“Ye.” I always get a chuckle when I see that, or especially when I hear it. It’s properly pronounced “the.” To wit: The word ye , as in Ye Olde Booke Shoppe, is simply an archaic spelling of the definite article the. This came about because the early type sets were made in Germany, and did not include the letter thorn, Þ or þ. In the Old English alphabet, þ represented the hard th- sounds (th) and (th̸) in Modern English. The use of the letter Y, which in some type fonts at the time had some visual similarity to þ, was a printer’s adaptation to absence of the thorn character. Thus, the form would have been rendered as ye. The pronunciation [yee] today is a spelling pronunciation. Likewise, modern technology makes it possible to easily spell it properly, as þe.
“Ye.” I always get a chuckle when I see that, or especially when I hear it. It’s properly pronounced “the.” To wit: The word ye , as in Ye Olde Booke Shoppe, is simply an archaic spelling of the definite article the. This came about because the early type sets were made in Germany, and did not include the letter thorn, Þ or þ. In the Old English alphabet, þ represented the hard th- sounds (th) and (th̸) in Modern English. The use of the letter Y, which in some type fonts at the time had some visual similarity to þ, was a printer’s adaptation to absence of the thorn character. Thus, the form would have been rendered as ye. The pronunciation [yee] today is a spelling pronunciation. Likewise, modern technology makes it possible to easily spell it properly, as þe.