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There is a well-known phenomenon in non-logographic languages called ‘pronunciation spelling’ which has been used since time immemorial (which, by the way, has been the 3rd of September 1189 ever since the year 1276) to separate the linguistic men from the um... not-yet-men.
Pronunciation spelling is what happens when you, perhaps unaware of a traditional pronunciation, or indeed totally ignorant of the fact that spoken and written language do not necessarily have much to do with each other ( and not just in logographic writing), you pronounce a word just as it’s written, usually in the process butchering it for the ears of the cognoscenti.
And now the essay behind which all that exposition was ... um exposited will become apparent, because the other day I was driving out aways (I think it may have been through Minneola, TX) when I chanced to pass an establishment resplending in the name of “Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe” and, as soon as I had dismissed the obvious notion that they were covering their ... um ... a ... selves in case anyone discovered that they were in the habit of selling out-of-date meat, I started to muse on that amusing ‘Ye’---you see ‘Ye’ (pronounced ‘Ye’) is a fascinating example of a spelling pronunciation with a wild and wiggly history that goes all the way back to the dim mists old Germanic paganism. In those proto-literate days men were given to scratching words of power on sticks and stones (all the better to break your bones) not to mention swords (presumably just in case the pen WAS mightier). The medium of these rune staves necessitated an alphabet made up of straight lines. One of the characters was called ‘thorn’ and represented the voiced or unvoiced “T H” sound (as in ‘that’ an ‘thing’). It looked rather like a letter ‘p’ that had got a bit carried away with it’s vertical stroke, extending it well above its bowl--or like the bastard offspring of a lowercase ‘b’ and ‘p’ who got even more carried away while kerning. With the advent of Christianity and monks and scribes and writing in the less-scratchy environment of parchment, several characters survived from runes, one of them being the thorn. This was because the th sound is so unusual and so the usual suspects for providing alphabets at the time (Latin and Greek) came up short in the th-area.
And so from somewhere around the seventhish century to the fifteenth the thorn lived happily in the world of English letters, though gradually, sporadically being replaced by the t-h digraph until the introduction of printing. Printers founts didn’t have thorns, but late-model thorns had something of the aspect of the letter ‘Y’ (you’d have to see it--this is definitely not working on radio---you can’t even see me waving my hands around---you’ll just have to believe me) so compositors (the guys who actually set the type) would sometimes use the letter ‘Y’ instead of the digraph t-h. Their justification for this was that it helped them to justify their lines (i.e. make them all the same length--so the page looked nice and neat). Carvers of tombstones and the like would also do the like for the like reason (if you follow me).
They would often write ‘that’ as a ‘Y’ for the ‘Th’ with a ‘t’ beside it for short (or in extreme cases above it), or (drum roll please) ‘the’ with a ‘Y’ and and ‘e’ foolishly expecting it to be pronounced ‘the’.
Of course after a while people forgot about poor thorn and started to spelling pronounce it “Ye” and then, around the end of the 19th century, people who (presumably) had never even known anything about poor thorn to forget in the first place, started using the term “Ye Olde” often to disparage something that was merely pretending to be old. From there it’s but a skip and a step to that butcher in Minneola, TX.
Just as soon as I got home (all this musing surprisingly not causing me to crash on the way) I immediately googled “Ye Olde” and found a slew (possibly a whole slew) of them, some of which I suppose are sort of appropriate uses---‘Ye Olde Archery Shoppe’ of Madisonville or ‘Ye Olde Clocke Shoppe’ in Humble make some sort of sense, as does ‘Ye Old Historic Laundry Antiques’ of Terrell, but what on earth could have been going through the minds that came up with ‘Ye Olde Self Storage’ just round the corner from me in Denton or, to go further afield, ‘Ye Olde Donut Shoppe & Bakery’ in Altus, Oklahoma.
Then to finish on a high note there are my favourite inappropriately Ye-Oldeds:
In Okeechobee, Florida there is ‘Ye Old Adult Book & Video’ which must specialise in the naughtier exploits of Guinavere and Launcelot and, on the other side of the country, ‘Ye Old Strip Shop’ in Vallejo, California) which it turns out to my considerable relief actually deals, not in the fleshpots, but in Furniture Refinishing & Repair
Cheerio for now
from Richard Howland-Bolton.
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