Heads up for mobile typers! Þ: hold T, choose Þ Æ: hold A, choose Æ Đ: hold D, choose đ Œ: hold O, choose œ Bonus! For ‽, just hold (?) If youre like me, it wont come up when holding M to get ?, you have to go to the second page of characters instead. I couldn't find the eNG one unfortunately, i hope one of you can!

The “long s” survives in the modern German letter ß, which is a double s (eg Strasse / Straße). The left hand side of the letter is a long s

I love how you smile while explaining the history. I can tell you love it and that’s infectious! Great teacher.

Æs a Norwegian, I'm sitting here enthralled by this video. We still use Ææ Øø Åå. ^^ Also, I had no idea that futhark came from Anglo-Saxon. Learning new things is fun. ^^ So I will contribute! The "older" way of trying these letters in Norway, I was taught, was: Æ = AE. Ø = OE. Å = AA. ^^ Nifty! Though I am trying to teach my friends abroad how æ, ø, and å are all sounds in the English alphabet still! Maybe I can simply link them one of your videos. ^^

I will bring back þ if it kills me and þat is a promise I intend to keep

I once met a guy whose name was Thorn. When I suggested he spell his name using the letter, he seemed confused. Also, thank you for telling me how to pronounce Menzies.

I really enjoy your language discussions and have watched many of your videos. Word origins have always been fascinating to me. I was in first grade in 1963, with Sisters of Mercy in a Catholic school. The nuns taught us some interesting things. First, our vowels were "A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y and sometimes W." W occasionally had an oo sound like in ooze. (I think it may be Welsh?) They also told us rooves was plural of roof. So at Christmas there were "hooves on the rooves". Plus (plusses) they taught us that the plural of BUS is BUSSES, with 3 Ss, not BUSES. Please keep posting, Mr. Rob, and thanks!

Rob, I had NO idea the topic of your videos was something I would geek out over, but I LOVE IT! Thank you!

We need to bring back Þ. It's Þe best letter ever made

I'm an ESL teacher and it's explanations such as this that give my students the rationale they need to help them grapple with spelling and pronunciation. Students from phonetic languages like to know why English looks different from the way it sounds. Thank you.

What a great channel. Thank you for your dedication and passion you put in your videos. It is great to learn more about English

C'est une de mes chaînes préférés. Drôle et passionnante à la fois. Continuez Rob !

The "Tironian et" is still used when writing Irish or Scott's Gaelic in the more traditional uncial script. It is also why, in Europe, the number '7' typically has the crossbar through it - to distinguish it from 'and'.

As a vocalist who uses a lot of IPA, it's so cool to see that a lot of symbols used in that were used in English way back when!

I absolutely love your vids. Really informative and presented with the right balance between fun and fact. Thank you.

So happy that your channel popped up! I love it. You've got me hooked! Thank you so much

Thank you for filling in those obvious holes. I was born in Germany and came to America at age ten with no clue of American English. I learned fast and had to dump the accent in a hurry just to fit in. In high school I chose a language major and became a Latin scholar. Curiously that led me to become a high school art teacher for 35 years and a teacher teacher for five more after that. That also included 24 years of night school or adult education. Latin was so a part of me that I used every opportunity to include Latin word origins in my lesson both for the kids, adults and colleagues. I had 40 great years of passing on my my modest knowledge. I wish you had been around to enhance my etymology. I love your presentations. They give me great pleasure.

There's the Ash (Æ æ), There's the Edh (Ð ð), There's the Ethel (Œ œ) and the Thorn (Þ þ), There's the Wynn (Ƿ ƿ) and the Yogh (Ȝ ȝ), All of these are no more, There was also Ampersand (&), But that's still around

Just watched this video twice with my 6-year-old son who just started learning English last year! All the edutainment things you used and the puns won him over instantly! You are a brilliant educator!

Just found your channel. Love it! I've always been fascinated by English and your channel is priceless

I have to say, that old anglo-saxen alphabet song was just awesome... how about a looped or full version?

As a child in the nineteen-sixties, I noticed on old pub signs that there were two types of what I thought to be Y, one with tail going left, the other with the tail going right. Years later, I learnt about thorn but the old pub signs had all been replaced, leaving me to doubt my memory. The signs I remember had probably been written fifty years earlier by sign-writers educated in 1900 who were aware of the old ways. Upon moving to Reading, I found the George Hotel in King Street, the frontage of which bears the ancient but nicely renovated 'Ye George MDVI', the first letter clearly being thorn with the tail bending towards the right.

I love your posts. Very witty and extremely interesting. Keep up the good work

This is my favorite newly discovered channel of the month - maybe year ;-) Well done, chap.

For most of these, the replacements we have are perfectly fine and there’s no reason to go back. W works. & as well as simply “and”/“ond” works. But English orthography has no current way to distinguish between a voiced and voiceless “th”, so either “eth” or “thorn” or both would be a great thing to bring back.

