In the 1700's to 1800's schoolgirls developed their sewing and language skills by creating "samplers" which consisted of upper and lower case alphabets and numbers. Why did their alphabets omit the letter "J"?
by 
Jeff
ANSWERS: 1
-
The letters J and V were not part of the early (Latin) alphabet. The same letters were used for I/J and U/V until about the 19th century. You will quite often see, for example, Jesus spelled as IESVS. So presumably the missing I or J are a variant of this! Most early samplers had the abbreviated alphabet on them; more recently (say in the 19th century) some might have one short 24-letter alphabet and one long (26-letter) one. Often they copied older samplers, and that would explain why the missing letters on newer samplers.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC