Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Letter Y

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcasters/writers David Christopher Bell and Tom Reimann (Gamefully Unemployed, 'Fox Mulder Is A Maniac' podcast) for a look at why the letter Y is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. See NordPass Business in action now with a 3-month free trial here nordpass.com/sifpod with code SIFPOD.

The letter Y, known for being pointy, famous for being a vowel sometimes. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the letter Y is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Two wonderful guests return this week, David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman. They're comedy makers, podcasters, live streamers. They make a lot of that stuff together under the shared name Gamefully Unemployed.

Also, Tom writes for places like 1-900-HOTDOG, makes videos for places like Ranker and for Turner Classic Movies. Dave is a writer of film scripts. He's also the head writer of the fantastic Some More News channel on YouTube. These guys are so multi-talented and pretty busy, so I'm so glad they're back to get into one of the strangest letters in all of writing. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes. I've used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Dave recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Tom recorded this on the traditional land of the Cheraw, Kiawe, Catawba, and Okaneechi peoples, and acknowledge

that in all of our locations, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about the letter Y. Self-explanatory, stands on its own, and if you want to hear the one other SIF episode about a letter, you can listen to the one about the letter X, also featuring these guests. But they each stand on their own. It's not like a sequel or something, because each of those letters are surprisingly the title of the podcast and in totally separate ways, even though they are next door to each other in the alphabet. So please sit back or look at a map of the Mediterranean and a map of the English Channel, because both those bodies of water, very important in this episode, turns out. Either way, here's

this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Dave, Tom, it is so good to have you both back. And of course, I always start by asking your relationship for the topic or opinion of it. So how do either of you feel about the letter Y? I mean, I'm going to go ahead and say I'm pro the letter Y. I believe I've used it a lot in my career. And so I can't tell you how many times. I literally can't tell you how many times I've typed Y. So I'm into it.

I feel cold indifference, which I feel is all the letter Y has ever shown me. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I guess it's fair. Everybody has their own perspective on the world. I can't change that, but I am upset by it. Don't invalidate me, Dave. I'm not gonna.

I'm not gonna. You know, I think the letter Y has been more for you than you think. That's all. I was I was thinking about like, what's the last time I thought about the letter Y a lot? And it's when we taped an episode of this podcast about the letter X and thought about how X, Y, Z are down at the bottom of the alphabet. They're just like hanging out at the bottom, even though they're just letters. But like somehow they have the feeling of like there's a club down there at the bottom of the alphabet there right just like hanging out at the bottom yeah even though they're just letters but like somehow they have the feeling of like there's a club down there at the end yeah they also they do feel like you they wrote the alphabet and then they were like ah we

need a few more and they just sort of yeah yeah and they just sort of like scribbled they're like i don't know cross and they're like i't know, like a cross with a tail. And I don't know, let's just make this mark this like mark. Like it feels lazy, the last three letters in a way. Feels like they kind of threw those out. Right. Brief spoiler for what's coming. Y and Z happened that way in the Roman Empire.

They really tacked them on at the end. That's actually for real. And you would think that you could say the same thing about like i but i actually think i was a deliberate choice i think they looked and they're like check this out line down and people were like oh my god oh my god it's so simple and beautiful like i feel like there was intent behind that whereas these last ones just feel like scribbles yeah they're just shapes no the eye is great because the eye is like me that's like when you're writing i you're like me and it's like pointing at you because it's a little person yeah yeah it's like a little stick figure it's perfect conceptually perfect it is

it's also like the number one and i'm number one number one baby exactly layers it's got layers it makes sense yeah and i i also i had a thought that y is not in any of our names i don't think but i uh because my my wife's last name starts with y so through her i've thought about it a lot that way but uh you know it's it's not like x where x was part of my name and i was like ah this letter i'm on it all the time right tom you could technically someone could like twist it to be Tommy. And there's your Y. Me, I don't, even Davey, it's an IE.

Like a lot of Ys are replaced by IEs, I feel like, in like cute versions of names. I think of Davey as being with a Y, but that's okay. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Like Davey Havoc. That's a Y. All right.

That's fair. I'm thinking of like the cutification of a name as opposed to like an actual name. Like, oh, that's Tommy or that's Billy. He just doesn't give a hoot. But like IE is specifically when it's going to be cute. Yeah, as a cutie pie. Like it's a little hamster. Yeah.

Yeah. And all that vowel element, especially similarity to I, that leads us into the takeaways. This episode, out of all the episodes of this podcast, is unique because every other show has a stats and numbers segment. And with this topic, all the information's kind of takeaway size. There's not a lot of like math around this letter. No stats and numbers segment this week. Skipping it. Wow. Wow. No, not even a song? Not like a song about how there's no stats and numbers segment this week skipping it wow wow no not even a song not like a a song about how there's no stats so i have prepared a brief musical selection and here and here it comes a gathering of numbers appeared above my head to do to do this sang to me. There are no stats.

And said, let's skip ahead. They said, do takeaways. Do takeaways. Do takeaways with me. Do takeaways. Do takeaways. Do takeaways with me. Oh, my goodness.

Perfect. I'm so excited we got to be here for that. I feel like we're sharing something special. I feel so much joy right now. Yeah. I feel like I'm riding on Falkor's back. Yeah. Or as his friends call him, Falky, right?

Good old Falky. You're right. Good old Falky. You know, Falky, he doesn't give a hoot. Unless it's an IE, then he's just a big sweetie. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But here we go into takeaway number one.

