How old is the letter y

The necessity to learn the written image of every new word beginning with dis — in pronunciation will turn the sweetest individual into a disgruntled customer or cause dyspepsia. Are you sure it is disharmony but dysfunction? Look them up or search for them.

However, the process of writing need not become a game of constant riddle solving. If I were king, with due apologies to the Wylds, Wyldes, Smyths and Smythes, I would abolish the letters x and y , except in their family names, and let lynx and Styx become homographs of links and sticks!

Who will be stymied by my desire to make life easier? Stymie is a late word of unknown origin. My plan has little practical value, for the chance of my achieving the status of an absolute monarch, an enlightened despot, a benign benevolent? However, the die is not cast. Those who enjoy reading dictionaries will discover gyves , lychgate , lykewake , wych — elm along with wych-hazel , and many other nice-looking words.

They will wonder why tryst , which is probably related to trust , is not trist. It remains to say that y is the first letter of numerous words, yes and New York among them. It allows dogs to yap and yuppies to flourish. Send your etymology question to him care of blog oup. Image credit: Ouroboros by Lucas Jennis.

An etching of a wyvern eating its own tail. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Our Privacy Policy sets out how Oxford University Press handles your personal information, and your rights to object to your personal information being used for marketing to you or being processed as part of our business activities. We will only use your personal information to register you for OUPblog articles.

Or subscribe to articles in the subject area by email or RSS. Your essay this morning was a special delight. One of my late friends, a son of a Danish missionary in Tranquebar, India, went to a local English boarding school, also attended by sons of ethnic Indian civil servants; this was before the independency. The puzzled teacher said that he had better do this on the blackboard. I have a question about monkeys in regard to your January 23rd post. Are they failing? Language definitely is cultural but with the huge influences of English American culture, it becomes something which is opted in to, rather than something which is fixed.

The problem is that this word is a false, decontextualised mish-mash of spelling choices, a genetically engineered monster, created to forward an erroneous argument, rather than a natural word that has evolved through an elegant process of selection. English orthography is graceful, pattern-based and law-abiding.

Bemoaning what appears to be an impenetrable, illogical surface is denying the orderly underlying structure of English spelling. Ultimately, such complaints help no one. Allan, the words above not only can be law-abiding, but are. This is why nobody has succeeded. It is necessarily complex, but why mistake complexity for impenetrability? The pronunciation of both the vowel and the consonant varied by language, time, and place.

Bruce, your question is related to the Latin alphabet. It is the exact same in Dutch and Norwegian, as well as a host of other languages written in the Latin alphabet during the Middle Ages and later. The languages that use this alphabet all make adjustments peculiar to the language at hand, but they all have in common that before semi-modern times, I and J were considered variant forms of the same letter, same as U and V. Context generally determined what value the letter had. Show 12 more comments.

Active Oldest Votes. The answer to this is Improve this answer. This is a good explanation. Just French, really. The francophone influence in England pushed that I believe, when English switched from runes to the Latin alphabet. Cerberus, I didn't know that about the origin of J. I'll update the answer.

English iota. It is possible that this changed in later Greek under Latin influence? But not in normal words. Show 7 more comments. Yesterday - Gestern This outline only partially touches upon the question asked, but I hope throws some light on the evolution of the sounds around the letter J in a broader context.

Just to back-up the spanish matter. Casillas e. There is also the famous island of Mallorca. It's kind of funny because some of the no so well known words are often pronounced by the non-spanish speakers ofc with the classic l like in "letter", e.

Add a comment. Gwillim Law Gwillim Law 2 2 bronze badges. I have a problem with the modern assumption that Jesus translates to Yeshua in Hebrew. The figure of Jesus is introduced to the world in Greek, not Hebrew, so the Hebrew translation might not necessarily be what folks now want to asume. We don't really know what his name was in Hebrew.

BruceJames To begin with, Jesus' name in his native language was probably Aramaic, not Hebrew which by Jesus' time was solely a liturgical language, not a spoken language. There are opinions that call him Yeshu, e. Klausner "Yeshu Ha-Notzri" Reuben Alcolay explains that Yeshua is really Joshua, where as Yeshu, in Hebrew and Aramaic, was a name traditionally applied to Jesus. Richard Bauckham's review of ancient Israeli ostuaries commented that the name Yeshua was a rare spelling of the name in the days of Jesus and that Yeshu was more common.

Yeshua is not applied in Hebrew or Aramaic works to Jesus until Maimonedes in the 12th century. There is no agreement here because there is no Hebrew or Aramaic source from Jesus' day. Bruce is Yeshu something other than a late variant of Yeshua? Next "Turtle" vs. How old is the alphabet? As Modern English evolved, the Old English letters were dropped or replaced.

What is the letter thorn? Go Behind The Words! Get the strangest stories of your favorite words in your inbox. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Another baffling trait of the English alphabet?

Using W as a vowel. Find out how that can occur here.