A different “e”, which we still use today, was recited, at least, by Anglo-Saxon children. In Portugal the story would have been different…
The Latin alphabet we use has, for centuries, had a last letter other than ‘Z’.
Long before being just a graphic element in brands like “Ben & Jerry’s” or “H&M”, the symbol “&”known as “ampersand”, was taught in schools as an integral part of the alphabet.
The origin dates back to ancient Rome, which brought us the alphabet we use today, formed from even more ancient alphabets — the Greek and, even before that, the Phoenician.
In Latin, the word for “and” is “et”. With intensive use in manuscripts, scribes began to write the “e” and “t” more and more together, until the two characters merged into a single graphic ligature: &. The symbol crossed centuries and entered the first versions of the English alphabet.
One of the oldest known records of an alphabet in English, described by the monk Byrhtferth more than a thousand years ago, included the 23 original Latin letters and added several other signs, including the ampersand, normally placed at the end, after the Z, says . Throughout the evolution of English, many letters and symbols from the so-called “Old English” fell into disuse, but & remained until the 19th century.
At this time, instead of simply ending in “X, Y, Z,” children were taught to recite “…X, Y, Z, &.”
Those who spoke English did not read it as “ampersand” (the current name). The symbol was pronounced as “and, per se, and” — an expression that can be translated as “and, by itself, and”. The formula “by itself” was used in classes whenever a letter could function, by itself, as a whole word, such as “A” or “I”.
Over time, the oral repetition of “and per se and” ended up being phonetically condensed into the word “ampersand”, which became the name of the symbol in the English language.
It is not known for certain when or why the ampersand stopped being taught as a letter of the alphabet.
Em Portugalthe “ampersand” (&) has been part of Portuguese writing practice for centuries. In ancient texts, manuscripts and printed, & appears as a common abbreviation for “et” in Latin texts and “e” in Portuguese texts. But it was not consecrated as a lyric in the modern norm, contrary to how it was seen in the Anglo-Saxon world in which it was recited as such.
In all versions of the Portuguese alphabet, the “&” does not appear. The Priberam dictionary, for example, defines the ampersand as a “graphic sign used to replace the conjunction eparticularly in commercial names.” Ciberdúvidas cites the Houaiss Dictionary and classifies it again as a graphic sign that replaces the conjunction and, used mainly in commercial names and in bibliographical references
