He reftoreth my foul

Even according to your link the character was indeed a form of "s", not a different character. There were simply three different forms of "s" at one time, in modern terms they would be capital "s", lower case "s", and medial "s".

I am the first to admit that the spellings have changed in our Bibles, but this was not one of them. </font>[/QUOTE]I can see where you are confused. The article is poorly written—it even includes the discussion of characters for the “s” sound in the same paragraph as ligatures, which they are not. Where the article has long s in parenthesis, it is not speaking of the character “s” but the “s” sound. English used to have three characters for the “s” sound (as, coincidently, does Greek); now it has only two. Any time a character in a word is changed, the spelling of the word, by definition, is also changed.

I tried to find a better article on the internet, but I could not find one. Perhaps you can.

 

In this close-up of the Bill of Rights from the link above we can even see that the long "s" looks like an "s".

 

reckon why they made one s in congress large and the other small?

 

The next to last "s" is the "long s" in question. At one time it was the "s" used when it was not the last s" in the word.

This was the form of the letter "s" in question from the OP.

 

It does not matter what it looks like to you. We know for a fact from the study of orthography that the character of which you write is NOT the character “s.” It is a character in the English alphabet that is no longer in use. The shape of the character and how it appears in the handwriting of various individuals is irrelevant; it is not the character “s” or the character “f.” It is the character “ſ ”.

As you can see for yourself, some people in this thread thought that the character “ſ ” was an “f” because that it is what it looked like to them.

 

How does one pronounce that character? I would truly like to know.

It appears to me that it is an "s", just like the two forms of sigma.

 

What about the "Æ" or "æ" charcter I used to think it was a typo in my KJV. It is used alot in words like "Judæa." Does any one know the history or origin of this character?

I Know that alphabets change over time. In Spanish 2 letters were dropped out of it's alphabet as recently as 1994.

 

Those are simply ligatures and there has been a long debate over whether or not there form a separate character or not.

 

Those are simply ligatures and there has been a long debate over whether or not there form a separate character or not. </font>[/QUOTE]What's a ligature? The question may sound stupid but I would really like to know?
Thanks
EW

 

Sorry EW - they basically are two letters blended into one. That is why there is a debate about whether they are two letters simply joined or by joining they become a new character. Most of them went out of vogue when American spellings were simplified.

 

Thænkf C4K!

 

C4K said:

Those are simply ligatures and there has been a long debate over whether or not there form a separate character or not.

Historically, in early and middle English, the Æ and æ ligatures were a distinct letter called an eth. Its pronunciation was roughly the same as a short e (leg, bed, etc.)

By the seventeenth century, the eth, as well as some other letters such as the thorn and ash, had disappeared from English orthography. In 1611, these ligatures were simply a typological convention.

EaglewingIS4031 then asked:

What's a ligature?

In traditional typography, a ligature is a piece of type containing two or more letters joined together. (The word ligature comes from a Latin word meaning "to bind.")

Certain pairs and triplets of letters are traditionally printed as ligatures: notably ae, oe, ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. This is still true in modern bookmaking where books are typeset by computer; while the ae- and oe-ligatures are out of vogue, the others are still used because the spacing of the ligatures looks more natural than the distinct letters. (In fact, at least four of the ligatures I listed are part of the standard Windows fonts, so if you felt so inclined, you could even configure your word processor to automatically replace these letter groups with the appropriate ligature as you type.)

 

(The word ligature comes from a Latin word meaning "to bind.")

I guess I could have figured that out "Ligar" means to tie in Spanish!

Thank you for the info. I thought the "Æ,æ" was called the "ash."

Thænk§
EW

 

Whoops! My bad. Yes, you're right, that's the ash. Eth is the Đ or đ character that stands for our vocalized th sound.

 

As I read the posts in this thread it appears to me that a substantial part of the confusion has arisen from a basic confusion over the difference between characters and letters. All letters are characters; but not all characters are letters. Letters are a subset of the larger set of characters.

In orthography, a character is “a graphic symbol (as a hieroglyph or alphabet letter) used in writing or printing.”

In orthography, a letter is “a symbol usually written or printed representing a speech sound and constituting a unit of an alphabet.”

I have used here the wording of the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary so if you disagree with the definitions, you can take it up with Merriam-Webster, the foremost lexicographer of the English Language. The key word in their definition for “character,” for the purpose of our discussion in this thread, is the word “or.” A character may be either a hieroglyph or a letter.

The character used in earlier English orthography for the long “s” sound was a different character than the character used for the short “s” sound, and therefore it was a different letter of the alphabet. When one changes the letter used to spell a word, one changes the spelling of the word.

In Greek we have a different situation. We have three forms of the character “sigma,” all three of which are considered by most teachers of Greek to represent the exact same sound. If, indeed, they do represent the exact same sound, they are indeed the same letter.

 

The only difference in the long "s" was its placement. It was used unless it was the last letter of the word. That seems somewhat similar to the sigma usage in my unlearned opinion.

I agree with you when it comes to ligatures.

[ March 10, 2006, 03:14 AM: Message edited by: C4K ]

 

Thatf thatf all folkf!

 

Here are some examples of the use of the long "s" in the 1795 Oxford edition of the KJV:

"fin" (Ps. 32:5)
"fee" (Ps. 34:12)
"chafe" (Ps. 35:5)
"wife" (Ps. 36:3)
"flay" (Ps. 37:14)
"feed" (Ps. 37:26)
"fore" (Ps. 38:2)
"foul" (Ps. 42:1)
"fake" (Ps. 44:26)

If the above are not considered examples that were later updated, here are some other examples that should prove that all the updating was not finished by 1769 or 1795.

Leviticus 18:18
besides (1795 Oxford)
beside (present Oxford)

Numbers 6:5
rasor (1795 Oxford)
razor (present Oxford in Scofield Reference Bible)

Numbers 20:14
travel (1795 Oxford)
travail (present Oxford)

Deut. 10:2
brakedst (1795 Oxford)
brakest (present Oxford)

Joshua 15:26
Aman (1795 Oxford)
Amam (present Oxford)

Ezra 7:14
counsellers (1795 Oxford)
counsellors (present Oxford)