In the English language, the letter Y makes several vowel sounds and only one consonant sound. I had never thought deeply about this it turns out the the general belief is true that y is both a vowel and a consonant in english and that's the only one like that but you're right there's a lot more there than i realized it really is so like like we said you could do ie or y what is wait wait, what is it? What is it? A consonant? Yeah. Yeah. This is devastating me. I guess we can start with the one consonant version first. So it only does it one way. And in technical speak, the Y consonant sound is called a palatal semi vowel. And I know the word vowel is in that name, but palatal is referring to your palate,

like kind of at the roof of your mouth. And when an English speaker is saying why in a consonant way, it's because there are physical actions that are kind of like a vowel, but also your tongue is moving up toward the palate, toward the roof of your mouth. And examples are a lot of words where why is the first letter, such as youth and yearning. I was going to say like yap. Oh, yeah. Yap. And I just said yeah. Yeah, yep. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I just said, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So in that case, the Y is the ye of it all. Yeah. And if you, now I keep saying yeah too, but like when you say these words, especially when Y is followed by other vowels in an English word, it tends to be a consonant.

Huh. What? This is a weird letter. You're making, you're blowing my mind right now with how weird this letter is. Cause now like you're like pointing out that, yeah, it can stand in for a vowel as well.

Like it's just, it's like a question mark. Like it's the question mark letter that we're just like, we're using as the filler letter whenever we're like, not sure. It's the floating letter whenever we're like not sure it's the floating letter yeah yeah like a like a like a like a floor manager yeah it's like that the mortal combat boss who can be everybody yeah shang tsung shang tsung it's the shang tsung of letters yeah oh wow well now it sounds really cool uh yeah yeah like i don't know if everybody had this experience but

like in american school i was taught that the vowels are a e i o u and sometimes y sometimes why and i i got and sometimes y and w but i think that's like i don't when it's w that sounds like propaganda yeah i guess it can be but it's like rare. It's when you're trying to talk cutely, right? You add some W's in there. I immediately don't like that. Yeah. That's a super specific kind of true thing. It turns out that the other consonant that is a palatal semivowel is W.

It's just that W never crosses over into being a full vowel. Right. But it's got that mouth behavior kind of when it's just the w never crosses over into being a full vowel yeah right but it's got that like mouth behavior kind of when it's said if that makes sense oh boy the english language is so funny by the way it's nonsense it's just random nonsense imagine any anything in science or math that added, and sometimes. Prime numbers. And sometimes this one. Planets. And sometimes Jupiter or something like that. And it's like, wait, which times?

Yeah, it's just literally a collection of exceptions. Yeah. They say language is like living or organic or something. I forget how it's described, but just the nature of language that it's always evolving but it's really we're just saying it's like we're making it up as we go along and i think like english is the most obvious yeah i yeah it is and like again i i do get it that it's like it has to evolve it has to be bendable but i always think back when i was in high school i had a friend who was terrible in English class, terrible. And he was great in math.

And I was the reverse. And I asked him, I was like, how are you so good at math? He was also like, he wasn't a dummy, but he was like, he kind of, he was like a Ramon. Does that make sense? He had that dude energy. But he was a math whiz. And I was just like, how are you so good at math? And he said something that resonated with me,

is he said, because math never changes. And he's right, yeah. He's like, because it's always the same answer every time. So all you have to do is remember the answers. With English, it's all about interpretations and all these exceptions. And it's like, oh, that does make a lot of sense it's about how someone's brain works you know math doesn't require context yeah it's always that yeah and that was the most math that ever made sense in my mind i still can't i'm still trash at it which is funny like i can't i can't work with something

that has like static rules for whatever reason well yeah because it's still like you still have to learn this like if someone says like you know the good thing about like working on a car is it's all the same pieces it's like yeah that doesn't help me though like I'm still I still don't know how to take apart a car it's still an incredibly complicated machine

yeah I wonder if it's with math when you're wrong you're just wrong right and then with english you get you can get it wrong so many ways but you can also just power through that you know which is you can just decide you're right just call it a colloquialism exactly yeah i i i not only did i excel in english but i went to like a performance art, like very hippie school. So it was so, I was so easy to BS my way through English class where it'd be like, oh, for my book report on war and peace, I painted a picture and they're like, oh, that's so creative and amazing. Meanwhile, I'm over there having not actually read the book. Uh, you literally went to the same school as maybe

an arrested development. Exactly. You got a crocodile in spelling it was so easy it was so easy because if you just do something artistic it didn't matter if you actually read the book oh man yeah yeah and I I definitely had like more facility for English in school and I and I think it was partly like reading a lot of books early on. So then you just get used to all these dumb little rules and things. Cause like, right. Shout out to anyone who's learned English as a second language, because so many of our letters have different sounds all the time. Yeah. And that's part of how Y can be a bunch of vowel sounds. It's similar to all the functions of i some of the functions of e

and also a whole nother vowel category called a schwa all at once anytime i get into a discussion about the english language i'm always reminded of an eddie is her line where she said um basically english is just cheating at scrabble. Yeah. It's true. Well, because like you read a book and you don't recognize a word. If you've read enough, like you're saying, Alex, you get to this point where you're like, ah, I bet I know what that word means.

