Ignore þis comment, I'll delete it in a minute to preserve þe aesthetic of þis little þread lol
Uh ok if I write a comment and delete it too soon þen it doesn't leave behind a "Comment deleted by user". I have to be patient for þis stupid joke, þis sucks 😂
Was it 2 millennium after the rest of the world discovered you could prevent disease by not eating from the hand you wipe shit with? It took them a while to even figure that out.
Þe reason þ is so attractive to me is because of its history in the English language. I don't want a Greek letter tossed into þe latin alphabet we use (ironic, I know considering where we get þe word alphabet). Þ isn't Latin, of course, but it has historical precedent in þe English language
Obviously it was to a degree (I'm not sure the entire Latin alphabet was, there are Latin letters that bear no resemblance to Greek letters), but you won't see many people advocating for changing D to delta and O to omega.
When we are specifically talking about using a different letter in English to represent "th," þ has the most significant historical precedent, followed by ð (but I hate ð). If people want to start writing English in the Greek alphabet, more power to them, have fun! This just isn't the right sub for that.
The ancient Greek alphabet looked like runes (for the same reason Turkish runes looked like that; those shapes are easy to carve into wood) and had a few variants due to local dialect things, like whether they had a w sound, h sound, or whether they used x for ks or aspirated k. Eastern Greeks, who had a w sound, founded a colony in Italy and traded with the Etruscans, who had no voiced sounds and a lot of consonant clusters. Then the Romans adopted their script for themselves, but didn't have the aspirated sounds and had voiced sounds again, so they used gamma for most k sounds and later invented a new gamma with a mark on it for g.
Not long after, the Germanic tribes adopted the Etruscan alphabet (probably through Rhaetic people in the Tyrol region) as well, leading to runes and thorn.
Later Western Greek became the dominant set of dialects for writing, so they stopped using waw or digamma except as a number, the ancestor of our f. Later their voiced stops and voiceless aspirated stops became fricatives.
Then in like the 1300s the humanist style developed based on the ornamental style ancient Romans and Greeks used, and Greek and Latin letters as we read them today usually were standardized. Later Western Europeans would invent conventions for v, w, vs u and i vs j.
Every Latin letter comes from (East) Greek: alpha, beta, camma, delta, epsilon, faf, gamma, heta, iota, jota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, omicron, pi, qoppa, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, vpsilon, wpsilon, xi, ypsilon, zeta.
Probably the same is true of Germanic, basically every letter can be understood as taking the Rhaetic and Etruscan alphabets and adapting them together, using Etruscan like variants sort like how we took middle and initial u and split them into v and u.
In all likelihood Thorn is the Rhaetic style of writing Theta. Over tens of thousands of hands over a few centuries the middle bar turned into a was vertical mark and eventually incorporated into the side kind of like Ю.
So if theta and thorn are basically humanized variants of the same letter using both might serve a similar purpose to i vs j or u v w f and y all being ultimately the same Phoenician letter. Thorn could represent Germanic th and theta Greek th, which might be useful, because Greek theta is invariably voiceless while Thorn obeys a Verner distribution.
Why aren't we taking hebrew or arabic letters þen? Þe greek alphabet was based on þe Phoenician alphabet and latin was based on greek while þese alphabets evolved from Phoenician, so it should be no problem
actually, waznt ðat first cursed imported printing press from Jermanny?
at ðe very least ðey could've held off on ðe sound merjer til after ðe printing press was developped so ðat it'd be on ðer (ðey wer a bigger importanter county so hopefully it'd've had Þ activly added to ðe type set) /j
Þeir writing was fully consistent. Þere's no point in arguing which way is better, you only correct someone if þey accidentally forget þeir internal rules
I like it a lot, but would ever write using þe Latin alphabet using it. I'll even admit I'm a bit salty about þe IPA using it instead or þ (þough I'd also be content with þe voiced dental fricative being represented by δ, so I really just want it to be consistent)
It doesn't really fit very well wiþ þe modern Latin script.
It shouldn't even be in actual Latinic alphabets. Some people will do anyþing to avoid using Þorn, and just because þey see it as "old-fashioned" no less.
I studied IPA getting my linguistics degree and would like to see it become more commonly known. I've studied koine and Modern Greek, so I'm familiar with θ there too.
For me, like most Greek letters I'm aware of, it's for maθs and þat's it.
I will say, it is more distinct þan þorn, because to my eyes, þorn is way to similar to p (at least in most typefaces). Þeta to me is far more distinct compared to it's most similar letter: O. But I still prefer þorn.
