Re: Off topic: type (ME letter "Yogh")

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Patricia M Godfrey  on Thu, 6 Feb
2003 17:51:12 -0500


> ... another medieval letter that I
> cannot id off the top of my head right now

There aren't that many, really -- not in English anyway, only about four or
five -- how large is the landing pad on top of your head? You've got the Edh
aka Eth (D middle bar), which doth sound like eth without "e"; you've got the
very early form of G, which looks like a scorpion hanging from the ceiling -- I
don't think it has a name, or anyway I'm ignorant of it; the Thorn (oblique
"P"-shaped), which subtly distinguishes the sound of "th" when it appears at
the beginning of a word (them) from "th" when it is not initial (an Edh) -- but
later on, they were just used interchangeably; the Wyn or Wen, a char for
wynsom wyfmen (win=joy), which also looks like a Thorn, only o-bleaker; and
what else? That's it. Oh, the Yogh, for darkest nyght. These aren't really
mediaeval characters, they're all very early, Teutonic, runic chars. The wyn,
for example, looked (in stone) like a triangular pennant flying from a vertical
staff -- hence the P shape. The names of the runes were derived from the
initial letter of things they spelled: thus a Thorn comes from "thorn", spiky
sharp. An Edh was a landing pad on the top of the head (silent h). And so
forth.

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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