12 letters no longer in the alphabet

Source: mentalfloss.com

Blogger M. Asher Cantrell from mentalfloss.com recently put up a very interesting post on 12 letters that have at some point existed in the English alphabet, but have since been phased out.

Among them are familiar symbols such as the ampersand (&), ash (æ) and ethel (œ), which are still seen today, though not considered part of the Latin alphabet.

An interesting one is the letter thorn (Þ), which was used in the word “ye”, an old English form of “the”. Contrary to popular belief, the ‘y’ was actually a Þ, and was pronounced ‘th’ – so those people who try to sound old-timesy by saying “ye” this and “ye” that are actually wrong!

Check out the full article for more interesting facts about disused letters and digraphs!