It’s cool, but þorn and eð work better for English, I þink. Þeta works in Greek and ðe IPA, but eð and þorn were used in English previously, and have strong ties to oðer Germanic languages.
Indigenous languages would disagree with you lol. Halkomelem, Squamish, Shuswap, etc… are you telling me “t̓ᶿéʔt̓ᶿθe ʔəɬ θə t̓ᶿə θθéʔəɬ t̓ᶿə θá:ɬθet” isn’t some badass orthography?
It’s the Halkomelem sentence for “the earth is rock solid”. It word for word translates to “it is strong, that the earth the rock”. Central Salishan languages use Theta all the time!
i do wonder why scribes boððerred to learn ðis one particular runic letter for a sound Roman didnt hav a letter for as opose to uzing a Greek letter like wiþ Y/ᚣ or ᛡ/ȝ or uzing (from ðe start) a digraf like ᛝ/ng
i þink its because for Y, & NG (yogh is a middle english letter, i þink it evolved from G, which made þe /j/ sound in OE), þere was already an established way to write þose sounds in þe Latin alphabet. /θ/ is totally someþing else, so þe english scribes took a glyph from þeir language's native script & adapted it to Latin, Greek was a more distant script to þem þan runes at þe time
but Lattin doesnt hav NG eiððer (i should note ðat Y made a ü sound at the time /y/ wich Lattin also didnnt hav), also i þought ðat ðe scribes in question were prosteletizers ðus why ðey uzed ðe Lattin alfabet instead ov ðe Runic alfabet (runic waz forane to ðem) in ðe first plase so wouldnt Greek hav been less forane to ðem cuz it waz ðe main languaj ov Cristiannitty at ðe time? (oððer languajes wich had ðeze sounds also uzed Runic til around ðat time)
Because þe Runes were more readily available I suppose. Plus þe fact þat English's dental fricative had allophonic voicing might've played a role in þem just using someþing þat had already worked for þem in þe past.
I like Greek language and alphabet for its logical use of letters as numerals. Theta is also 9. But it originally came from the Semitic language, Phoenician. In that alphabet it was the letter for tét 𐤈, which would come from the word coiled, or bundle, or container. It’s very interesting that the Greeks did not use this letter for centuries, but is now standard.
it solves the "thorn looks too much like p/b" problem, but at what cost?
In Greek, it wasn't [θ] but [tʰ] — it's [θ] in the IPA and look, I love the IPA, but if we're gonna start that why don't we just always write in transcription?
I'm not against it (it's not like we always use the same sounds for borrowed Greek letters anyway), I just don't know what the argument for it would be aside from not looking too much like other letters
It has its place in Greek and IPA, but that’s it
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woah, iz ðis sub popular enuff to atract hater trollz now! ðat's a achievment
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I can't say it's a hobby that I'd enjoy but more power to you I guess
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þe amount of misunderstandings in þis comment is crazy
Ignore þis comment, I'll delete it in a minute to preserve þe aesthetic of þis little þread lol
Uh ok if I write a comment and delete it too soon þen it doesn't leave behind a "Comment deleted by user". I have to be patient for þis stupid joke, þis sucks 😂
cuz peopel don't hav hobies involving an autistic special intrest of language (PS we don't REALLY expect ðis to go anywhere)
uhm wait till you learn about elder futhark and the origin of the word soap?
Was it 2 millennium after the rest of the world discovered you could prevent disease by not eating from the hand you wipe shit with? It took them a while to even figure that out.
Stop
Stahp.
Þe reason þ is so attractive to me is because of its history in the English language. I don't want a Greek letter tossed into þe latin alphabet we use (ironic, I know considering where we get þe word alphabet). Þ isn't Latin, of course, but it has historical precedent in þe English language
"a greek letter tossed in þe latin alphabet" said as if þe entire latin alphabet wasn't based on the greek alphabet
Obviously it was to a degree (I'm not sure the entire Latin alphabet was, there are Latin letters that bear no resemblance to Greek letters), but you won't see many people advocating for changing D to delta and O to omega.
When we are specifically talking about using a different letter in English to represent "th," þ has the most significant historical precedent, followed by ð (but I hate ð). If people want to start writing English in the Greek alphabet, more power to them, have fun! This just isn't the right sub for that.
