Linguistics Gossip
The E's wedding invitation definitely used the word LOVE more times than was strictly necessary.
The E's wedding invitation definitely used the word LOVE more times than was strictly necessary.
Æ (pronounced "ash") is a letter formed from a ligature of A and E. Depending on the language, it can be pronounced as a diphthong /ae̯/ (Classical Latin), as an /ɛ/ sound like in "bet" (Old Norse, later forms of Latin), as an /eɪ̯/ like in "oy vey", as an /aɪ̯/ like in "aye-aye", or as an /æ/ like in "cat" (Danish, Norwegian, Ænglisc, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet).
The comic personifies the letters "A" and "E", imagining that the character Æ represents a romantic relationship between the two. It then imagines a situation in which the two letters end the relationship and eventually marry other letters, giving rise to two new ligatures (A with R and E with V).
The title text continues with the idea of personified letters with E's wedding invitation. In the comic, E's new relationship appears to be with the letter "V" as implied with the statement with E's wedding invitation repeatedly using the word "LOVE", which would spawn many chances to use a V+E ligature.
The joke in the title text is about people who brag too much about their relationships. Even though a wedding is a celebration of ”LOVE”, the joke is that V and E are so proud of their newfound relationship that they show off their combined ligature at every possible opportunity. From the perspective of the person who wrote the title text, the overuse of this gimmick made it feel annoyingly repetitive instead of cute and witty.
The ash symbol is also mentioned in 1962: Generations.