Have you ever wondered about the old-fashioned “ye” in shop signs? It was a lazy printer’s solution to saving space for “th”, and should be pronounced as “the”, not “yee”! The Old English character “y” was a graphic alteration of the Germanic rune “Þ” (which came over with the Viking raiders and the Danish King Canute and his rabble, but that’s another story). When English printing typefaces couldn’t supply the right kind of “P” they substituted the “Y” (close enough, right?). That practice continued into the 18th century, when it dropped out of use. By the 19th century it was revived as a deliberate antiquarianism – to give a shop a pedigree, so to speak (read “marketing scam”), and soon came to be mocked because of it. And now we think of it as the quaint way they used to write…
For a short, fun video on the topic, click on Ye Olde Web Link, below.