The ancient Greek alphabet looked like runes (for the same reason Turkish runes looked like that; those shapes are easy to carve into wood) and had a few variants due to local dialect things, like whether they had a w sound, h sound, or whether they used x for ks or aspirated k. Eastern Greeks, who had a w sound, founded a colony in Italy and traded with the Etruscans, who had no voiced sounds and a lot of consonant clusters. Then the Romans adopted their script for themselves, but didn't have the aspirated sounds and had voiced sounds again, so they used gamma for most k sounds and later invented a new gamma with a mark on it for g.
Not long after, the Germanic tribes adopted the Etruscan alphabet (probably through Rhaetic people in the Tyrol region) as well, leading to runes and thorn.
Later Western Greek became the dominant set of dialects for writing, so they stopped using waw or digamma except as a number, the ancestor of our f. Later their voiced stops and voiceless aspirated stops became fricatives.
Then in like the 1300s the humanist style developed based on the ornamental style ancient Romans and Greeks used, and Greek and Latin letters as we read them today usually were standardized. Later Western Europeans would invent conventions for v, w, vs u and i vs j.
Every Latin letter comes from (East) Greek: alpha, beta, camma, delta, epsilon, faf, gamma, heta, iota, jota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, omicron, pi, qoppa, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, vpsilon, wpsilon, xi, ypsilon, zeta.
Probably the same is true of Germanic, basically every letter can be understood as taking the Rhaetic and Etruscan alphabets and adapting them together, using Etruscan like variants sort like how we took middle and initial u and split them into v and u.
In all likelihood Thorn is the Rhaetic style of writing Theta. Over tens of thousands of hands over a few centuries the middle bar turned into a was vertical mark and eventually incorporated into the side kind of like Ю.
So if theta and thorn are basically humanized variants of the same letter using both might serve a similar purpose to i vs j or u v w f and y all being ultimately the same Phoenician letter. Thorn could represent Germanic th and theta Greek th, which might be useful, because Greek theta is invariably voiceless while Thorn obeys a Verner distribution.
That is a great history lesson, thank you!
I am still of the opinion that we should only be using þ for the "th" sound, voiced or not, but I definitely learned a lot from your comment!
I wοuld fully suppοrt changing O tο οmicrοn. Þis wοuld make such a mess
If οnly sοmeοne bοþered dοing it. Οne can οnly hοpe
Why aren't we taking hebrew or arabic letters þen? Þe greek alphabet was based on þe Phoenician alphabet and latin was based on greek while þese alphabets evolved from Phoenician, so it should be no problem
Þe Etruscan mediation of þe Western Greek alphabet is a fascinating fulcrum on which our writing conventions are based :)
It's a great letter. For Greek.
Why does Greek get a letter for it and we don't? Unfair.
Ɣ Roȝməns. Blaȝm ɣ Roȝməns.
actually, waznt ðat first cursed imported printing press from Jermanny?
at ðe very least ðey could've held off on ðe sound merjer til after ðe printing press was developped so ðat it'd be on ðer (ðey wer a bigger importanter county so hopefully it'd've had Þ activly added to ðe type set) /j
Jermanny iz so krst...
I use θ all the time for maþematics. 3/10, looks too much like a 0
Basically ðe equivalent of capital Ð. Fake mustaches ain’t gonna fool us, D 🤨
*þe
Þeir writing was fully consistent. Þere's no point in arguing which way is better, you only correct someone if þey accidentally forget þeir internal rules
Pretentious.
It’s cool, but it’s not really a Latin or an English letter
Ιτ ιζ κούλ
If they'll make a Latin equivalent just like , then it'll be better!
Unicode is great
PNGs as well, if needed
That is what happens if an E and an O have a baby
Wait, it’s not a girdled zero?
It's Greek Þ
I know, we’re talking about how we perceive θ in comparison to oðer common symbols. Ðey see O wiþ E’s middle bar, I just see 0 wiþ a belt on :)
Good for þe IPA, not necessary for English.
Nice, but not what we need in English.
It's fine in the IPA, but English isn't the IPA
I like it a lot, but would ever write using þe Latin alphabet using it. I'll even admit I'm a bit salty about þe IPA using it instead or þ (þough I'd also be content with þe voiced dental fricative being represented by δ, so I really just want it to be consistent)
It doesn't really fit very well wiþ þe modern Latin script.
It shouldn't even be in actual Latinic alphabets. Some people will do anyþing to avoid using Þorn, and just because þey see it as "old-fashioned" no less.
It’s for Greek
I studied IPA getting my linguistics degree and would like to see it become more commonly known. I've studied koine and Modern Greek, so I'm familiar with θ there too.
It serves þe same purpose as Þ (except for being only for þe unvoiced sound), but is uglier.