That kind of idea where it's like you get, or like if you've ever done a crossword puzzle, you don't have to actually know all the answers. Sometimes you just look at structure of words and you go like that's gonna be an e there or like oh that that'll be that'll be a y i don't know what that word means but that looks like a word and sure enough you'll be right yeah like wordle too i kept finding myself being like okay if the fourth letter is a t the next one's probably an e but it could be y

but you know there's like a limited range of dumb next letters this could be. And yeah, like with these specific vowel functions, so Y can do pretty much everything I does. And if people don't know, there's a concept of long vowels and short vowels in English. And a long vowel is when a vowel sounds like the name of the letter. So for example, Y sounds like a long I in the word fly, in the word goodbye. Like you're saying the name of the letter I when you say it. Right. And I feel like there's a generation of millennial kids learning that Ys can very much be I's because of their names, right? Like there's so many of those names now where they're like, let's make, let's just stick a Y in there. Let's just swap in a Y instead of an I or an E.

Yeah. New name. Oh yeah. Was there the new She-Hulk show? Isn't there a joke about a character like Madison? And then it's like, and the Y isn't where you think it is. Like that's the joke. in and then it's like and the y isn't where you think it is like that's the the joke i had a i had a friend named zach and he briefly turned his name spelling into x a q u e i believe and it was

like man i hate this language so much that's a bold move yeah keep it uh that's like when the edge started introducing himself as the edge yeah yeah it's a big step you're asking a lot from me man yeah because well and then like so why when it's being i it can be this long i it can also be a short i which is where it's not sounding like how the letter is said a good example is the word myth right myth has a y in the middle but it's not sounding like how the letter is said a good example is the word myth right myth has a y in the middle but it's not it doesn't sound like any letter or the game missed missed yeah it's like exactly where my brain went yeah i'm just sitting here thinking about missed yeah oh yeah yeah speaking of confusion there we go That is the Y of games. It is. In many ways, the Y of games.

And Dave, as you said, it can be an E. It's almost always being a long E when it's an E. The most common example is something like the word messy. The Y on the end of messy sounds like we say the letter E. Messy. and then there's a whole nother thing i hadn't really heard of called a schwa are either of you familiar with a schwa no i've heard it sounds yeah it's so it's pretty hard to describe but it for one thing does not sound like the name schwa what it is is a sound that any vowel can make. And it's where the vowel is not stressed and doesn't sound like the long or short version. And to my ear, most of the examples almost sound like an eh or uh noise, like kind of a dropping out.

And I'll have, in particular, a YouTube channel linked called MmEnglish. And there's a creator there named emma she makes this great video all about schwoz with a bunch of examples why i can do this is the short version uh but like other examples of schwoz are the a on the end of the word umbrella like when you say umbrella you just kind of drop out on that a at the end it's not a long a or a short a i think i get it yeah it's this is the true question mike it's the true like yada yada yeah of it the the one the one that standed out is carrot you have written here because like it's not carrot it's just carrot you know and

that's a great one yeah the oh yeah yeah because in carrot if it was a long o it would be like care wrote and then if it was a O, it would be like carrot. And if it was a shorter O, it would be like carrot. It sounds like you're strangling someone with a vegetable. Yeah. Right. I feel like the schwa represents like someone saying like, listen, it'd be weird if we didn't put a vowel here for the writing, but like ignore the vowel. Almost, yeah.

Yeah, it's like a clipped or truncated sound. Yeah, which once again, English, man. I can't imagine trying to learn it as an adult. That's an exhausting thought. Dave, you should start spelling your name D-E-Y. Yeah. Why not? Dave.

David. Oh, yeah. Now, I can't believe I'm not. Dave. David. Oh, yeah. Now, I can't believe I'm just remembering this now. If people listen to the libraries episode of the podcast, we talk about Melville Dewey, who made the Dewey decimal system. But he was also an activist about spelling simplification. And at one point, he changed his last name Dewey to D-U-I. Wow. Because that sounds like Dewey. It also looks like you were driving drunk,

but like, that might've caused problems for him. Had he been born in a little later decade. Yeah. Yeah. Melvin DUI. Yeah. You're not hired,

obviously. That's like a terrible college nickname. Yeah. obviously um it's like a terrible college nickname yeah national lampoon's melville dewey uh but uh but yeah so this schwa sounds all of the standard vowels can do it a e i o u and so y can do it too one example of a schwa y is the word satyr s-a-t-y-r great word like you're you're just sort of jumping from the t to the r you're kind of dropping out that y in the way a schwa works yeah yeah again placeholder it's just we think it's weird to just

jump between these two letters so we need to like put something there yeah please ignore it's like it's like the mayonnaise or no wait no it's like like the meat of the sandwich we gotta put something between these two pieces of bread i don't know i think mayonnaise because mayonnaise is like the lubricant of the sandwich where it's like no one wants a dry sandwich but no one wants like a sandwich where all they're tasting is the mayonnaise so it's like a thin layer um and it doesn't have to be mayonnaise but mayonnaise yeah i think i think it's a good mayonnaise tom yeah solid mayonnaise yeah i like that we're doing like a tom and dave guesting on sif cinematic universe now this is good it's all aligning. We did talk about mayonnaise. Yeah. We did. Yeah.

