lwood: (elder futhark)
lwood ([personal profile] lwood) wrote2007-01-16 09:02 am

Reasons You Know You're Me, #786:

(a non-ongoing, non-consecutively numbered series, nicked proudly from [livejournal.com profile] 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!
ext_12944: (anachronism)

[identity profile] delirieuse.livejournal.com 2007-02-01 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] lwood.livejournal.com 2007-02-01 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, in MY version of politeness, that's actually rather forward! I mean, we haven't been introduced!

Hear, hear!

-- Lorrie