Oh my god I audibly gasped when I realized "that" and "thanks" make different "th" sounds

Always a great and informative presentation👏👏👏

Thank you for explaining the history and demise of these letters which I have often run across, and always wondered about, especially the long S.

Definitely bring back thorn, eth and eng. Seems way more efficient to have a single letter to denote a single sound instead of two letter combos.

Eng is very intuitive, you can tell it was invented by squishing the letters together (n + g = ŋ). It is so intuitive that I found myself using it in university when taking notes without knowing it already existed. I also would incorporate an i into it for -ing by dotting it.

Hi Rob Thanks again for an interesting post. My son still uses Thorn when he messages his mother and me. He is interested in the Anglo Saxon and Early Medieval periods and even has his 'phone set up to use a few of these old letter especially Thorn.

Great research about present day English. I bless you for your splendid noble work.

Thorn is definitely a useful letter that should make a come back. Some of these letters would definitely help especially when trying to teach English and to learn some of the other more complex languages in the world.

You forget to mention that the long S "ʃ " was mainly used because quill and ink, or printing presses of the time would often turn two small "ss" into a blob of ink. So, the letter was necessary, as it separated the ink as "sʃ". As pens and printing presʃes evolved, its usage was no longer needed, and was eliminated simply because it was no longer necesʃary. By the way it was only used as a lower-case, and only if it followed another "s". And, it often had no crosʃ through it like and "f", so the distinction was easy enough to understand.

I am loving thorn and eth. I would gladly welcome half of them back. Keep up the good work!

Outstanding! I'm an amateur philologist (self-trained). Perusing old dictionaries or books I would often come across a character I had never seen before and, because they can't be searched for would always leave me wondering. This is excellent! Now if I can just get my tongue around the pronunciation of some of them it will be great. Thanks!

Very fascinating history of the evolution of the letters used in English. The long "s" always fascinated me and I tried to gauge what grammatical rules it followed ie never at the end of a word not before or after an actual "f" etc, but I found out like the rest of English grammar it was never consistent, had many exceptions and changed over time and often depend on the publisher. Thanks so much for sharing. 😉👌🏻

I first met þ in Tolkien, who used it in an obscure backstory part of LotR in the story "The Shibboleth of Fëanor", which tells a tale about how the Elves would change language unilaterally, so when a new pronunciation fashion took off, everyone changed everything that fashion applied to. The thing is, when a new fashion to change þ to s happened, Míriel Þerindë, the Ñoldor queen, was getting her name pronounced as Serindë and was offended by it, saying it *wasn't* her name! Even after her landmark death, her son Fëanor (very much a mother's boy) persisted in using the þ sound, as did his sons, and I presume his loyalist followers. If you know the background of "Shibboleth", it is from a Biblically-adjacent story where it is used as a test of whether someone was hebrew or not, because the other languages around them struggled with the sh's and th's. So I am guessing Tolkien's intent was that Fëanorian Quenya had this quirk that set it apart because their prince was honouring the memory of his beloved mother.

I have started to binge watch your videos!❤

New fav channel!!

1:18 My furniture started flying

I love how Ash and Ethel make an ah and oi sound respectively, but both of them now are used in words to make the ee sound

I really enjoy your videos. Thank you

Æ is still commonly used in Norway, we have two written languages (technically three) and it's quite often used in the second of them. Even lore is it used when we write dialects informally to one another over text as it's one of many ways of writing "I"

The long-s letter is still used in mathematics as the integral sign. The mathematical integral is a kind of continuous summation, so the long-s is a math abbreviation for an infinite summation. The corresponding discrete summation is signified in math formulas with a capital sigma.

Beautiful locations. Your calm demeanor and eloquent speaking make it easy to follow along and learn. You make language fun and fascinating to learn about as an adult. Thank you for sharing your love of language.

Very cool. As a practicing Heathen, learning the Elder and Younger futharks involves a lot of these letters. Thanks for sharing your expertise!

How could I not subscribe after this video? "Where the bee sucks, there suck I", made me laugh out loud when I caught on to what you were saying (rather quickly, I might add). Thank you - this made my morning! Best wishes from Australia.

I'm from Hamilton in Scotland and Hamilton originally evolved from the ancient Barony of Cadzow, except Cadzow was actually CadȜow but due to the typesetting of the printing press the Ȝ was replaced with a lower case Z. Very much enjoying your videos, fascinating stuff! 👍

I am absolutely over the moon that I found this channel. Right up my interests. Love linguistics.

I so enjoy these!!

This was a really interesting video! 😊

The "ŋ" should come back. It should be used as well in german. The "Æ" had a replacement in german with "Ä" alongside with "Ö" and "Ü". The "ſ" was partially dropped, because it was too similar to an "f". But it kind of remained in german. In Germany we have a ligature consistin of the "ſ" (the long s) and "ʒ" (the old z). The ligature is "ß" (called sz).

