4

W, U, and V Used to Be the Same Letter

The sound we say when we say a letter in isolation is called its name, and some of them are kind of interesting. Like, for example, what the fuck is up with H? Aitch? Haitch? What are you doing, H?

Nils Hendrik Mueller/Cultura/Getty Images
Why are you still here, H? Why don't you just go home?

But nothing is as dumb as W, because that motherfucker is clearly, clearly made up of two V's, not U's. Well, it turns out that way back in toga times, U and V were basically the same letter. Which is why old Roman signage, despite being written in Latin, and thus kind of similar to the language we speak, seems to have way too many V's in it.

Rossignol Benoit via Wikimedia Commons
My Latin's not great, but I think this one's advertising an upcoming boxing match between Caesar and the Pope.

3

"Ye" Is Actually a Single Letter (and We're Pronouncing It Totally Wrong)

OK, so you know that store in the quaint part of the mall that sell things you never need to buy? Buttons and bobbins and such? The one that for some reason has "Ye" in its name? Like most people, you've probably seen those signs and walked into the shop to punch the shopkeeper directly in the eye for being so twee. "Why don't you just write 'The,' you pompous ass?" you shrieked into his face.

Thinkstock Images/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"I HOPE A WALMART COMES IN AND JUST CRUSHES YOU."

Well it turns out that they did actually write "The," even if they didn't really know it. Because back in ye old times, that "Ye" wasn't spelled with a "Y" but a completely separate letter called a "thorn." Here's what a thorn looks like when it's wearing a little "e" as a hat:

Wikimedia Commons

2

People Have Tried to Deliberately Mess With the Alphabet

I've talked about spelling reform before, and how various lunatics have attempted to change the way we spell words based on their own vision of how the world should work, or simply what the voices in their head have told them to do.

Wikimedia Commons
-hissing- "Kill all the U's, Noah."
"Yes, master."

But those all involved new spellings with the usual array of letters. At least a few people have proposed changing the actual alphabet itself. These proposals generally aim to get rid of letters that have sounds covered by other letters (i.e. dumping C, whose roles can be covered by K or S) or to add letters to accommodate common sounds that require the use of more than one letter (like SH, or NG). For example, back in tricorn hat days, Benjamin Franklin proposed a version of the alphabet which would have resulted in writing like this:

Wikimedia Commons
Translation: "Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would have happened to me."

1

We Still Have the Forgotten 27th Letter On Our Keyboards

Thanks to the brave efforts we made to fight off the evil Benjamin Franklin, our alphabet still only has 26 letters (in English, at least). But he wasn't the only one to propose new additions to the alphabet, and over the years, there have been a few contenders that have gotten pretty close to the prize. One of them is on your keyboard right now, in fact.

cherezoff/iStock/Getty Images
Not the seven. That's normal.

That's right, the ampersand. When Romans were writing out notes to each other about orgies and vomiting and such, they sometimes blurred their E's and T's together into one symbol ("et" meaning "and" in Latin). Over the years, this blurred together "and" kept getting blurrier and blurrier until it became the bizarre, rear-heavy monster we know today.

Alatius via Wikimedia Commons
It was a crazy journey, with many literal twists and turns.

These kind of merged letters are called ligatures, and there are still a few loitering in the shadows of the English alphabet. But none are as old or as popular as the ampersand, which, because it was widely used in actual Latin texts, got copied down into Latin alphabets by various scholars in the Middle Ages. And as our alphabet derives from their work, the ampersand loitered on the edge of the English alphabet well into the 1800's. It's mentioned specifically in a well-known predecessor of the Alphabet song.

tang90246/iStock/Getty Images
"Oh my god, Becky. Look at its butt."

The crazy name comes to us in a similar way. Because the ampersand was found at the end of the alphabet, people saying their ABC's would end their recitation with "and, per se and." Which, when sort of translated, means "&, itself meaning 'and.'" Which is clever, although kind of hard to remember. There are easier mnemonic devices for remembering the ampersand.

tang90246/iStock/Getty Images
For example: if you see anything other than a dog dragging its ass on the ground, well, now you never will again.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and your best friend. His first novel, Severance, is incredible and available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Apex Books. Join him on Facebook or Twitter.

For more from Bucholz, check out 4 Reasons People Hate It When You Compliment Them and The 5 Weirdest Ways Words Have Changed Meanings.

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