And there's a Y in there. How about that? Oh, so that's the two roles of Y. And also there's a surprising thing I learned here, which is that if you're not an English speaker, your language might not treat Y as both a vowel and a consonant. And apparently one key example of this is like most northern european languages and german swedish polish czech in those languages y is just a vowel there's no

consonant version that explains a like that explains looking at that language like those languages like in a lot of those languages like what we call J sort of serves that, what the vowel sound, the consonant sound that Y would make. J is a real Y when you think about it. Like when you look at how it's, yeah, it's got that Y energy for sure. That makes so much sense. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's what they use instead. They don't do the consonant that we were talking about. Yeah. But yeah, so that's, that's exactly how it's a what they use instead. They don't do the consonant that we were talking about.

Yeah. But yeah, so that's exactly how it's a vowel and a consonant. I had no idea. And the rest of the main episode here is the history of this. Like, how did we get here? How did this weird bonkers letter that's many letters come to be? I bet I... Oh, I'm sorry.

I bet I asked this on a previous episode. It just feels like something that's been on my mind. Do we know what the last letter was? Like when we were like, we need one more minor sound. Because Y feels it's got last letter energy as well. I don't know. Y feels like it's doing a lot of lift. That's why.

That's why I feel like the last letters are the ones where they're like, oh, oh, shoot. We have all these other sounds here. Gotta plug up some holes here. Yeah. That's why Y can do like five different things. Yeah. The order of Y and Z seems arbitrary, but otherwise we know why those are the last ones. And that brings us into takeaway number two. the letter y joined the latin alphabet as a special character for translating greek words into latin oh and z joined the same way they joined at the same time for that purpose but uh one more time that's the letter y joined the latin alphabet as a special character for translating greek words also the latin alphabet is what we use in English today. It's the one I'm used to with 26 letters.

Wait. So it's just because the Romans were stealing everything from Greek culture. So we might as well steal another letter so we can more easily steal, I guess. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Oh, perfect. The key source here, this is a book called Language Visible, Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z.

It's by classic scholar David Sachs. It's awesome. But he was also a source for the Letter X episode because we talked about a lot of Latin letters coming from the Phoenician alphabet, including X in that one. And the first steps of why match that. alphabet, including X in that one. And the first steps of Y match that. There was a script developed in Egypt in the 2000s BC, and then a people called the Phoenicians who lived in interlinked trading cities on the Mediterranean, they like really ran with it. Like they took it and made a Phoenician alphabet and used it for their language. And that alphabet had 22 letters. 19 of those are the roots of today's Latin alphabet. Right.

Wait. So sort of like X initially, Y is another one like that. All right. Perfect response from Dave. Right. Wait. It's all so very confusing to me. Totally, yeah.

It really is like, it it's an evolution right it's just this long history of us like yeah taken from other things and seeing what works and what doesn't that's what it feels like it's it's like when it's any anytime like webster's adds a new word to the dictionary and we're all like well yeah that makes sense everybody's using that word on twitter or whatnot in like 100 years nobody's gonna understand right why why why does what is this cringe that means awkward apparently like what i mean that's like we that's a completely different cringe is a noun what yeah okay i believe this is pronounced kringa the kringa uh sounds like a food okay yeah i don't yeah it's you think the

internet might make that easier to track but i feel like it's gonna make it harder right because we've had we've had historical documents for a while now and it's just like yeah who's gonna scroll through twitter and like try to figure this out in a hundred years from now it's gonna be exhausting people studying languages have done a lot of work that seems really exhausting to me, to trace how this Phoenician alphabet inspired a bunch of others. Because it's the roots of everything from the Hebrew alphabet to Arabic to a lot of Indian language alphabets. And another one it's the roots of is Greece, because what many people did is they took their existing language and then used Phoenician characters to write it. They were like, okay,

there's a good set of squiggles. We'll write our language with these squiggles. And around the year 800 BC, the Greeks build up an alphabet. And one of their new letters from Phoenician letters is called Upsilon. It's oopsalon i've i had pronounced it upsalon until researching but it's spelled u-p-s-i-l-o-n and much better as oopsalon yeah yeah it's fun and uh and oops we made a language for some it has the energy of like that's amore to me i don't know why it's like oops alani you know like yeah yeah i mean it's what musk said after buying twitter right hey oh sorry i'm so sorry it's also it's a it's like a couple weeks till this comes out so for folks who don't know twitter

used to be a social media website um where you it was like short posts anyway that's what it was right now now i guess it's a bank probably by the time you're listening to this anyway but yeah that was the worst joke I've ever said in my life. And I'm so proud of it. I'm so proud of it. No, it's not. You've told worse. It's good stuff, man.

Thank you. Thank you. So this letter, Upsilon. Upsilon, you know, is with us today, like in fraternity letters and stuff. But also, it's the foundation of two English letters all at once. I'll have a picture link for people, but if you look at a drawing of this Greek letter, the lowercase Upsilon looks pretty similar to a lowercase letter U, like it's sort of that cup-shaped swoop, you know? you know but an uppercase oops-a-lon looks like an uppercase letter y it is like the the three lines all converging in the way that a y does yeah which makes sense i get why we do the lowercase y we do because we have the u but yeah like if you think of the y as a chalice the lowercase would be like a little cup you know yeah like that makes to me. It's a martini glass and then like a tumbler.

Well, when you want to make it tiny, you just chop its leg off. Exactly. I get it. But then we had you get in the way and you does feel like an afterthought because they're like a, you, it's just like a curvy line. What's the uppercase? I don't know, a bigger U. Like whenever the upper and lowercase are that, it feels like a last minute addition or it feels like they panicked. Like S and X and Z.

