Ye olde

When we see a quaint sign announcing Ye Olde Shoppe, we usually pronounce the "Ye" as yee. In fact, it was originally pronounced "the."

Anglo-Saxon (Old English) had two different letters for the "th" sounds: an eth for the th in that and a thorn for the th in thin .

eth
thorn

The eth died out in the 1300s, and the thorn was finally replaced by the th (called a diagraph)in the 1500s, by which time it had come to look very much like a y. People eventually forgot what the thorn meant and interpreted Ye (the) as Ye (ye) when they saw it on old signs.

And that is how The Olde Shoppe became Ye Olde Shoppe.