Ye Olde The

           Way back before dictionaries, people could hardly speak correctly. If you were to travel back in time to the Dark Ages, the air would be filled with the sounds of "thou"s, "thust"s, "thee"s, and "ye''s. Why, one could go to any Renaissance fair, and there would be as many "ye''s as there is fake chain mail and incredibly exited nerds.

By morns light, I toil as a McDonalds  patron. But come twilight, I doth
don ye olde garb and drivith mine Prius down to the revelrous fair. Verily. 

           With so many people saying "ye" that way, it must have been something people actually said. Right? Hahaha nope. Well not technically. You see the Y at the beginning of "ye" shouldn't actually be a Y. It should be an Old English-- excuse me, Olde English -- letter called the thorn. 

Not to be mistaken for the chemical sign for lead.

           And another thing, it's pronounced "th." So it's "The Old Grenade Outlet Bargain Emporium", not "Ye Olde Grenade Outlet Bargain Emporium." So it begs the question, how did we get into the habit  of saying "Ye" wrongly? Well, as you may have guessed, it's all the German's fault. 

I google image searched Germany and this came up. Typical. 

          It all started when German typesetters were the only ones making letters. And they didn't have a thorn letter because they were, well, German. So they substituted the thorn in "ye" with a Y, because they looked similar in handwritten form. This was fine, because people at the time knew what it was supposed to be. It's like us understanding what "Ke$ha" means. 

"Nope, ze thorn iz to hard to cawrve." - Some American faking a German accent.