Yeah. It's like, what's the bigger one? I don't know. Just draw it bigger. Don't you think that's weird and confusing? It's like, yeah, but I want to's weird and confusing it's like yeah but uh i want to go home so let's just write that down we're done for the day the us at the alphabet factory are done let's go home thinking about this got me really up in my head about like the letter a

or the letter g or a few others in the Latin alphabet that are super different, upper and lowercase. Like a lot changes. You would not necessarily know those are the same. Yeah. A is a real head scratcher. A is a head scratcher. Like that would be the one where like the emperor would decree, this is lowercase A.

And then the rest of the course would be like, I don't know what the hell this dude is talking about. That is a O with a tail. What that thing is. Yeah. Especially in like typeface or you know printing where it looks like a reverse g yeah yeah what is that yeah man get out of here it doesn't even look the same like it looks like lowercase a looks different depending on if you're yeah anyway it's very confusing and yeah and then like shape differences helped a really weird thing happen

with oopsalon which is that it got added to the latin alphabet twice over and hundreds of years apart like it got added once and then a totally different way 800 years later didn't have anybody doing qc i guess we already got one of these first you invent the letter q you invent the letter c then you have to like you know so the greeks create upsilon in the 800s bc and then about 100 years later they start colonizing what's now italy and so they meet a group of people called the Etruscans. And the Etruscans copy the Greek letters for their language. And then that from there gets copied by Romans for Latin. And so that turned Upsilon into the letter U. That's the first way it enters is like Upsilon

becomes U and then they have it. Right. And I mean, the way you spell Upsilon is with a U at the beginning. So it's fitting. Yeah, we really call it something that indicates that. We're like, yeah, it's the U. And then what happens is the Romans partly interact with the Etruscans by conquering them and then building a huge empire where they conquer, among other people, the Greeks. And Rome, like Tom said, they just start co-opting as much Greek culture and science and writing as they possibly can. However, there are difficulties because the alphabets don't quite line up.

So in the 100s AD, the Roman authorities add two letters to the alphabet. And they add the Greek consonant zeta, which is Z, and then they re-add Upsilon because they want to capture the sound of Upsilon, but with a letter that is now Y. I love the idea of waking up and your spouse is reading the paper and they're like, new letters. We got new letters dropped today. I'm sure that's not how it worked exactly, but I like that version of it. Like, honey, there's new letters now. It's a new letter, yeah.

Yeah. Like, ooh, let's go try them out. Let's go do stuff. Let's go write. Take these new letters out for a whirl. See how it feels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is exciting.

Honestly, I would be so excited if they were just like, yeah, there's a new letter. Everybody turned in their keyboards. We're changing everything. We have one more letter, and it's going to change everything. That would be wild. Yeah, that would be awesome. That would be like the biggest news. That would be, yeah.

Like a holiday. I wish they would do that, like roll out new words every so often. Here's a new word. But new letters. I would want new letters. would i would want uh new letters like both new words yeah yeah that's fair give me new numbers too i don't care yeah oh new numbers oh my god what a good idea totally wouldn't totally wouldn't be a problem nope not at all

i do i remember being a kid and watching like the SNL celebrity Jeopardy sketches and I think the French Stewart character bats threave as a number and I kind of wanted to use threave I was like how do I get that going that's a great number like cool I'm into it what if okay hear me out what if we just do new numbers for the like like one and a half two and a half three and a half four and a half like for those increments between the numbers we already have that wouldn't ruin math too much right no yeah so we just have to add we have to add way more anything it would improve math yeah yeah it It's weird. I am thinking of like advanced math classes. I mean, everybody knows about pi, but pi is an example where they were like, we can add

a number by adding a Greek character. Right. That's weird. And then I think I've been in a math class where the letter E is its own number. I forget what that's for exactly. It's a calculus thing, I think. I don't know. I think that's our approach to do numbers is take latin or greek letters and

just say this is this number now and that's it all right that's what really messed me up in advancing through math class when they started adding letters to the mix i'm like whoa whoa slow down yeah no we got letters in here now we made a deal here this was math i need my shapes to be distinct and separate. Yeah. You, like, walk over to your English teacher, like, math teachers horning in on your stuff. Are you going to do anything? Are you just going to sit there? English teacher is like, oh, oh, that SOB.

I'm going over there right now. Get a fight going. Throwing erasers at each other. fight going. Throwing erasers at each other. Yeah. Well, and with the announcement of these new Roman letters, apparently Z was a pretty straightforward addition because it's a Greek consonant called Zeta. They just didn't quite have it in Latin. Right. But Y was added very specifically as a let's capture the exact nature of Greekreek words and writing according to david sacks the greek upsilon sounded like kind of a mix of you and i so the romans already had you but they said let's add upsilon in the letter y as like a way to specifically cover the i-ish pronunciation

in greek writing using it so it was like a highly almost technical addition to latin to capture greek right and then apparently the romans since they already had you they started saying the letter y more and more like an eye and apparently by the 300s a.d it pretty much matched the roman eye like i and y were interchangeable at that point. Huh. That makes sense. Wait, so it was originally going to be like more of a U you're saying? And then they were like, this feels more like an I? Greek upsilon to a Roman ear, it sounded kind of like their letter U and kind of like their letter I all at once. And they had to like pick one, basically. They're like, well, it can't be both yeah so they made you you and then they said okay

to capture the nuance of a u that's more like an eye here's why right it's the short version it does look like an eye turning into a u like that's that is yeah it's an eye with a u on its shoulders yeah it's like a cronenberg it splitting. An eye took a U to a parade. Yeah, yeah. This all checks out. That's a little family. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Which is wild because I don't think of eyes and U's as being related, but they are. They have the same blood, it turns out. Good for them. They're not so different after all. Yeah. I mean, like a like a you does look like an eye like trying to get up off the floor and struggling. So I guess they are similar. Oh, like lifting its head and its feet at the same time.