This is why I usually have to write my name as Thorsteinn when writing with foreign people, but as an Icelander, where Thorn is alive and well, my name is spelled Þorsteinn :) Same goes for Ð/ð which is heavily used here as well. Even sometimes both in the same word. Það var nefnilega það!

Love it, thanks. Justing reading about Anglo Saxon art. I like the and pictogram tool. Might bring that back 🔙

This takes me right back to my early childhood in the early 70's when they brought the teaching method of ITA into classrooms. Mum taught me the standard alphabet prior to going to school at age 5 and I could both read and write it. Schools had introduced the ITA method of alphabet so I had to unlearn and then re-learn how to read and write the "new" alphabet from the beginning. I remember struggling with the new letters a lot which included Ethel and Ash and maybe others. After a short period of time ITA was dropped and teaching reverted back to standard alphabet. I then had to relearn a 3rd time back to standard.

In German: "Round s" (the normal letter) was used at the end of words and syllables, "long s" at the start and mid of words (as long as it was not the end of a syllable too). That's also the reason why whe have "sharp s"=ß in German: it is, for example in the word "dass" => "daſs" the use of these rules: long s in the mid, round s at the end. Later the typesetters combined it, thus the ß. It still shall be used when using Fraktur or other scripts like that.

The elongated “s” could appear initially or medially, but in final position there was only “s”.

new to your channel and quite like it! - I see the long s on many a gravestone here in Quincy Massachusetts

How the hell have I only just found your channel. Holy shit. Fantastic content.

I really enjoyed this video. I found it by accident but took a look as I recently spent a few years working in Iceland (the country, NOT where mums go to shop!) so I'd been introduced to thorn, eth, and ash. I never did get far with my attempts to pick up Icelandic because my students all seemed to want to practice their English on a native English speaker as their exams were in English. About the third or fourth year out there I discovered that one of my students had an Australian mother. I asked him how long she'd been there and he replied "About twenty-eight years." I then asked how good her Icelandic was. With a grin on his face he replied "It's getting there." I've subscribed now and look forward to exploring the rest of your vids as language fascinates me. Thank you.

Æ is still used in 2 of the continental Scandinavian languages (Denmark and Norway) and in the insular languages (Icelandic and Faroese). It makes roughly the same sound as the "e" in the English word "Tent"

this is a damn good video... you have a new follower,,,🙂

I’ve watched about 5 videos on letters dropped from the English language and this is the best one in every way but primarily because of your obvious research. Two or 3 of the others explained the reasons for why some letters were dropped with an answer that seems the most obvious and/or logical to someone from this century, but one bugged me: the letter that looks like a 3, YOGH, was dropped from WORDS because people kept mistaking it for the *number* 3 (really?). Your answers for the same letters were completely different, but you explained exactly why and you showed documentation! (YOGH was replaced because it looked too much like a capital Z in some typesets.) I greatly appreciate thorough research and proof when possible. My more personal appreciation for this video is for clearly pronouncing the difference between a soft and hard "th". Every video I watched did it but only yours didn’t sound (to me, anyway) like the two were exactly the same. I liked the previous video of yours on the origin of the uppercase letters of the English alphabet so much that I clicked on this one. I liked this one so much that I subscribed.

1:10 Dude looks like he’s being held at gunpoint

In Irish, the Tironian et (7) is also used in the Irish equivalent of etc. - 7rl. - short for "agus ar uile", loosely translated "and all/the rest". Love the vids Rob - so interesting!!!

I really enjoy your videos. I wish you had a TV series.

Love this!

This is really interesting and helps explain a ton about why sounds GH like in night are pronounced the way they are, or why TH can be soft or hard. Especially for a bilingual like me whose vernacular comes from the Austronesian family of languages. Interestingly enough, the modern Filipino alphabet has Ng as a single letter, and instead of calling it "Eng" we call it "Nang". The Ng along with Ñ added to the current English alphabet make ours 28 letters instead of 26.

You, my fellow British linguist, deserve many more subscribers! Great job!

That was fantastic!

Wonderful video! I would love to see 'thorn', 'eth', and 'eng' make a comeback. And if the Gods of Language were feeling especially generous, perhaps 'long s' for good measure (I've always though it elegant looking). Cheers!

