The point isn’t related to “th”, it’s related to the inconsistent pronunciation of “ough” and being 4 distinct vowels. Eth and thorn don’t fix that. And arguably, inconsistent vowel pronunciation is much more difficult to learn than the two pronunciations of “th”.

Tolc is a dude who doesn't understand the language and culture and uses AI to translate anything in the language of the people who live there. He's just mad no one buys his BS.

He's so angry lol

Lol. If you don't feel shame for your AI translation of real people then I don't know what to say. 井底之蛙 life you're living

As we would say, 不知所云

But you don't speak the language... Do you?

Lol. Ok. Not my fault if reading comprehension and clicking the links in the article is too much for you.

I mean... It says otherwise in the article lol

I disagree that these two letters would be much help for English learners. E.g., though, through, thought, tough. Adding thorn and eth wouldn't fix the bigger problem there.

Also curious what you mean by saying we don't even use voiced and unvoiced dental fricatives consistently. As far as I'm aware, I've never heard an accent use an unvoiced one for the word "the".

100%

I do think he has stress, but it's self-induced. He's clearly mentally unwell. Honestly, makes me think of that BoJack Horseman episode where you hear his inner monologue throughout the show and it's just things comments directed at himself like, "you piece of shit.", "You're so fat", etc.

Not an excuse at all for his actions, but I do really think that's what's going on. He hates himself. Needs constant validation. But no amount of validation is going to soothe his inner monologue. So he's spiraling while his stress continues to grow.

The 打 in 打火機 is more like hit in this context. Makes a bit more sense with the way older lighters required you to flick it. But 打 is also used in a ton of contexts haha.

The second character, 鵝, means goose. So 企鵝 is literally something like, "standing on tiptoes goose". But no one would look at it that closely, to everyone it's just a penguin.

"Threven" has a nice ring to it now that I think of it.