Eh? No f!

ſo, today is Monday, Decembre the Twelfth, in the yeare 2011.
I’ve decided to wryte as I would have wrytten back in the ſeventeenth century. Well, almoſt.
Its not at all eaſy, what with the ſpecial character for the letter ‘s’ that was uſed back then. The normal letter ‘s’ was alſo uſed, which made many words ſeem very ſtrange indeed. The general rule of thumbe, or ſo it ſeemes, is to add the ‘ſ’ character at the beginning of wordes or in the myddle. They don’t appeare at the ende of the wordes, unleſs there’s a double ‘s’, but the very laſt character is the ‘s’. I’m not ſure if my olde Engliſhe is as correct as it was back then, and I ſuppoſe folke who wrote back then would have done ſo without even giving a ſeconde thought to how they were wryting and ſpellyng for that matter.
Wordes do looke funnie when they aren’t ſpelled as we expecte to ſee them today, but it would have been the norme back then.

OK! Enough of that!

I don’t think for one moment that the seventeenth century writers would have thought that somebody like me would have come along, trying to write as they may have done back then. I’ve seen a few examples of the early written word, and it takes me quite a bit longer to read it than I would a more modern piece. I’m not particularly good at speed reading at the best of times, but certain examples (as my poor one above should hopefully indicate!) slow me down considerably.

I seem to remember being taught in school that in days gone by, people used to spell as the word sounded, which accounts for the different spellings of older words that crop up from time to time. I suppose this also accounts for some of the town and village names that don’t actually sound as they are spelled (Lower Peover springs to mind here; pronounced ‘peever’ if you weren’t aware).

Of course, I may have completely made that lesson up. School is such a long time ago now it is more of a haze than anything else. Not as long ago as the seventeenth century, I must add, but almost.

I’m going to explore this early style of writing a little further. It may help me with my quest. It may help me with my writing. It may also confuse me a little further than I already am, although that is highly improbable – there are some boundaries that just can not be reached at this current time, and my level of confusion is so off the accepted chart it is almost in a different solar system.

So, this random post draws to a close. Time and space, words and history, nonsense and fact all rolled into one neat little bundle. Well, all mixed up within a filler post anyway.

And ſorry if your esses now sssssound a little sunny… there – all back to normal now!