1632: The Alphabet's Pronunciation: U and Y Jun 3, 2019

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The names for the letters in many alphabets like in German or Estonian etc. more or less mirror the sounds being represented: not so in English. Though the story is complicated for each letter, most shifted away from the simpler pronunciations in the 15th century, but in a few cases it happened later. It wasn't until the 17th century that U was pronounced [iu] like in 'few' (or simply 'ew'!) rather than just [u] as in 'too'. The only one that isn't known for sure is the pronunciation of Y; in German it's 'upsilon', like the Greek ɛ 'epsilon' and in French it's 'igrec' meaning 'Greek I', but the English name for the letter is more removed and less certain. There will be more on the whole alphabet's pronunciation soon.
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