Like crunches or something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters,

and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, the JV Club with Janet Varney,

is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

And remember, no running in the halls. And yeah, I feel like a lot of this episode is basically running into ways that the letter Y is being other letters or like other letters. Because it enters Latin because it helps them translate Greek, but also it gets to stay, even though it becomes similar to I, because it still has utility that way and because people got used to it.

And then it also turns out a lot of non-English languages, when you're saying the names for all the alphabet letters, their name for Y references this history, like specifically. And one example has just always been in the background of my life because in high school i took spanish it was like great i learned spanish and when we learn the alphabet y has a really long name in spanish it's called e griega and it turns out e griega is an entire spanish phrase that directly means greek eye whoa so like they have to like explain it in their name for it yeah like modern spanish they say this is a greek eye if you're being very technical about what they're saying yeah that's so weird sort of like it's sort of

like w well this is a w it's a w you're right yeah it's even written that way yeah like yeah that's what it is i don't know man it's just so many names yeah it's just wild because it's like imagine if we did that for more things like instead of saying penguin we'd be like this is a black and white fish bird like and that's just what it was called uh i mean that'd be kind of fun but uh apparently french it's the same way it's y is the name for the letter y and then in some other languages like german they do a whole nother way of referencing this the german name for the letter y is upsilon it's just exactly a German sounding way of saying Upsilon. Yeah.

I mean, whatever works, I guess. Yeah. It's very confusing. So we're, we're, I think English is a relatively rare language and not referencing this situation. And we just call it Y and don't think about it. Right. They, why don't they just call it Y? Why don't, is it just that they don't want the Y to forget where it came from?

Like, it's like, are they teasing the Y? Like, just call it Y. That's the name. It's like calling your friend adopted Jim. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, yeah, Jim's fine. Just Jim.

You're adopted, Jim. Yeah. It's fine. I'm adopted. Like, i'm adopted like it's not it's not i don't consider that an insult it's just weird that you keep reminding me it's baked into his name yeah and then if he goes by jimmy oh no so many places in origins adopted jim that's so good well there's a and then there's one more takeaway for the main episode and let's get into takeaway number three the consonant letter y invaded england with the normans and then eliminated multiple existing

english letters whoa it looks like it's capable of that. It's got two arms. Yeah, this is a story coming from England, where the English language is from, being sort of separate from Rome for a lot of its history. And so there were alphabetical differences. And if people don't know, the Normans invaded England in 1066 AD, and among many changes basically made the letter Y a part of the English alphabet.

Yeah. So that's also part of why we have it. It's those guys. All right. And the key sources here, it's David Sachs' book and also a piece by Stanford University classicist Cynthia Haven. In general, like this Norman invasion of England, what happens is in 1066, the King of England dies with no heirs, but he picked a new English lord to be king, and then both the King of Norway and the Duke of Normandy decided, no, I should be King of England,

and separately invaded from different directions. That's awkward very awkward meeting in the middle oh hey it's all soldiers and they're like and they're all they all are just like i don't know you send a guy back to go ask him i'll send a guy back to go ask him i guess like i don't know i don't know man is that the duke of norman it is is that a host it's a host bot dang it all right that tom thank you for bringing that i forgot about calling an army a host that feels great i would love to have a host behind me Are you kidding? Shoot I'm doing something if I have that

Yeah Absolutely, you are doing something That is true Damn, alright What do we do? Do we fight? Do we fight? I guess we fight I don't know about this specific story But I know that's happened a couple

of times throughout history where they just sort of like shared being king which never works out no i can't imagine kings tend not to like sharing the throne lasts about a couple of months until invariably one or both is like what if i was just the king yeah you know what would be neat if i just stabbed the other guy yeah like speaking of the romans that's most of what we all know about their history it's just everybody started stabbing each other to be emperor yeah right it's an interesting tactic yeah yeah mid-stab oh this is a pretty good system getting stabbed this needs to be updated i don't imagine it's it's an amazing though thought of like the vice president just stabbing the president Oh, this is a pretty good system, getting stabbed. This needs to be updated. I don't... Imagine. It's an amazing thought of the vice president just stabbing the president and then just taking their place and being like, I'm president.

Anybody want a shot? Okay, I'm president. And everybody just going like, oh, okay, I guess that's president now. Pretty shrewd politician. Yeah, it's really... Yeah. Wow. You're real good at this.

And then two weeks later, he gets stabbed and we're like, he wasn't a shrewd politician, really, if you think about it. Somebody else was more politically savvy. Someone saw that happen, and they were like, oh, you can just stab him? Oh, okay. I love the idea that it's just like some guy, too. It's just someone, just like a barista or something. It's just like, no, that's me now. And it's like, oh, okay. That's just someone like a barista or something. It's just like, no, that's me now. And it's like, oh, okay.

