Scrabble’s Two Letter Words – Ye, Yo & Za

Ye

Ye – The archaic form of ‘you’. Originally ye formed the second person plural, and was equivalent to the modern ‘y’all’. By the 15th century, English speakers were influenced by French occupiers who insisted there was both a polite and a more familiar way to use the word you (vous; tu). The word ‘thou’ became an informal word you said to your pals, while ye and you became formal words you said to your betters. By the 17th century, with the French no longer running amok the English countryside, English speakers decided the distinctions in formality were silly, got rid of ye and thou altogether, and left you to fill the role of all second person pronouns.

Ye – The word ‘the’. Often pronounced ‘yee’. It should probably be pronounced ‘the’, but then people would look at you weird. An irregularity in the language that’s mostly the fault of the Dutch.

In Old English, ‘the’ was spelled ‘þe’. That first symbol þ is called ‘thorn’. It’s a letter seen in a number of ancient Scandinavian alphabets, and is still used in Icelandic. The English letter thorn once represented the th sound, but by the time Middle English was in full swing the th combination was in heavy rotation. By then, thorn was only used for common words (such as the, that, and this) which would have looked wrong to Middle English scribes if the thorn wasn’t there.

The Dutch, however, had no thorn in their alphabet. And since many early English printers bought and used Dutch printing presses, those printers needed a symbol to represent what was missing. The letter ‘Y’ was often chosen. This practice was so widespread that it worked its way back to the scribes, who began handwriting the letter y instead of th. In early Middle English, it was common for scribes to stylistically write þe as þͤ. The word ‘that’ was written as þͭ. But by late Middle English, scribes were writing yͤ and yͭ, respectively.

Over time thorn phased out and th replaced y in every case except one: in the expression ‘Ye Olde’, which is almost exclusively found in shop names to make the store feel older or more British. Such as with the British restaurant Ye Olde King’s Head in merry old Santa Monica, California. Be wary of any establishment calling itself ‘Ye Olde Barber Shoppe’, lest you find yourself covered in leeches while your molars are extracted.

Yo

Yo – Dating back to the 1400s, yo can mean hello, hey, woah, or present. It’s that last case that propelled yo into its modern usage, as a number of soldiers in World War II would shouted ‘Yo!’ in response to roll call. From there, yo filtered its way back to the states, and was especially popular in the Italian and African communities of Philadelphia.

Some time in the mid-seventies, it spread in use across of the rest of the English speaking world. Some lexicographers point out that the word is universally easy to say, and that shouting ‘Yo~!’ is easy to hold and hear over long distances. But I have a difficult time imagining the word taking off like it did without the help of Sylvester Stallone. His breakout film ‘Rocky’ was the highest grossing film of 1976, raking in $117 million dollars at the box office, and won three academy awards, for best film, best actor, and best screenplay.

Stallone wrote Rocky as a local underdog. He’s an everyman who’s shooting for heavyweight champion of the world. It’s the sort of person people loved to imagine they could be. It’s been fifty years, but if Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’ is played at a party, someone will shadowbox. They might be too young to understand the reference, but they’re aspiring to be Rocky nonetheless. And what better way to emulate your Philly-based working class hero than to pepper the word ‘yo’ into your vocabulary? I found a supercut of every time a character says ‘yo’ in the six Rocky movies and, by my count, it’s said 152 times by various characters. Considering the word’s pervasiveness, it would be stunning to imagine yo not enter the public consciousness.

While the word ‘yo’ spread in use through the northeast United States in the late 70s and early 80s, rap music broke out of its modern roots in New York City, and artists powdered their songs with the filler word: ‘yo’. Maybe gangsta rappers wanted to sound more like Italian mob bosses who delivered more yos than a Duncan factory. Maybe they did it simply because the word is fun to say. Regardless, the word yo became the filler of choice when working out where the words met the beat.

Over time, yo became synonymous with rap, thanks in part to the late 80s two hour block of music television called ‘Yo! MTV raps’. As rap became an international sensation, one word stood out. If you’re a Japanese or Indian rapper and you want to sound more like the American rappers you’re emulating, slather your raps with the word ‘yo’. Throw in an ‘ok’ on occasion too, but definitely lots of yo, yo, yo, yos. Nowadays if you walk down a road anywhere in the world, you might hear someone yelling ‘Yo!’ to get your attention. Yell yo back at them.

Image by Pixabay.

Za

Za – Short for pizza. Za seems to be one of those words that inspires rage and disbelief by those who first encounter it outside of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book. I read a few commenters online who keep circling back to blame Southern California for this, citing each other for reference. It isn’t hard to imagine a surfer dude stoked for za after pocketing some mondo waves. Here’s your actual reference: A slang book from 1967, indicating that the word comes from the Midwest and probably Minnesota. The general belief is that college students, who used late night pizzerias for study sessions and parties, shortened the word like they did with so many others because it was supes fab, natch.

Speaking of dispelling myths, the pizzeria didn’t become one of the most popular restaurant genres in the world because American soldiers returned from Italy in World War II with a developed taste for pizza. It sounds reasonable, but isn’t sustained by facts. Pizzerias were a rare sight in the United States in the late 1940s, and mostly found in large city centers. World War II led to so many cultural changes that I’m a little glad to take one phenomenon away from it. (Though, I can’t help share one I love. American men came home from World War II and told their girlfriends that the Europeans shaved their legs, so American women thought it was trés chic to shave. The average European woman, however, was not shaving her legs. European prostitutes were, in an attempt to avoid lice. This anecdote about why American women shave their legs might not be entirely true either. Women were showing skin more and more in the 1940s—especially with the invention of the bikini—so there may have been a natural reason why Americans were doing what the Europeans weren’t. But it’s hard to not be taken by the idea that an entire fad of women shaving their legs came about because of a generation of ignorant, dishonest soldiers.)

Nor did pizzerias take off due to Italian immigration (Really, Encyclopedia Britannica? You used to be so well-respected, and now you’re making up answers for whatever sounds truthy…) The height of Italian immigration was between 1880 and 1921. The 50s and 60s was not some special time in Italian Immigration. Why pizzerias took off is the same reason why other fast food chains took off: the spread of the suburbs and the proliferation of the automobile. Going out to eat used to be an event. Pack the family in the car, sit down at a restaurant, wait for your food, then come home and listen to the radio. That was your night. By the 1950s, teenagers were packing into the Studebaker, slipping off to McDonalds for a bag full of burgers, before cruising down Broadway, looking for some action. Easy to box pizza, combined with ovens designed to bake a pizza in four minutes, made for the perfect food to jump in the truck, put in an order, and tailgate some za at a football game. After all, the Wolverines are up against the Buckeyes and there ain’t no chance we’re missing that. Bricka Bracka Firecracker, Sis-Boom-Bah!