Why are people using the "þ" character?

Comments

• mrslt@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t know, but I downvote every improper use of the thorn.

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  • sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What is an improper use?

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    • mrslt@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The thorn (Þ) represents the voiceless dental fricative (think the “th” sound in “think”, “thick”, “thistle”, and so on).

      To represent the voiced dental fricative, (think the “th” sound in “these”, “there”, “weather”, and so on) use the eth (Ð), not the thorn.

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• gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I get that it’s one person, I get that it’s an earnest but unsuccessful attempt to counter-AI, but also isn’t it kinda cool to advance the human language in a personal way. I’m surprised Lemmy is so upset by it, maybe that’s just the boomer mentality or maybe it’s the mentality of hating change, but like everyone can admit the English language is obtuse and hard to master and that’s partially because we have less letters than we have phonetic sounds (look at phonetic, it’s actually fOnetik). Couldn’t we use some advancement in that area of our life? And wouldn’t a grass roots movement on Lemmy symbolize the kind of simple, systemic changes we need more of this world? I mean isnt it kinda punk to improve the world in whatever way you can?

  Idk, just reading the comments in this thread people seem more antagonistic than I would expect. It’s not like we’re/he’s jumping to the shavian alphabet. It’s just a single change that anyone can immediately solve after reading a sentence or two with it present.

  Point is I like it. And I have no idea how to type it on my phone lol

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  • AtariDump@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No. Fuck that guy.

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    • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Why? Is there a history there or is this a you thing?

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  • naught@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    i can just hold ‘t’ on my phone keyboard

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    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      5

      :(

      Damn you Gboard

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    • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Dang, I just get a 5. Lol. I should look for new keyboards - I think that’s a thing phones can do? Which do you have? Is that a thing a person knows or can find out lol? Never once thought about my keyboard on my phone. Really big blind spot I got here I’m realizing.

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• Zier@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  You will be shocked to learn that "þ" is actually a letter used in modern Icelandic. It's not just an old letter.
  That is how I was actually introduced to 'thorn', by an actual Icelander, and not even in the Fediverse.

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  • Havatra@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yupp! I probably should’ve specified that I’ve seen the use in English, but it is indeed still in use in Icelandic! It stems from Old Norse, as a rune, iirc. Icelandic is the closest we have to Old Norse in today’s used languages.

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• edgemaster72@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I just use a Firefox extension to replace it back with th, now the only time I’m aware of it being in use is when someone flips out about it

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  • AEsheron@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Đere’s no escaping us, broðer.

    Once upon a time, English both used thorn, the character you are replacing, and eth, the one I just used here. One was used for words like that, this, there, and the other was used for thin, thank, and throw. That didn’t last very long, linguistically speaking. The quickly became interchangeable, and thorn rapidly became the most popular one. But I think if people want to bring it back, we should bring them both back. And while we’re at it, we should bringing back the “four form system.” IE, we used to have two different ways to say yes or no, those two words were specifically used to answer a negative question. Current English leaves negative questions impossible to answer with a single word wothout ambiguity. “Will they not go?” cannot be answered with only yes or no in Modern English’s 2 form system. But with a 4 form system, we had yea and nay for general usage. “Will they go?” Yea means they will, nay means they won’t. But with the negative form of the question, “Will they not go?” Yes means they will, and no means they won’t. Over time yea and nay were both dropped and yes and no became universal.

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    • percent@infosec.pub ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Đere’s no escaping us, broðer.

      Here’s gemma3:12b-it-qat, the tiniest LLM I run on my home server.

      Image

      Though, any LLM is overkill for this, of course. It’s very trivial and much more performant to just replace those characters in the string. Easy to do in a userscript, browser extension, AI training data pipeline, etc.

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  • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    please, share a screenshot shot.

    I wonder if it looks like people complaining about nothing and hope it’s funny

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    • edgemaster72@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      From yesterday

      Image

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• xpey@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  TIL about the AI poisoning thingy.

  I used to be in r/bringbackthorn so I just thought it was a fun thing lol

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  • Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I would subscribe to þat comm

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• shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This whole thread is a test for who can read easily and who can’t. Takes me a beat and my brain runs with it. And I ain’t all that bright.

  Anyway, I enjoy their comments, always relevant and often insightful.

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• captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Idk but I like it. We never should’ve let the Dutch take it from us (they’re who the English got early typewriters from)

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• ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Finally, new letter to name a language after!

  What kind of features should I add to þlang (or Thornlang)?

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• falcunculus@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Not everyone does it, and it’s ahistorical, but I think it’d a cool way to distinguish between voiced (ð) and unvoiced (þ) dental fricatives. Why not have two different symbols for these? Eg: ðe þin faðer þinks about ðis (the thin father thinks about this).

  It’s not necessarily hard to type, on my computer it just happens to be AltGr+d (ð) and AltGr+t (þ).

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  • jimmux@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That at least serves a purpose. Or we could use the Shavian characters and slowly transition to a phonetic writing system.

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    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Holy shit that is awesome!

      I did not know that was a thing.

      Woo conlangs! Woo con… scripts?

      English sure is funny sometimes.

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• MagisterSieran@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  They’re being extra.

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• Hedup@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  If English didn’t use Latin alphabet it would make much more sense. One small step at a time.

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  • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    þ is part of Old English. It came with the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians during the great Germanic migration. It was present in Middle English, but had already started being replaced by “th-” and “y-” like in “Ye Olde Tavern”. Obviously, “th-” won out, but it was the printing press that removed þ from the English language.

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    • Hedup@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      What I was alluding to, was that it would be nice if English went back to being phonetic language with consistent spelling that reflects what actually is being said.

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    • Dozzi92@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yeah, if someone comes on here speaking olde English, we can chastise them as well. I remember having to read Shakespeare in high school and being like “the fuck is this nonsense.” It’s wonderful in context. This is a message board where we’re trying to convey ideas (generally stupid ideas), so it makes sense to stick to the guidelines.

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• matelt@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I’ve seen one of their comments, I thought it was a fun novelty. It’d be even more fun if someone decided to write in the phonetic alphabet!

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• daggermoon@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Is that old english?

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  • AEsheron@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Was used all the way up to modern English. It was one of several characters that just got dropped because they wanted to use fewer when the printing press was adapted for English. Back then it was kind of the wild west for spelling, especially when printing words that used those characters. For example, sometimes they would just replace the character with a not often used one that was obviously a stand-in from context because it just didn’t fit naturally, in this case before “th” became the standard replacement, “y” was often used. One of the most commonly used examples that most people don’t realize is “ye,” as in “ye olde pub,” etc. While “ye,” pronounced as it is spelled, was used as a less formal “you,” “ye” in this context was understood to be pronounced as “the.”

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  • chilicheeselies@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Ive seen it in icelandic

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    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yep, iirc, Icelandic is the only language that still uses it as a standard letter.

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• Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Well, the Thorn character is the one that the English language transcribes with “th”. I see no problem with that.

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• njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Don’t worry about it.

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