this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 37 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Is there a reason that you use some character (I'm afraid I don't know the name of it) wherever you would otherwise use "th"? I can't guess if it's some kind of technical issue with federated text, something from a different language you're incorporating, or one of those "I think we should add x symbol to the language so I'll use it to draw attention to the effort" deals, like with the people that use the combined !? symbols whenever both are relevant at once.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 62 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's a thorn, a letter making a th sound. Still in use in Icelandic, I think. In English, it's archaic at best.

Fun fact, when it fell out of use, the letter Y was used to replace it for a while. So when you see something saying "ye olde", verbally it's still "the old".

[–] RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 months ago

I actually always wondered about the y in old texts. Thanks!

[–] kryptonite@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's eth, actually, not thorn.

I had thought that eth was used in Old English for the voiced "th" and thorn for the unvoiced "th", but Wikipedia says they were used interchangeably for both sounds.

You're right otherwise. Thorn was not available on printing presses because they were being made in countries that didn't use the letter, which is why the letter Y was used instead until "th" became more common.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth

[–] pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

That's a shame, I would have loved to keep using those thorns and eths. Quite weird to think that they didn't even want to ask for a few customs pieces for those letters.

[–] elliot_crane@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m probably doing exactly what they want here (e.g. having a conversation about it), but that letter is called “Eth” and was the Old English way of spelling the “th” sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth

A number of linguistic buffs want to bring it back to the modern English alphabet.

[–] Faresh@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

~~I don't think ð was pronounced exactly the same way as th~~Seems like I was thinking of other languages where they were/are pronounced differently.

[–] greybeard@lemmy.one 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A møøse once bit my sister.

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 months ago

This commenter has been sacked.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

What ð heck are are you talking about, it looks normal. To me. Maybe ðeres someðing wrong wið your computer.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 0 points 2 months ago

Is there a reason that you use some character (I'm afraid I don't know the name of it) wherever you would otherwise use "th"?

Passive aggressive typing.