27th letter of the alphabet? an a and e joined together? What was it?

[rock-n-roll]

it was taken out years ago, but what was it and what was it called? where did it come in order of the alphabet?

[nickmo]

http://alphabet.en.ogarnij.net/en/%C3%86 describes eveything about phonetics, ligatures, vowels etc with tons of links. The letter is still in existance of course and is an ash in case you wondered.

[sir.prize]

The characters � and � In Modern English, and particularly as a printing term, are usually referred to as ligatures or diphthongs.

[Quizmonkey]

Well, it was pronounced 'ash' but actually spelt 'aesc'.

[Quizmonster]

TOED happily lists the ligature, �, with the spelling 'ash'. 'Aesc' was, after all, Old English for 'ash' as in tree anyway.

[nickmo]

And if we go further back, it comes from the corresponding Anglo-Saxon Futhorc rune, related to the Elder Futhark rune '�ss', this derived from the even earlier useage in Greek words having the diphthong αι (alpha iota).

The ash is also found with different uses in Faroese, Icelandic, Finnish etc - so maybe that is a clue to the Old English heritage of the name of the tree.

Aren't letters fun....?