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These ligatures are proper letters in some Scandinavian languages, and so are used to render names from those languages, and likewise names from Old English. Some American spellings replace ligatured vowels with a single letter; for example, gynæcology or gynaecology is spelled gynecology .
The following were scribal abbreviations during Middle and Early Modern English using the letter thorn: (þͤ) – a Middle English abbreviation for the word the (þͭ) – a Middle English abbreviation for the word that (þͧ) – a rare Middle English abbreviation for the word thou (which was written early on as þu or þou)
Taking this one stage further, the clue word can hint at the word or words to be abbreviated rather than giving the word itself. For example: "About" for C or CA (for "circa"), or RE. "Say" for EG, used to mean "for example". More obscure clue words of this variety include: "Model" for T, referring to the Model T.
In Old English, the runic letter wynn Ƿ ) was used, but Norman influence forced wynn out of use. By the 14th century, the "new" letter W , originated as two V glyphs or U glyphs joined, developed into a legitimate letter with its own position in the alphabet. Because of its relative youth compared to other letters of the alphabet, only a few ...
The letters A, E, I, O, and U are considered vowel letters, since (except when silent) they represent vowels, although I and U represent consonants in words such as "onion" and "quail" respectively. The letter Y sometimes represents a consonant (as in "young") and sometimes a vowel (as in "myth").
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Some words contain silent letters, which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Examples include the l in talk , half , calf , etc., the w in two and sword , gh as mentioned above in numerous words such as though , daughter , night , brought , and the commonly encountered silent e (discussed further below).
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