lwood

(a non-ongoing, non-consecutively numbered series, nicked proudly from camwyn)

While on the several sundry shuttles that get me to the Mad Scientists' Home, I espy one of many signs promoting the new Third Street Light Rail, which will be known as the "T" for "Third".

"But Third doesn't start with a 'T', it starts with a Þ!"^*

Imagine, if you will, a City by the Bay spreckled with Þ's--yes, gentles, San Francisco would be sticking its tongue out at you. Neener!

But no, instead we flush several centuries of West Norse and Anglo-Saxon typography right down the drain and settle on T.

I blame the Normans. Silly Normans...

-- Lorrie 8-Þ

^* - Note for the Orthographically Challenged: Þ, and its lowercase partner in crime þ is a character known as "thorn" or "thurs" (giant/Jotun/etc), depending on which rune poem you're citing--in HTML, the Anglo-Saxon 'thorn' wins out...for a letter only in modern use in Icelandic, go figure. It may represent either of the two phonemes that in Modern English are relegated to the low-rent dyad^† 'th': the voiceless interdental fricative demonstrated above (third), or the voiced dental fricative of the 'th' in 'the'. In Icelandic, it's only for the voiceless version; the voiced gets the also stylish, also underused eth, spelled Ð and ð.

^†‡ - Dyad. It means pair, for when those times "pair" is insufficiently snooty. Don't blame me, blame Edred Thorsson.

^‡ - My footnotes can so have footnotes of their own! See!

doc_beowulf? anthony_arndt? lilmissnever? Any translations on the probably-Russian there?

[Edited to Add:] dr_beowulf has come through with the goods. Roughly translated, "Friendship is friendship, but business is business." See his comment for, well, commentary.

Courtesty of utu_eros with e_falki as an intermediary, I bring you yet another modern interpretation of the Oskerei Russian commentary on the commercialisation of Christmas...

( Don't click here if easily offended by Santa-targeted violence... )

-- Lorrie