Note 8 — Chapter I

This prefixed y is a mark of a very illiterate or antique form of the dialect. I have known piece yarthen used for "a piece of earthen" [ware], the preposition getting lost in the sound of the y. I leave it to etymologists to determine its relation to that ancient prefix that differentiates earn in one sense from yearn. But the article before a vowel may account for it if we consider it a corruption. "The earth" pronounced in a drawling way will produce the yearth. In the New York Documents is a letter from one Barnard Hodges, a settler in Delaware in the days of Governor Andros, whose spelling indicates a free use of the parasitic y. He writes "yunless," "yeunder" (under), "yunderstanding," "yeundertake," and "yeouffeis" (office).