Reasons You Know You're Me, #786:

[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!

Comments

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

My understanding was that we lost Thorn/Thurs at the time of the introduction of the printing press in England (circa 1500). I only half remember the story ... something about what's-his-name in England (you know, the one who got executed for printing and English-language bible, Thomas someone) not bringing a Thurs block from the Continent, and substituting Y instead. Which is why we have Ye Olde Tavern; Es were cheaper then, and the Y was masquerading as a Thurs.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Drat.

You're right; I'd forgotten until reminded. Thanks for reminding me!

-- Lorrie

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

That's perfectly all right. I'm a bit of a giddy geek about language, and I still think it's a shame that we don't use at least Thurs if not Eth as well. They'd just lend our alphabet a little style!

[arcturus.deadjournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Hmm. You inspire me. I've already convinced my betrothed that if our first child is a daughter we should name her Elfriede. This conversation is inspiring me to spell it Elfrieðe or Elfrieða or maybe Ælfrieða. Well, maybe that last one is a bit much. Poor child. She would already have an unusual name, and having letters that her kindergarten teacher wouldn't recognize might be cruel.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I consider my desire to give a child some incredibly obscure name one of the less-pressing, but still significant, reasons I Should Not Breed.

8-)

-- Lorrie, who can't get people to spell that right after knowing them for years, so...

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit of a giddy geek about language

That's all right, so am I (http://users.aber.ac.uk/auj/hotchpotch/90.html)!

They'd just lend our alphabet a little style!

Not only that, but once we'd brought thorn and eth around, maybe we could revive use of the long-lamented second-person singular/familiar.

Gendered nouns we can probably leave to the side of the road, but I want my thees and thous!

-- Lorrie

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

That would be pretty cool. Not to mention I'd no longer feel that shop attendants were being overly familiar.

We have a juice bar here called Boost that has in its promotional material "To be polite enough to call you by your first name."
Well, in MY version of politeness, that's actually rather forward! I mean, we haven't been introduced!

Bah, I say.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Well, in MY version of politeness, that's actually rather forward! I mean, we haven't been introduced!

Hear, hear!

-- Lorrie