Re: Scripts

On Friday, July 5, 2002, at 09:49 , Nik Taylor wrote:

> Joe wrote:
>>
>> Yeah, I miss þ and ð.  Especially þ, but at least you can still type
>> them.
>> (who would have thought, ancient symbols still being available on a
>> computer
>> 800 years after their abandonment)
>
> The Icelanders still use ð and, I think, þ.
Yes they do.

And þ survived in English right up till the advent of printing.  Abrigon
unjustly blames the French for the loss of the letter in English; in fact
it was the German fonts used by Chaucer & the early printers that hastened
its demise.  The used {y} as a substitute for þ - hence the mock archaic
"Ye
olde tea shoppe", which was not satisfactory - and the Norman {th} won out.

> Problem with þ is it looks
> a lot like "p", so that using it looks like "þornography" to use a
> friend of mine's joke.  :-)
In the old English version of the Latin alphabet, the symbol "wenn" also
looked horribly like {p} and {þ}.   IMHO the Norman French W was an
improvement.  But I agree þ and ð would be useful letters in English; but
then so would symbols for /S/ and /Z/ be useful as well as the affricate
/tS/ (we have {j} = /dZ/ already).

> Also, Macs show thorn as "fl" for some reason.
Mine doesn't - your þ is perfectly legible as 'thorn' (I hope it stays
the same when reposted).

Ray.

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