Any answers? Why in old English text was an 's' written as an 'f'? It wasn't; it was just written differently according to its position in the word. The f-like s (like an f without the crossbar) was a tall variant used at the start or in the middle of a word, which the modern s was used at the end or after a tall s.
A long s, for example, was used at the beginning and middle of words (fong, ufe, etc.). Printers were taught that it should be used before a hyphen at a line break even though a short s would normally be used. Hence, huf-band instead of husband.
The end of the long s was quite abrupt in English printing, occurring around 1800, but the character lingered a little longer in the U.S. Outside of manuscripts and antique books, you might only encounter the long s in German, where it lives as one half of the "Eſzett," or double s character (written as 'ß').
It originated most likely as a pictogram of a tooth (שנא) and represented the phoneme /ʃ/ via the acrophonic principle. Ancient Greek did not have a /ʃ/ phoneme, so the derived Greek letter sigma (Σ) came to represent the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/.
The letter was probably contained in an Asian alphabet from which the Greek, Lydian, and Etruscan were derived. In some very early Latin inscriptions, f was used in combination with h to represent the unvoiced labial spirant (English f). The h was soon dropped, and the sound was represented by the letter f alone.
It originated as the Phoenician symbol for a voiceless sibilant. The Greeks adopted it as the letter sigma (Σ), with lower-case variants according to its position in a word: medial (σ) and final (ζ). The Etruscans and then the Romans further adapted the form to create S.
The answer lies in the fact that that's not an F at all. It's actually a letter called the medial S, also known as the long S, which was a second form of the lowercase letter S. This old-fashioned letter has a long history.
Why are so many English words that were spelt with a “z” are now replaced with the letter “s”? Americanised English uses the letter z where as British use the letter s. With the global communications becoming real time now. Getting to a common standard is most important in order to clarify things and simpler to use.
F is pronounced the same as the modern English [f] when at the start or end of a word, or when it is beside an unvoiced consonant. However, it is pronounced like [v] if it comes between two vowels (heofan, seofan, yfel), or between a vowel and a voiced consonant within a word (wulfas).
z or s? In British English, s is generally used in such words as recognise, authorise. The letter z is used in American English in such words as recognize or authorize. However, it is not wrong to use z in such words when using British English as standard.
In German, the letter ß is known as the eszett or scharfes (sharp) S. It's a special character, similar to the German umlaut you're probably used to seeing by now. But unlike those two dots above “a,” “o” or “u,” the eszett is written as a capital B-shaped character with a tail: ß.
By the late 19th century, condensed layouts such as California Case had simplified the process of setting type by hand by eliminating the long s and its ligatures. The long s stopped being used in printed materials in England during the 1810s and 1820s, while it died out a little earlier in the United States.
Often, a short S would go next to the letter F (e.g. misfortune) to avoid confusion. Around 1780, the long S suddenly fell out of fashion. It's thought that as technology advanced, printers wanted to simplify their typesets and kept just one form of S in their kits.
Even unusual letters like Z and J are silent in words that we have adopted from foreign languages, such as marijuana (originally a Spanish word) and laissez-faire (French). But as Merriam-Webster Dictionary points out, one unusual letter is never silent: the letter V.
First, note that, in 'earth', there is no E /e/ that you have in 'ate'. Besides, there is no T in its pronunciation, although it is present in the spelling. Rather, what we have is the long form of the low A (ERR), plus the thither sound TH, which we have in month, length, three etc.
🇫 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter F Emoji.
Emoji Meaning
The letter S, which can be used as part of a regional indicator pair to create emoji flags for various countries. Regional Indicator Symbol Letter S was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Emoji 2.0 in 2015.
The letter F with hook (uppercase Ƒ, lowercase: ƒ) is a letter of the Latin script, based on the italic form of f; or on its regular form with a descender hook added. A very similar-looking letter, ⟨ʄ⟩ (a dotless j with a hook and a horizontal stroke), is used in the IPA for a voiced palatal implosive.
But it's also used in almost every English-speaking country. In England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, India, Canada (usually), and New Zealand, Z is pronounced as zed. It's derived from the Greek letter zeta.
Due to its association with the war in Ukraine, the Z has become a militarist symbol in Russian propaganda and is used by Russian civilians to indicate support for the invasion.
Much of our modern alphabet comes directly from the Greek alphabet, including a letter, that looked just like our “Z,” that the Greeks called “zeta.” “Zeta” evolved into the French “zede,” which in turn gave us “zed” as English was shaped by Romance languages like French.