James Baquet

    Mark hears his classmate Ming singing in the common room of their dorm.

    Ming: “A, B, C, D, E, F, G...”

    Mark: What’s that you’re singing, Ming?

    Ming: I’m sure you know. It’s “The Alphabet Song.”

    Mark: Oh, also called “The A.B.C.” It uses the same melody by Mozart as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” It was copyrighted in 1835.

    Ming: I thought it was much older than that!

    Mark: No. In fact, the alphabet as we know it isn’t much older than the song.

    Ming: No way.

    Mark: Yup. Our alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet. Until a few hundred years ago, it had several more letters — and was missing three common ones.

    Ming: What were the extra letters?

    Mark: One of them was the ampersand (&), a symbol which means “and.”

    Ming: Really? That was considered a letter?

    Mark: Yup. The shape came from a way of writing the Latin word “et,” which meant “and.”

    Ming: I don’t see it.

    Mark: You can in some fonts. But the name “ampersand” is not nearly as old. You would recite the alphabet and when you got to this one, say, “and per se and,” meaning “the symbol ‘and’ as ‘and’ itself.”

    Ming: “Per se” means “as itself,” right?

    Mark: Right. Eventually, from saying it fast, “and per se and” became “ampersand.”

    Ming: Weird.

    Mark: Uh-huh. Besides ampersand, there were 23 more letters from the Latin, and several more from Anglo-Saxon.

    Ming: Ah, Old English. What were those letters?

    Mark: One of them, “thorn,” looked a little like “p,” and was a way to write “th.” When we got rid of it, we had to write the two letters. Another, “wynn,” was an old way to write the “w” sound. It also looked like a “p,” or maybe “y.”

    Ming: Okay.

    Mark: Then there was “eth,” which looked like “d,” and sounded like a cross between “d” and “th.”

    Ming: Got it.

    Mark: “Yogh” was pronounced “g,” and looked like a curly “3.”

    Ming: Any more?

    Mark: Yes, two. One combined a and e together, and the other combined o and e.

    Ming: Don’t we still see this in British printing?

    Mark: Sometimes. For example, Americans write “encyclopedia” and “fetus,” but Brits write “encyclopaedia” and “foetus” — sometimes using the special characters.

    Ming: Okay, so there were 24 Latin letters. Take away “ampersand” and there were 23. But there are 26 now. What are the added three?

    Mark: Well, “v” was taken from “u,” and “j” from “i.”

    Ming: Oh, that’s why the name “Julius” was carved “IVLIVS.”

    Mark: Right! Also, “uu” became “w.”

    Ming: Double-u!