The history of W in Finnish is interesting (for some values of "interesting"). Mikael Agricola [1], a Lutheran clergyman, essentially created literary Finnish from scratch in the 1500s (before that, Finnish had existed solely as a spoken, vernacular language, with official business conducted in Swedish (or German), and until the reformation, the language of the Church had of course been Latin).
Agricola had to create an alphabet for Finnish, and naturally borrowed heavily from Swedish and, to a lesser extent, German. His orthography was not particularly self-consistent, and for example the /u/ and /v/ phonemes might be written as either "u", "v", or "w" in Agricola's works. For example, the word uusi (/u:si/; "new") was written by him as "wsi", indeed using "w" as a literal "double-u". The /w/ sound did not exist in spoken Finnish.
Over time, Finnish became the almost entirely phonetic language that it is now, with letters matching phonemes essentially one-to-one. /u/ was regularized as "u" and /v/ as "v". As /w/ still doesn't exist, the letter "w" is very rarely used, mainly in some surnames as an alternative spelling of "v"; phonebooks used to collate "v" and "w" as the same letter. In loanwords "w" becomes "v" (e.g. "whiskey" -> viski). Finns with a thick accent (see "Rally English" [2]) tend to pronounce the foreign /w/ as /v/ when speaking English, similar to Germans.
Today, imitation of Agricola's orthography is the Finnish version of "ye olde English", used for humorous or intensifying effect. For example, the word vanha "old" might be spelled "wanha" in the name of an antiques shop. "Wanha" also used to be a standard "old news" reply on IRC, especially to links that had already been pasted by someone (and this became so annoying on some channels that it became a kick-worthy offense).
Finnish W is inherently tied to Swedish W. Historically, V and W were the same letter, and they could be used interchangeably. W was generally preferred in Fraktur and V in Antiqua. In the 19th century, the orthography changed to use V everywhere, except in some proper names. This happened a bit earlier in Swedish than in Finnish. And, recently, V and W became separate letters. In 2006 in Swedish and (arguably) in 2022 in Finnish.
I remember vividly being so annoyed when they added W to the Swedish alphabet in 2006. The alphabet I learned to recite in first grade is suddenly wrong?! I still don't say it correctly unless I concentrate, if I have to recite the alphabet, I always skip over W.
The argument at the time was that no "native" Swedish words are spelled with a W, so it shouldn't be part of our alphabet. However, but 2006, enough loan-words had been imported to Swedish with W's (like "webben", "the web") and it was in enough brand names (like "Volkswagen") that it should be included.
But I'm still mad about it! This is my tiny ridiculous hill to die on, W should not be part of the Swedish alphabet!
Ye is really Þe (Þ = thorn) and it seems that printers, back in the day, used y instead, probably to save money. So it was probably considered old school when printing became popular and wasn't worth getting excited about.
Agricola means farmer in Latin, is that an incidental? You mention Lutherian, so perhaps an affectation.
His father was a farmer. Commoners usually didn't have family names at the time (except in Eastern Finland), but he needed one when he went to school.
Yes, I know what ye is :) Similarly, the "olde Finnish" is usually not exactly historically accurate.
Agricola was born Mikael Olofsson/Olavinpoika, i.e. a simple patronymic surname. He assumed the Latin name when he started studies in a Latin school [1] in Viborg/Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia). He became interested in the Reformation and Renaissance humanism; later, as an ordained priest, he was sent to Wittenberg and studied directly under Luther himself. He was instrumental in executing the Reformation on the Finnish side of Sweden (then just a Swedish province; Finland as a political or geographical entity didn't really exist yet). Among other deeds, he translated the New Testament to Finnish from Luther's German translation (and besides the whole orthography, had to invent lots of new words in the process).
The early printing presses in Britain were imported from the continent where the letter thorn was not used, so they didn’t have a thorn letter. The printers used either y or “th” (which was also already being used by scribes in place of thorn in parts of the country anyway) to replace thorn depending on how much space they had. Y followed by a superscript e was common way to print “the” when space was very limited.
"letters" for printing are just small metal blocks with the letter in reverse on them - a blacksmith and the up and coming new artisans could have put some together, with some effort.
The thing about the printing press is not the technology involved, which is pretty simple, it is the ideas involved. Once you have seen the process, it becomes obvious.
The press itself would have been imported, probably a bit more than once and then copied mercilessly.
I think that thorn's days were numbered already and y was simply used in print to save a couple of pennies.
Perhaps someone more invested in this would be able to look at the incidence of thorn in English handwritten text and printed text.