Like, that's just the rules. Right. Last to stab. Just stabbing rules. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it's a really wild set of invasions, because you have the Norwegians coming from the north, the Normans coming from the south, because Normandy is in northern France and French speaking. Normans coming from the south because Normandy is in northern France and French speaking.

But what happens is the new English king says, I'm going to fight in the north first. And he defeats the Norwegians at a place called Stamford Bridge. And then he like hurries his army south to fight the Normans and loses at the Battle of Hastings. That's embarrassing. Yeah, like two in a row is tough, it's tough it's tough yeah couldn't do it and uh should have given himself a bye week right wait for the next draft get some youth yeah yeah but it's so so the duke of normandy wins this battle. His name is William.

He like fights more battles to become the ruler of England, crown himself King William the first. And this King's off a long period of cultural exchange between England and Normandy. And by extension, France, like a lot of French language and culture gets brought in and like the English nobility speak French and,

and it's a big French influence before that., like the Romans adopt Y in the 100s AD and then from there, Latin speakers end up developing lots of other European languages, including French. So like that, now we have a stronger link between like the Romans and the English through this French invasion. That is interesting though. I remember I just read recently about something about the movie Braveheart, where it's like they have this subplot of Sophie Marceau's character talking to her handmaiden in French, and the king can't follow the conversation. But I've heard historians pointing out, well, no, French was the official court language in England at the time,

so everybody was speaking French. Right, yeah. Yeah, like William's Royal House, and then i think the next one to the plantagenets like it was mostly people connected to france or from france like that yeah it became sort of an upper level english person you speak french and then the like peasants are speaking english this weird germanic language that nobody likes you know it's a terrible language it really is they were right yeah it's real garbage it's just madness yeah but in like and so over the centuries before they invade england french speakers like they developed this use for y according to david sax the french

innovated the use of the latin y and they came up with like that consonant-ish sound at the front of a word and using y for it and apparently they also don't do it very much like it was it was hard to find examples of it apparently one example is the plural word for the body part eyes not the letter i like the eyes we see with uh in middle french that was spelled y e u l x yeah that's y e u l x it's doing that y consonant thing at the front right i reject that i can't even like mentally picture that assortment of letters yeah now we're playing scrabble, right? What do I do with this? Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. You'd get arrested if you put that on a Scrabble board.

Yeah. I once, by the way, speaking of English, I once played Scrabble in London against British people. And what an infuriating thing to do. Where there's a lot of me going like, that's not a word. And they're like, yeah, it is. And then they just grab some random person. They're like, what's that word? And they're like, oh, yeah, that's a word. And it's like, that is not a word. What they're like, yeah, it is. And then they like just grab some random person. They're like, what's that word? And they're like, oh yeah, that's a word.

And it's like, that is not a word. What are you doing? But yeah. See, this is why we revolted, I think. Yeah, exactly. This is part of it. We're tired of being embarrassed at the Scrabble board. Too many vowels. What are you doing?

Guys throw you into everything like it's going out of style. Yeah. Stop it. And yeah, and then french really rarely use this function for y in the french language and then what happens is the french march into england and say you have to use our language now as much as you can and one thing that takes off is that french function of y as a consonant that then becomes an English thing. Like that happened to match a bunch of words in the English language at the time, everything from yeoman to yoke. There were

also a bunch of German words that start with J in German that became English words. And then they used Y for that. A big example is Yule, like the Christmas Yule. That's a German word that we stamped a Y on the front of. So the French was like, you have to use our language. And then we did. And they're like, oh, you're using our loser letter. Like that was our, that was our, that was our, oh man, you could, yeah, we had so many other things you could have used. It was forced on us. They wanted us to, yeah. I want to remind you that you're losers. Yeah. I do hope English speakers that you're losers. Yeah. I do hope English speakers were like, well, I'll only use the wackiest rule. That'll show them. That's it.

Yeah, I want that. And yeah, and that like helped make Y popular in English to this day. Like that's how OOPSALAN became a French consonant, became an English consonant, and then it's both things. Right. a French consonant became an English consonant, and then it's both things. Right. And then also there's like an aggressive invasion element to all this because all those English words that they were saying without a letter Y on the front for it, they had their own letter before that, like they were able to write it. And so there was a different first letter that is no longer in use in the English language

because they didn't like start with a J or something like the Germans. They used a special letter called Joch. And Joch is... Sounds like Klingon. I was going to say it's a Klingon dish, I'm pretty sure. Oh, wow. I think it is. Yeah. Whatever it is, it's moving, right? That's their thing. Yeah.

And that's the best pronunciation i could find apparently that's a scottish pronunciation but the when people write about this letter they spell it y-o-g-h and i'll have pictures linked for people because it was its own character too and every time i look at the character i just see see a number three. It looks like a number three to me, but yeah, it sure does. So they fired, they fired this letter. They're like, we're sorry. We don't, we no longer need your services. It's, there's been a redundancy. You don't have a future in this language. Essentially. Yeah. Cause they also like did the same role. The French were like, we have a direct replacement for it. Use this. Don't we don't like yuck we would never use your weird old letter right yeah it is weird it doesn't feel like a y it maybe i'm biased um but like when i see this three i i think three just quite frankly yeah i don't know it's a better three like it has it represents three things it's got three

energy yeah yeah well it's got three points it's like yeah it's got three energy yeah yeah well it's got three points it's like yeah it's a three yeah it does yeah yeah it it looks like somebody's trying to do like some cutesy spelling of a movie sequel title like when it's the third movie and they plug a three and instead of the letter e to be fun that's's how it looks to me. Real Shrek the third letter. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah. But yeah, and so like apparently by the 1300s, 1400s people in England

transitioned to the Y. Also, some people in Scotland kept using yach because they were not conquered by the Normans right away and they had some separation where they could keep it going. For the French outlawed it. And then on top of that, Y in a different way wiped out a whole nother letter in English. And that one is maybe more famous, but it's a letter called Thorn. And I'll link pictures of that.

