• teft@piefed.social
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      2 months ago

      Depends how far back you go. Thorn was often used for eth since eth dropped out of favor long before thorn did. Thorn being in use is why we have ye olde shoppe. Ye is just the spelled with a thorn. Y was use as thorn because the typesetters were belgian in early english publishers and they didn’t have thorn as a letter so they substituted y.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Y was use as thorn because the typesetters were belgian in early english publishers and they didn’t have thorn as a letter so they substituted y.

        So what you’re saying is, the Belgians stole our thorns!