For me, like most Greek letters I'm aware of, it's for maθs and þat's it.
I will say, it is more distinct þan þorn, because to my eyes, þorn is way to similar to p (at least in most typefaces). Þeta to me is far more distinct compared to it's most similar letter: O. But I still prefer þorn.
It’s cool, but þorn and eð work better for English, I þink. Þeta works in Greek and ðe IPA, but eð and þorn were used in English previously, and have strong ties to oðer Germanic languages.
It's perfect… for þe IPA and Greek.
Great letter, glad þe Greek kept it, but it's still Greek.
Replacing þ wiþ it is like writing English like ثis.
It’s okay but I wouldn’t use it in writing
I like it
i ϑink ϑ fits better
Idk that one, where is it from?
it's a varient of the said Greek letter ϑera
Should always be written that way
fr, I think the varient ϑ works for medial and final forms too lol
It should ONLY be used to transcribe þe sound in þe IPA. Nowhere else.
Indigenous languages would disagree with you lol. Halkomelem, Squamish, Shuswap, etc… are you telling me “t̓ᶿéʔt̓ᶿθe ʔəɬ θə t̓ᶿə θθéʔəɬ t̓ᶿə θá:ɬθet” isn’t some badass orthography?
I mean it’s cool, but what þe hell is þat?
It’s the Halkomelem sentence for “the earth is rock solid”. It word for word translates to “it is strong, that the earth the rock”. Central Salishan languages use Theta all the time!
It’s goated. You’re telling me Halkomelem’s “θá:θt̓ᶿexʷ t̓ᶿə θéʔt̓ᶿeθ ʔiʔ θéːy̓θəq” would look better with a thorn?
YES
The lower case detached θ is arguably one of the ugliest letters ever
Good
i do wonder why scribes boððerred to learn ðis one particular runic letter for a sound Roman didnt hav a letter for as opose to uzing a Greek letter like wiþ Y/ᚣ or ᛡ/ȝ or uzing (from ðe start) a digraf like ᛝ/ng
i þink its because for Y, & NG (yogh is a middle english letter, i þink it evolved from G, which made þe /j/ sound in OE), þere was already an established way to write þose sounds in þe Latin alphabet. /θ/ is totally someþing else, so þe english scribes took a glyph from þeir language's native script & adapted it to Latin, Greek was a more distant script to þem þan runes at þe time
but Lattin doesnt hav NG eiððer (i should note ðat Y made a ü sound at the time /y/ wich Lattin also didnnt hav), also i þought ðat ðe scribes in question were prosteletizers ðus why ðey uzed ðe Lattin alfabet instead ov ðe Runic alfabet (runic waz forane to ðem) in ðe first plase so wouldnt Greek hav been less forane to ðem cuz it waz ðe main languaj ov Cristiannitty at ðe time? (oððer languajes wich had ðeze sounds also uzed Runic til around ðat time)
I apolojize for my mix up on ðe orijjins ov yogh
Because þe Runes were more readily available I suppose. Plus þe fact þat English's dental fricative had allophonic voicing might've played a role in þem just using someþing þat had already worked for þem in þe past.
I like Greek language and alphabet for its logical use of letters as numerals. Theta is also 9. But it originally came from the Semitic language, Phoenician. In that alphabet it was the letter for tét 𐤈, which would come from the word coiled, or bundle, or container. It’s very interesting that the Greeks did not use this letter for centuries, but is now standard.
if anyone says this letter is something other than a TH sound i will metaphysically hunt them down
I am honestly conflicted whenever it comes to Theta, Thorn, and Eth
10/10
I like it better than the letters that folks here are using.
ugly
It ſucks
Wyd'v beȝn graȝt, but it's 2.8 məleneə tyȝh laȝt
Not looks like good for handwriting. Even O and Q are really hard to write. That would be a bigger problem, and as the most common letter in English.
To be honest, as cool as Þorn is, sadly it's not originally from the Proto-Sinaitic script, whereas Θeta was.
it solves the "thorn looks too much like p/b" problem, but at what cost? In Greek, it wasn't [θ] but [tʰ] — it's [θ] in the IPA and look, I love the IPA, but if we're gonna start that why don't we just always write in transcription? I'm not against it (it's not like we always use the same sounds for borrowed Greek letters anyway), I just don't know what the argument for it would be aside from not looking too much like other letters
it's [θ] in modern Greek too
It looks as similar to O as þ does to b or p.
In caps, sure, but I don't think most people would get confused between o and θ, especially in the fonts where it's open on the side.