The phrase “sometimes in the same document” pops up a couple of times here. The thorn and eth could both be used “in the same document” because they stood for two different sounds, the “hard” (voiceless) th and the “soft” (voiced) th. The word “the” could have different pronunciations; in Chaucerian times it was almost always pronounced hard, but the softening happened in different phonological environments, not across the board and all at once. We hear different local pronunciations of it even today: hard and soft th, but also “d” and even “t” (reduced in Yorkshire speech - “goin to t’ pub”). That’s a relic of the hard pronunciation, which also survives in Lancashire and other places in the word “tha / thi” (thou / thee) among older people. As for the “long s,” it would always be used along with the familiar “s” in the same document because there was a rule for its use - the modern “s” was a final s, with the long s being used elsewhere. (The same is true with the letter sigma in Greek even today, with “σ” used initially and within a word, and “ς” only at the end of words. So “sas” is “σας”.) Also some of these letters weren’t abandoned by European printers simply because they looked like other letters; it was because they didn’t have those letters at hand, so they used what they did have. Nobody in England would have been confused by the handwritten thorn or wynn or yogh, only by printed material where actual other letters had been substituted.

The ghost of ash lives on in some spelling variations; grey in Old English was spelt with ash but as this died out neither "a" nor "e" became completely set in its place.

Came upon this video by complete accident. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much.

Great to hear the old usage. Please bring back thorn - I also miss as 😊

It's so sad that eth turned into "th" instead of "dh". It even looked like a "d". While reading, it'd be a lot easier to get through: "Then, three thinking thimbles were thoroughly thrown through their thirty thin things."

1980s, spent a long time in Denmark. The "Þ" sounding like "th" has transmogrified to 'd' in Danish. Hence "bad" (dk), meaning "bath"(en), pron. "bath"(dk), slightly softer "th" sound. And there are loads of words like that.

Nice Information 👍

Thanku this was very interesting 😊

1:00 Me: Ah, like QWERTY Him: Like AlphaBeth Me: Ah, yes, that might be a better example.

Just found this channel, the quality of the animations feels like that of a channel with a couple ten thousand subscribers. Hopefully you will be there soon.

What an interestiŋ video! Þank you.

First time here, love your channel, very entertaining way of presenting the facts. Now on to the topic: It's time to resurrect the "Þ", the "ð" and the "ŋ" in English. The age of the printing press and mechanical typewriters is long gone and most of the writing today is done by computer interface, so I shoulðn't be much of a problem to briŋ þem back. Please do a video on the proposed Shavian alphabet for English too.

I grew up in mainland, China and started studying English when I was just able to speak my own native language, which is Mandarin. This video reminded me the way my teachers used to teach English pronunciations when I was in primary school. They would essentially use these letters from Old English as denotation of the pronunciation of a word. I had no idea where these letters came from until I moved to Canada haha. But they did help me understand the pronunciation system in English a lot, especially for words where the same vowels would have inconsistent pronunciations across different words that use these vowels lol.

This is about to explode in the recommended and get millions of views... We are the pioneers! Great video! Its crazy how letters and rules can just be forgotten or removed!

Gracias. Very interesting.

Super interesting!

FYI: We still have the oe and ae in norwegian. Oe = Ø pronounsed as the i in sir. Ae = Æ, pronounced as the a in ash.

Þy videos are þe greateſt! Ƿe ſhould keep all þe letters! Greetiŋs from Vienna

and so charming as well...I can imagine him (before KZfaq) chatting up a lovely with these ffun ffacts (as in Cymraeg (Welsh in Welsh), it's the ff that gives the Saesneg(English, in Cymraeg) , and the f is pronounced as Saesneg "v".. and ending with The MidsummerÄs night Dream quote...(when he charmed her to his apartment..) ! Many thorny 7nks.

wow! this info adds so much context. Having Indian origin, I always wondered why does English have no letter to distinguish a hard t from a soft t; and a hard d from a soft d - (you gotta know the Devanaagri letters to tell the difference). Now this makes sense.

Excellent - some of these I knew already, but I've learned things and I'm very glad that I invested 11 minutes in watching your video. I shall now check out some of your others. Thanks very much.

Fascinating.. I've been interested in etymology for years but my schools or university don't have courses in this... But I stumbled upon your page..

Wauu a great video. I really enjoyed it. As a funny remark, the letters ASH and ETHEL is still used in the Danish alphabet to this day. ASH actually as is Æ and with the same sound. We use it in words like the Danish word for apple - "Æble" and duckling - "Ælling". ETHEL have been changed a bit though. As it represents the sound of OI, the I is placed across the O like this Ø and is used for words like island - "Ø". Thanks again for an interesting video.

I adore this man and I wish that somebody would do this kind of content for my language... We had something similar on national TV, but it was boring as hell.

Daði isn’t pronounced as daddy? I feel lied to and misguided.

This was entertaining and very well explained! I've been studying English for years and never knew these letters had existed at some point. Thanks!

As a learner of English language I am amazed. And (could not find the letter you used for and😪) wonder if phonetic alphabet letters comes from there as many of these letters matches. If so, these letters are living for the learners🙂. Thank you.

This was always the sort of stuff I wanted to know about our language especially in English class when I was young!