LOST LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET: 9 letters we stopped using 

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 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 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. ^^

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'.

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

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!

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"

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

THANK YOU! thank you for covering the whole "thorn is not a y, its not ye old pub" thing..... im always telling this to people, but no one ever cares.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I love your videos Rob. I would love to bring some of these back. My favourites from these lost letters are: Þ, Æ, 3, and eng.

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

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.

Rob, Du bist fantastisch! Ihr Angelsachsen könnt sowas am besten. Keep on truckin`!

Always a great and informative presentation👏👏👏

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.

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

I have started to binge watch your videos!❤

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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

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! 👍

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!

I really enjoy your videos. Thank you

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!

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.

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

New fav channel!!

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. 😉👌🏻

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.

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!

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

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

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.

The Fraktur font still knows the long s. In German we used it for an s at the end of a word, so compound words were easier to read. A Wachstube (Wach-Stube) with a long s inside is a guard room, and a Wachstube (Wachs-Tube) with a short s is a tube full of wax. Regrettably, Fraktur fonts aren't used any longer.

This was a really interesting video! 😊

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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!!!

1:18 My furniture started flying

Thorn and Eth are doubly useful as they not only save the writer a whole letter, they distinguish whether or not the "th" sound is voiced. I would also prefer a Wyn to a Double-U, but only for aesthetic reasons. Interestingly, the ampersand is actually a highly stylized ligature of the letters "e" and "t", which is why you sometimes see "et cetera" abbreviated as "&c." so is basically the same thing as the Tironian et, but just harder to write.

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

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.

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.

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

I so enjoy these!!

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."

This one reminds me of the time a German girl told me Americans don’t use the full alphabet and I still to this day can’t tell if she genuinely believed that or if there is actually some “secret” Anglo-Saxon letters the English have been gatekeeping. I’m starting to think it’s the latter now lol

When I first saw the "Aetna" logo (pronounced "et na"), it was spelled AEtna (where the AE was combined into an "ash" symbol), so it should have been pronounced, "at na". Also, if you were watching The Ocean Cleanup with Boyan Slat, they are using ships called the "Maersk" (pronounced "mersk" or "m'rsk"), but the ae is combined into an "ash" symbol, which makes me wonder why the name isn't pronounced, "mah-ersk".

I used to make up letters when I wasn't sure about the use of one or the other. It's good to see someone else did it as well, even if they didn't caught on.

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

I absolutely loved the futhorc song! Also, how come "w" is called a "double u" in english, and a "double v" in other languages? Such as french, german and swedish. Is there some interseting stury there, or is it just out "v/u" being the same?

Hi RobWords. LOVE your channel. I have a few comments about the "Lost Letters" episode. As long as you're on the subject, can't we streamline the alphabet even more? For example, we don't need K. C pretty much covers everything it kan do. So what, if we have to adjust a little and spell words differently like Cilometer and Cite, but as you read that sentence, they already seemed natural! And for that matter, we don't need S either. Good old C can handle those cmall jobz with a little help from the often maligned and seldom used Z (zed, if you will)! And why do people continue to think that a Pirate's favorite letter is "R," when it's really the "C" that he loves? Additionally, since the Brits have successfully eliminated H from beginning any words so required for as long as there's been an England, I think everyone else can safely do the same. Q also seems to be on its last legs, constantly having to be supported by that little "u," especially when the u has it's own usefulness and utilitarian understatements. And while we're on it, what about the ampersand for regular "and?" Difficult to write, very old fashioned and we have + to use in its place. Me + you; Abbott + Costello, Love + One, and so on. It's a multi-use clutch player with a million little jobs to do! I'm sure other viewers have other similar suggestions as well, and I welcome them. If we could get the English alphabet down to 10 or 12 letters like Hawaiian, it would be so much more efficient in our ever-growing electronic age. I'm sure you'll agree. Thanks.

I’ve written ŋ in the past by “mistake” while writiŋ , kind of likiŋ how it looked, along with its convenience. It’s satisfyiŋ to feel that it was sort of a natural outcome from writiŋ loŋ ago I’m so happy to have found your channel!! 🤓

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.

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.

and so charming as well...I can imagine him (before RU-vid) 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.

9:40 This same Tiro, the scribe who worked for Cicero, the only ruler of Rome who didn't come to the office via money, family, or military feats. In the excellent historical fiction book Imperium by Robert Harris he humbly takes credit for this mark. Note that all the various ways to write ampersand all have the shape of an E and T in them somewhere, as they all mean "et" (Latin for and).

Personally I'm always a fan of bringing back thorn and Eng. I can also see the long S as a suitable replacement for Ts where the T is silent since it's meant to denote a different s sound than we'd usually use.

Æ is still used in languages like Danish and Norwegian, which makes sense as English shares a common ancestor with both of those languages, all of which are Proto-Germanic. Icelandic and Old English look very similar to each other.

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

In French we still have not only œ as in sœur or œuf, as you said, but æ as well, in a few weird (mostly latin) words like cæcum, nævus, ex æquo or the first name Læticia. And we usually just call those letters « e dans l’o » and « e dans l’a » (e in the a/o).

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!

The late Benny Hill did a routine about the long S, in which he portrayed an 18th-century dandy singing a song called 'Fad-eyed Fal'. The short Disney film 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' has narrator Bing Crosby refer to 'Ye Old Snooker and Schnapps Shoppe', the last word being given two syllables.

Æ and Œ are related to the German Umlauts, which used to be written Ae, Oe, Ue. In Old German scripts the small e looked like two lines, and this e was later put over A, O, U. That is how we ended up with Ä, Ö, Ü and these versions were adopted into Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Turkish and Hungarian, which also had the sounds these letters represent as phonemes, albeit not having an _umlaut_ phonetic mutation in their languages (except some remnants in Swedish).

"Who needs another way of writing a lower case s?" Germans: It'ß treaßon then