New letter in German . . .

[Morkonan]

My daughter Þinks we're all a bunch of nerds, but a Þorough understanding of English orÞographical practice demonstrates Þat we have a point . . .

Considering the body of collected esoteric knowledge represented by this online gathering, I believe we could easily come to a consensus that your daughter is, indeed, correct.

She should study nerdstuffs in school so she can get an official title that allows her to alert nerds when they're wrong about nerdstuffs.

[Tamina]

I am way more impressed that Þey already had a place for Þis letter in Þe unicode standard, as if Þey knew.

[red assassin]

I am way more impressed that Þey already had a place for Þis letter in Þe unicode standard, as if Þey knew.

Þ exists in modern Icelandic, so it's not at all surprising þat þere's a Unicode character for it. But Unicode has characters for all sorts of obscure historical alphabets as well. ᚦ, þe Anglo-Saxon rune from which þe letter descends, is in Unicode as well, along with þe rest of þe various common runic alphabets.

(Interesting aside: in Middle English, þe way þe letter þ was written decayed into someþing indistinguishable from a y, hence "ye olde" and so forþ for "þe old".)

[brucewarren]

I've a feeling there was another character that resembled either and an s or an f or maybe a combination of the two. I think it was taller than both but I don't think I ever found out what it was called.

[pjknibbs]

I've a feeling there was another character that resembled either and an s or an f or maybe a combination of the two. I think it was taller than both but I don't think I ever found out what it was called.

That was just the old Celtic "s". They used it instead of the modern s when it appeared anywhere other than the end of a word, but that practice died out centuries ago.

[jlehtone]

Because there is a discrepancy between graphemes (the letters you write) and phonemes (what you pronounce, expressed using the IPA=International Phonetic Alphabet) in English and many other modern languages.

Interestingly, a German once claimed that German language spoken exactly as it is written.

I do know that in Finnish the way to pronounce a character does not change regardless of the context (i.e. alone or within a word, any word). There are only couple exceptions.

[Usenko]

Part of the reason English is the way it is is the history of England. To whit, the fact that it was once the island that every major empire or group of people in the area used to conquer just to show everyone how tough they were.

Therefore it had a language that was constantly coming into direct contact with other languages. And eventually what would emerge was a syncretism of (often incompatible) tongues.

Not sure about the great vowel shift though, that's nuts. Why the heck did we do that?!

[red assassin]

I've a feeling there was another character that resembled either and an s or an f or maybe a combination of the two. I think it was taller than both but I don't think I ever found out what it was called.

That was just the old Celtic "s". They used it instead of the modern s when it appeared anywhere other than the end of a word, but that practice died out centuries ago.

Yeah, this is the long s. It's actually where the modern integral ſymbol comes from, but you don't really encounter it otherwiſe. Intereſtingly, my ſpellchecker actually recogniſes the long s as being equivalent to a ſtandard s character, though it doesn't seem to know the "not at the end of a word" rule.

[Tamina]

I've a feeling there was another character that resembled either and an s or an f or maybe a combination of the two. I think it was taller than both but I don't think I ever found out what it was called.

That was just the old Celtic "s". They used it instead of the modern s when it appeared anywhere other than the end of a word, but that practice died out centuries ago.

Yeah, this is the long s. It's actually where the modern integral ſymbol comes from, but you don't really encounter it otherwiſe. Intereſtingly, my ſpellchecker actually recogniſes the long s as being equivalent to a ſtandard s character, though it doesn't seem to know the "not at the end of a word" rule.

This is where the German letter "ß" originates from. Very similar in its usage.