Another recent oddity is the letter r. My parents (so think born: early 1940s) were still writing r as a backwards and downwards curved squiggle, within a word. As a leading letter it would look like r or R.
For good measure, let's take a unique oddity: naïve - note the double dot over the i. It's a French word and let's face it, that thing is almost certainly a British affectation.
I own a copy of "Usage and abusage" and I probably ought to throw it into a fire 8)
Maybe it's just me, but I've never met a German in real life who turned 'w's into 'v's. German has about a zillion vowel sounds and a sound like a 'w' shows up in words like 'Bauer'.
"V" for "W" and "F" for "V" in German isn't really accurate, it's just "here's how to get closer to it with the English fricatives you already know".
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
Agricola had to create an alphabet for Finnish, and naturally borrowed heavily from Swedish and, to a lesser extent, German. His orthography was not particularly self-consistent, and for example the /u/ and /v/ phonemes might be written as either "u", "v", or "w" in Agricola's works. For example, the word uusi (/u:si/; "new") was written by him as "wsi", indeed using "w" as a literal "double-u". The /w/ sound did not exist in spoken Finnish.
Over time, Finnish became the almost entirely phonetic language that it is now, with letters matching phonemes essentially one-to-one. /u/ was regularized as "u" and /v/ as "v". As /w/ still doesn't exist, the letter "w" is very rarely used, mainly in some surnames as an alternative spelling of "v"; phonebooks used to collate "v" and "w" as the same letter. In loanwords "w" becomes "v" (e.g. "whiskey" -> viski). Finns with a thick accent (see "Rally English" [2]) tend to pronounce the foreign /w/ as /v/ when speaking English, similar to Germans.
Today, imitation of Agricola's orthography is the Finnish version of "ye olde English", used for humorous or intensifying effect. For example, the word vanha "old" might be spelled "wanha" in the name of an antiques shop. "Wanha" also used to be a standard "old news" reply on IRC, especially to links that had already been pasted by someone (and this became so annoying on some channels that it became a kick-worthy offense).
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikael_Agricola" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikael_Agricola
[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_English" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_English
jltsiren · · focus · HN ↗
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
OskarS · · focus · HN ↗
The argument at the time was that no "native" Swedish words are spelled with a W, so it shouldn't be part of our alphabet. However, but 2006, enough loan-words had been imported to Swedish with W's (like "webben", "the web") and it was in enough brand names (like "Volkswagen") that it should be included.
But I'm still mad about it! This is my tiny ridiculous hill to die on, W should not be part of the Swedish alphabet!
gerdesj · · focus · HN ↗
Agricola means farmer in Latin, is that an incidental? You mention Lutherian, so perhaps an affectation.
jltsiren · · focus · HN ↗
sellmesoap · · focus · HN ↗
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
Agricola was born Mikael Olofsson/Olavinpoika, i.e. a simple patronymic surname. He assumed the Latin name when he started studies in a Latin school [1] in Viborg/Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia). He became interested in the Reformation and Renaissance humanism; later, as an ordained priest, he was sent to Wittenberg and studied directly under Luther himself. He was instrumental in executing the Reformation on the Finnish side of Sweden (then just a Swedish province; Finland as a political or geographical entity didn't really exist yet). Among other deeds, he translated the New Testament to Finnish from Luther's German translation (and besides the whole orthography, had to invent lots of new words in the process).
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_school" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_school
pge · · focus · HN ↗
gerdesj · · focus · HN ↗
The thing about the printing press is not the technology involved, which is pretty simple, it is the ideas involved. Once you have seen the process, it becomes obvious.
The press itself would have been imported, probably a bit more than once and then copied mercilessly.
I think that thorn's days were numbered already and y was simply used in print to save a couple of pennies.
Perhaps someone more invested in this would be able to look at the incidence of thorn in English handwritten text and printed text.
Another recent oddity is the letter r. My parents (so think born: early 1940s) were still writing r as a backwards and downwards curved squiggle, within a word. As a leading letter it would look like r or R.
For good measure, let's take a unique oddity: naïve - note the double dot over the i. It's a French word and let's face it, that thing is almost certainly a British affectation.
I own a copy of "Usage and abusage" and I probably ought to throw it into a fire 8)
Tangurena2 · · focus · HN ↗
nephihaha · · focus · HN ↗
cynicalkane · · focus · HN ↗
ses1984 · · focus · HN ↗
ErroneousBosh · · focus · HN ↗
Ouman · · focus · HN ↗
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