Matrices for Old English letters

[KPMartin]

Has anyone heard of any matrices for old English letters such as thorn uppercase Þ/lowercase þ (which printers typically did not have in their fonts and set y instead, hence "ye olde shoppe" instead of "þe olde shoppe")?

[Dave Hughes]

Are you talking about Monotype matrices here?

Surely those characters became obsolete before it's invention.

[Dave Hughes]

For those unfamiliar with these Old English letters, here's a description of the last six to be dropped from the alphabet, courtesy of Quartz.com

I have to say that I am surprised that the Forum software was able to produce these letters quite easily.

Eth (ð)
The y in ye actually comes from the letter eth, which slowly merged with y over time. In its purest form, eth was pronounced like the th sound in words like this, that, or the. Linguistically, ye is meant to sound the same as the but the incorrect spelling and rampant mispronunciation live on.

Thorn (þ)
Thorn is in many ways the counterpart to eth. Thorn is also pronounced with a th sound, but it has a voiceless pronunciation—your vocal cords don't vibrate when pronouncing the sound—like in thing or thought.
Today, the same th letter combo is used for both þ and ð sounds. There is a pronunciation difference—thorn is a voiceless pronunciation and eth is voiced—but that's just something you pick up as you learn to speak. Of course, you'll never hear about this in school, because that's English for you.

Wynn (ƿ)
Wynn was incorporated into our alphabet to represent today's w sound. Previously, scribes used two u characters next to each other, but preferred one character instead and chose wynn from the runic alphabet. The double u representation became quite popular and eventually edged wynn out. Ouch.

Yogh (ȝ)
Yogh was historically used to denote throaty sounds like those in Bach or the Scottish loch. As English evolved, yogh was quickly abandoned in favor of the gh combo. Today, the sound is fairly rare. Most often, the gh substitute is completely silent, as in though or daughter.

Ash (æ)
Ash is still a functional letter in languages like Icelandic and Danish. In its original Latin, it denoted a certain type of long vowel sound, like the i in fine. In Old English, it represented a short vowel sound—somewhere between a and e, like in cat. In modern English, æ is occasionally used stylistically, like in archæology or medæval, but denotes the same sound as the letter e.

Ethel (œ)
Ethel also once represented a specific pronunciation somewhere between the two vowels o and e, though it was originally pronounced like the oi in coil. Like many clarifying distinctions, this letter also disappeared in favor of a simpler vowel lineup (a, e, i, o, u) with many different pronunciations.

[KPMartin]

David, I, too, believe it most unlikely that either Lanston or Monotype Corp. would have produced any such matrices. I think making such matrices would have been somewhat ironic given that it was typesetting that helped kill these letters off.

There are however several current hot metal aficionados who make matrices, and though it is a long shot I thought I'd ask.

And yes, I had confused thorn and eth in ye olde explanationne.

[John Cornelisse]

Ash (æ) and Ethel (œ), these characters were normally available with Monotype.

[David Bolton]

Just for the record, UK Monotype did produce all these Old English matrices - university printers etc would certainly have needed them. Whether a particular size of a particular face would have depended upon whether any customer had requested the matrix. And obviously now that Monotype Hot Metal has closed, getting new mats will be difficult.

The Sign Specimen that I printed a few years ago shows my own holding of them, in amongst all the other signs/symbols I have, and indeed my forthcoming Accent Specimen will also show them, and a few of the other sizes/faces I have purchased since.

David

[Dave Hughes]

The Sign Specimen that I printed a few years ago shows my own holding of them, in amongst all the other signs/symbols I have, and indeed my forthcoming Accent Specimen will also show them, and a few of the other sizes/faces I have purchased since.

Do you have a photo of that specimen that we could have a look at?