The ligature "æ" is a long "a" or "e", and was used until fairly recent times to replace an eta in words of Greek origin, such as "encyclopædia" and "hæmoglobin".

The "fi", if you are seeing it in Renaissance books, is probably actually "si", from when an "s" in the middle of the word was written as a tall letter.

[Flickerdart]

The long s+i ligature isn't fi, it's ſi, because the long s has no crossbar.

[Ravens_cry]

I've noticed æ much more often in older books, like from before the mid-twentieth century.

[Telonius]

Sometimes it's an artifact of changing a .pdf into a .doc file. Depending on the font in the original source file, when you change it into a .pdf, the character might be stored either as an a e or as an ae. So if you take that .pdf and save it as a .doc, it might display as either one. (I run into this in my job fairly often - it can be a real pain when trying to get an accurate character count from a .pdf file).

[Togath]

I've noticed æ much more often in older books, like from before the mid-twentieth century.

Interestingly, æ seems to be making a comeback in fantasy literature.
It's more authors just being trying to be fancy, but it is still fun to see a symbol like that surviving, even if in an odd use(and, if I'm remember right, either Swedish or Icelandic still use Thorn[which was oddly the source of words such as "ye" as the letter "y" was substituted for Thorn in some old printing presses]).

[Lateral]

Interestingly, æ seems to be making a comeback in fantasy literature.
It's more authors just being trying to be fancy, but it is still fun to see a symbol like that surviving, even if in an odd use(and, if I'm remember right, either Swedish or Icelandic still use Thorn[which was oddly the source of words such as "ye" as the letter "y" was substituted for Thorn in some old printing presses]).
It's Icelandic.

Anyway, the ligature fi is (as far as I'm aware) only typographical. (Well, I mean, they're both typographical, but it's pretty much just f and i put together for convenience, whereas 'ae' has multiple uses- as a diphthong in Latin or words pulled from Latin (as well as some Greek), as an archaic representation of the greek η, or as a letter in certain Germanic languages, mostly Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.)

[Maelstrom]

Also, the æ letter is called ash or æsc

[Keris]

The long s+i ligature isn't fi, it's ſi, because the long s has no crossbar. Though in some typefaces ſ has a nub on the left side, because that's where you'd start drawing the letter.


Unlike ligatures, thorn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)) (Þ) and eth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%90) (Ð) are actual letters that have fallen out of use in English. Thorn can be rather handy for some emoticons ( :Þ , etc.), particularly if when using P they'd be swapped out for smilies, or if you want to keep them symmetrical.

[shawnhcorey]

Interestingly, æ seems to be making a comeback in fantasy literature.
It's more authors just being trying to be fancy, but it is still fun to see a symbol like that surviving, even if in an odd use(and, if I'm remember right, either Swedish or Icelandic still use Thorn[which was oddly the source of words such as "ye" as the letter "y" was substituted for Thorn in some old printing presses]).

Yes, the thorn character, þ, is pronounced as an unvoiced "th". Sometimes, when the word þe was copied, the loop in the þ was not closed, which made it looked like a y, and þe became ye.

A similar thing happen with þou, which became thou or you.

[BWR]

But that doesn't explain why people say 'you' instead of 'thou' as well as write it. What does explain it is that it's the same forms as the plural: English just used the plural second person in place of the singular, which was polite address (look at German and old-fashioned Norwegian).

While there may be some cases of using 'y' instead of 'þ' for writing 'thou', that's not the reason we spell or say 'you' instead of 'thou' nowadays.

[Jay R]

Yes, the thorn character, þ, is pronounced as an unvoiced "th". Sometimes, when the word þe was copied, the loop in the þ was not closed, which made it looked like a y, and þe became ye.

A similar thing happen with þou, which became thou or you.

"Thou" and "you" are as different as "I" and "we".

[shawnhcorey]

While there may be some cases of using 'y' instead of 'þ' for writing 'thou', that's not the reason we spell or say 'you' instead of 'thou' nowadays.

That's the other explanation for "you". Nobody knows which of the two are correct. Or perhaps, it's a merger of both. :smallwink:

[Miklus]

So lately I've been seeing some weird things pop up when looking through certain texts.

Such as this: fi
and this: æ

Notice, these are singular characters. They are not f,i or a,e.

Any ideas what these characters normally mean? Are there any other weird characters that you've had no idea about? How would we go about pronouncing these?