It sort of looks like one vertical line with then like a capital D type bulb in the middle of it. It's a pregnant eye. Yeah, an eye with a baby. It's like a too tall P. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Thorn was a letter that made the sound that the letters TH make together in English. And so it was like everywhere. It was in these them there that

most commonly the you know it was like a really core character in english that's a yeah that's that we could still use that character now yeah it feels weird to just have like one letter to represent two letters i guess i i don't know i think we could get used to it if there was a new letter to drop it'd be this letter right yeah it'd be coming back like the mcrib yeah i like it when you write the mcrib like it's a thorny mcrib yeah like yeah i like th. Man, Y has a lot of blood on its hands. Yeah. Picking up some bodies over the centuries. And Thorn is still around today in especially the Icelandic language, because England got it from runic languages of Scandinavia. Oh, sure, yeah. That makes sense.

Which is also just cool. But the letter Thorn in the late 1400s starts going away because of block printing like it was so popular the french couldn't really get rid of it but block printers just wanted to cut down on how many letters they had to like carve and stack and stuff right and then the confusing part to me is that they said hey let's temporarily substitute thorn with the most similar letter. And they picked Y, which I don't really feel it totally looks like it. I don't see it.

But that led to like the thing you see at Ren fairs and medieval situations where people call something ye old whatever. That's actually just a Y that's supposed to be a thorn. And it's supposed to just be said the old tavern or the old castle or whatever wow yeah we've been saying it wrong for so long yeah we like pronounced it because we don't know the context of block printers saying like everybody knows this is a thorn right great and then in that context we lost thorn sweet right now i can be the most annoying person at the renaissance fair yeah which is a tall task yeah really a guy in jester bells is gonna be so mad to get aced out some tumbling

oh man that's incredible homemade motley. It's going to be so angry. Anyway. It's our day. No. It just feels like now when we say ye olde, we're like bullying why. Like, it's like we're making fun of it. We're bullying Thorn. I guess we're bullying Thorn.

You're right. Yeah. We're bullying some letter. Thorn didn't ask for this. Yeah. I do. I love that Thorn got phased out literally as a cost-cutting measure yeah that's amazing incredible like we don't need

all these letters it costs a lot of money to make another one so let's just use what we have 26 was there a hard limit yeah 27 get out of my office and it was also like a little bit french and latin's fault still too because like the first block printers have a very small audience of literate people and so a lot of those people also were so fancy they knew these other languages and so they if you're printing in french or latin you don't need. It's like, this isn't a weird runic character in those languages. So yeah, it just got wiped out. And so why really? A lot of blood on his hands, like you said.

Really, really wiped out a lot of characters that we don't do anymore. Hashtag justice for Thorn. Yeah. Stacking up bodies. Bring back Thorn. Yeah. And it's a fun letter. And it's like, yeah, and there's nothing else that looks like it. Like, it's a fun letter and it's like we they're yeah and there's no like there's nothing else

that looks like it like it's a yeah it's it deserves to be a letter it's the coolest named letter too thorn thorn yeah it's great sounds like an action movie character yeah where would it go like in the alphabet because i wouldn't want it at the beginning in the end like where where does it feel put it right at the beginning thorn bc there you go thorn abc will it be or a thorn bc we reshuffle it we boot a right out of the lead okay it's been sitting at the top for way too long like it's yeah it's it's the it's the chris hemsworth of letters where it's just like no we got it we gotta have our star there don't call it a comeback yeah thorn never left folks that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman for not only exploring sauces with me,

but also exploring multiple letters with me. What a fun set of things we got going. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. E if you support this show on Patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus show really, really goes for it because it's not one story, it is three stories of the letter Y gaining huge modern prominence in really surprising, odd, roundabout ways. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 10 dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring the letter Y with us.

Here's one more run through the big takeaways. And this week it was all takeaways. Takeaway number one, in the English language, the letter Y makes several vowel sounds and only one consonant sound. Takeaway number two, the letter Y joined the Latin alphabet as a special character for translating Greek words. And takeaway number three, the consonant letter Y invaded England with the Normans and then eliminated multiple existing English letters. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great.

David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman do a bunch of wonderful, fantastic internet comedy, gaming, everything else, things at Gamefully Unemployed. The Patreon is patreon.com slash gamefully unemployed. That's gamefully. It's a pun on gainfully unemployed. You understand. You can also find Tom Ryman at the Weird History YouTube channel, also writing over at 1-900-HOTDOG, also did a piece recently for Turner Classic Movies, and David Bell has excellent script writing over on the YouTube news and comedy show Some More News, as well as a movie script

on the Blacklist. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. I particularly leaned on a fascinating book. It's called Language Visible, Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z. That's by journalist and classic scholar David Sachs. Also online writing by Stanford classicist Cynthia Haven. Wonderful YouTube work from the channel MmmEnglish. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that,

our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners.

I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.