Old English alphabet

Sample text in Old English (Prologue from Beowulf)

Old English pronunciation

Old English was the West Germanic language spoken in the area now known as England between the 5th and 11th centuries. Speakers of Old English called their language Englisc, themselves Angle, Angelcynn or Angelfolc and their home Angelcynn or Englaland.
Old English began to appear in writing during the early 8th century. Most texts were written in West Saxon, one of the four main dialects. The other dialects were Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish.
The Anglo-Saxons adopted the styles of script used by Irish missionaries, such as Insular half-uncial, which was used for books in Latin. A less formal version of minuscule was used for to write both Latin and Old English. From the 10th century Anglo-Saxon scribes began to use Caroline Minuscule for Latin while continuing to write Old English in Insular minuscule. Thereafter Old English script was increasingly influenced by Caroline Minuscule even though it retained a number of distinctive Insular letter-forms.(2)

A Short History of the word "Ye"

It is a common misconception that the word “ye” was used in place of “the” in Old-Middle English. Stores didn’t have signs that said “Ye olde shoppe.” Despite the frequency of this belief, the was never spelled or pronounced with a y, but it has always sounded like “the.” The letter thorn, or Þorn (Þ), sounds like the modern th and was often used in place of th in the 13th Century, but when the use of th began to popularize in the 14th century the letter Þ started to become less distinguishable from the letter wynn (Ƿ) and eventually the modern Y.

By this time, th was the more dominant form of thorn, but Þe Ye (with the subscripted e’s) were used as abbreviations. Because of this, and the modern need to further distance ourselves from the past, ye has become a popular pronunciation and replacement for a middle aged the. (3)

Ye is not an entirely made up word, however. It is well known that ye was used as an old plural form of you, as in “Come All Ye Faithful.”

*You can make a Þ on a PC by using the Alt-0222 shortcut (hold Alt and press 0222 on the keypad).


Sources http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm
(2) http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm
(3)http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html