"æ" is a perfectly valid letter of the danish alphabet along with "ø" and "å". Our language is more advanced and needs more wovels! :smallwink: Norwegian has them too. Swedish has åäö instead. In order for a non-dane to propperly pronouce the "æ", you must stuff your mouth with boiled potatoes and say like a sheep: "Mæææææ!".

[BWR]

That's the other explanation for "you". Nobody knows which of the two are correct. Or perhaps, it's a merger of both. :smallwink:

Meaning what? The explanation for the written form or the spoken one?
Because using 'y' for 'þ' is most definitely not the reason we use the second plural for the second singular.
It's also highly unlikely to be the reason we use it for the written form, because if people used the second plural for singular address in spoken language, they would also use it while writing.
And if the 'thou' lexeme were consistenly written with a 'y' you'd have lots of other forms 'ye' for 'the', 'yy' for 'thy' 'yine' for 'thine', and I am not aware of any such cases.
While 'ye' is found as a pronoun, it is from 'ġē', not 'the'.

Unless you have some sources that say otherwise, in which case I would love to read them.

[Traab]

Only time I see the Æ is when I see mention of the Æsir when i read norse myths. Even then it seems to be done less often, like writers figure, "Meh, Aesir is close enough."

[Zrak]

I've noticed æ much more often in older books, like from before the mid-twentieth century.

It used to be standard to maintain the ligature in English words derived from Latin roots which contained the dipthong it denoted. I would imagine this practice stopped as familiarity with Latin decreased and thus the ligature obfuscates rather than clarifies.

[Jay R]

It used to be standard to maintain the ligature in English words derived from Latin roots which contained the dipthong it denoted. I would imagine this practice stopped as familiarity with Latin decreased and thus the ligature obfuscates rather than clarifies.

Those are actually words with Greek roots, since it replaced the letter "eta". It stopped being used in America when Noah Webster regularized the spelling of "encyclopædia" to "encyclopedia", etc. This had no effect on British English, of course.

[Flickerdart]

Those are actually words with Greek roots, since it replaced the letter "eta". It stopped being used in America when Noah Webster regularized the spelling of "encyclopædia" to "encyclopedia", etc. This had no effect on British English, of course.

http://i.imgur.com/T1V4EBX.jpg

:smalltongue:

[Zrak]

Those are actually words with Greek roots, since it replaced the letter "eta". It stopped being used in America when Noah Webster regularized the spelling of "encyclopædia" to "encyclopedia", etc. This had no effect on British English, of course.

True, I should have said "Latin and Greek." I simply defaulted to Latin since that's what I'm familiar with, but it was/is used to indicate Greek etymologies as well.

[rs2excelsior]

I'm not familiar with Greek, but "ae" is a diphthong in Latin, pronounced "aye." I've seen them written/typed together before. I imagine it's an artifact of typeset printing presses, but don't quote me on that.

[Miriel]

Those are actually words with Greek roots, since it replaced the letter "eta". It stopped being used in America when Noah Webster regularized the spelling of "encyclopædia" to "encyclopedia", etc. This had no effect on British English, of course.
Actually, encyclopaedia was borrowed from 16th-century Latin. The Latin neologism itself was created with Greek stems, but it is not a Greek word.

[SaintRidley]

Just going to post this link here on the thou/you issue. It covers most everything you need to know about English second person. (http://saintridley.kinja.com/lets-thou-and-i-talk-about-pronouns-1470176250)

On a tablet right now and unable to use the characters, but thorn and eth remain in use in Icelandic. In Old English they were used interchangeably. The ae ligature existed in Old English as a full letter on its own, with a phonetic value approximate to the a in cat.

[Jay R]

Those are actually words with Greek roots, since it replaced the letter "eta". It stopped being used in America when Noah Webster regularized the spelling of "encyclopædia" to "encyclopedia", etc. This had no effect on British English, of course.

Actually, encyclopaedia was borrowed from 16th-century Latin. The Latin neologism itself was created with Greek stems, but it is not a Greek word.

Yup. As I said, "words with Greek roots".

[Miriel]

Yup. As I said, "words with Greek roots".
But the English ae just follows from the latin ae. And my dictionnary says there is no eta in the -paedia root. The diphtong replaces a Greek αι.

[Razanir]

Though in some typefaces ſ has a nub on the left side, because that's where you'd start drawing the letter.

Thorn can be rather handy for some emoticons ( :Þ , etc.), particularly if when using P they'd be swapped out for smilies, or if you want to keep them symmetrical.

I actually have used it that way before :smallbiggrin:

[Lissou]

Æ is still used in French, although not nearly as much as œ (which is still an acceptable spelling of some words in English such as manœuvre). Sadly a lot of English websites seem to write œ as "ce" (c+e) rather than oe at least.

Anyways, if the letters appear when they shouldn't be, there is obviously some sort of problem. I used to have something similar to that happen on some websites that replaced accents with other letters or symbols, but that hasn't happened in years.

[BWR]

'æ' is one of the three extra vowels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f488uJAQgmw)Norwegian has.

[Heliomance]

Meaning what? The explanation for the written form or the spoken one?
Because using 'y' for 'þ' is most definitely not the reason we use the second plural for the second singular.
It's also highly unlikely to be the reason we use it for the written form, because if people used the second plural for singular address in spoken language, they would also use it while writing.
And if the 'thou' lexeme were consistenly written with a 'y' you'd have lots of other forms 'ye' for 'the', 'yy' for 'thy' 'yine' for 'thine', and I am not aware of any such cases.
While 'ye' is found as a pronoun, it is from 'ġē', not 'the'.

Unless you have some sources that say otherwise, in which case I would love to read them.

We do have 'ye' for 'the' - it's the source of things like "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe".

[BWR]

We do have 'ye' for 'the' - it's the source of things like "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe".

I know. The point is most English dialects use the second plural in place of the second singular, and the spelling of 'you' comes from 'ēow' not 'thou' spelt with a 'y'.

[BaronOfHell]

"æ" is a perfectly valid letter of the danish alphabet along with "ø" and "å".

No way! I am from Denmark and I've never encountered those letters before.

Btw. oddly enough, the computer writes "a" differently than I do. I guess I got used to it, as we learn both ways in school, though everyone abandons the way the computer writes "a". But writing "a" as I usually do, then the way I write "æ" becomes œ.. or does it? Holy cow I've forgotten how I write "æ". I think maybe my "e" is different too?

Edit: Yes I found it:
http://i33.tinypic.com/rh31gl.png
Computer "æ" vs. how I think most northerners write "æ".

& cursive vs. non-cursive of "æ" when written:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSmtDWO8aq41dVJ7b0LU4cFyYhGzXgqg CalGLZJPt7bMB9INeK4

[erikun]

'Ye' is a misidentification of the word 'þe', due to how it was frequently written with the wide slope and narrow loop to the þ character. This resulted in some people misreading "þe Olde Shoppe" as the stereotypical "Ye Olde Shoppe", despite nobody at the time thinking for a moment that it was the word "Ye". Sometimes early printing presses did spell it "ye" due to not having a þ character.

This is completely independent from the second-person plural, personal pronoun 'ye' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_(pronoun)), which was from Middle English and ultimately dropped in favor of 'you' (which acted as both second-person plural and second-person singular). This can be seen in phrases such as "Hear ye, hear ye all!"

[HeadlessMermaid]

The ligature "æ" is a long "a" or "e", and was used until fairly recent times to replace an eta in words of Greek origin, such as "encyclopædia" and "hæmoglobin".
No, the Greek eta ("η", capital "Η") is normally replaced by the letter "e". Examples:
Ἥρα --> Hera
Μήδεια --> Medea

The ae / æ replaces the Greek diphtong "αι" (alpha iota), so you'd have:
αἷμα --> hæma (blood)
Βάκχαι --> Bacchae

However the æ wasn't only used for loan words, it was also a proper Latin diphtong. I think.

[Razanir]

'Ye' is a misidentification of the word 'þe', due to how it was frequently written with the wide slope and narrow loop to the þ character. This resulted in some people misreading "þe Olde Shoppe" as the stereotypical "Ye Olde Shoppe", despite nobody at the time thinking for a moment that it was the word "Ye". Sometimes early printing presses did spell it "ye" due to not having a þ character.

This is completely independent from the second-person plural, personal pronoun 'ye' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_(pronoun)), which was from Middle English and ultimately dropped in favor of 'you' (which acted as both second-person plural and second-person singular). This can be seen in phrases such as "Hear ye, hear ye all!"

Close, but no cigar. IIRC, the change was because fewer and fewer printers had the character, so they started replacing it with the similar-looking Y

[Jay R]

No, the Greek eta ("η", capital "Η") is normally replaced by the letter "e". Examples:
Ἥρα --> Hera
Μήδεια --> Medea

The ae / æ replaces the Greek diphtong "αι" (alpha iota), so you'd have:
αἷμα --> hæma (blood)
Βάκχαι --> Bacchae

However the æ wasn't only used for loan words, it was also a proper Latin diphtong. I think.

You're right. Thanks for the correction.