the second guy is just bein an aßhole
IIRC, the word translated as ‘carpenter’ in most versions of the bible more accurately translates as ‘home builder.’ In the Middle East two thousand years ago, that would have absolutely meant masonry. Jesus would have been a bear, not a twink.
Yup, still annoying.
if it keeps going, it will eventually become invisible and then it’ll be normal
things can be normal and annoying
to the first point, maybe he wasn’t a good carpenter because he was a twink. to the second point, can i get an amen?
Paging that one lemming (San, or something like that I believe) that always uses the thorn in their comments, if it weren’t for them, I never would’ve had a chance at understanding this.
Still really annoying though, ngl.
I tracked them down and they’re on piefed now and display names and such are odd over there, let me try tagging them.
I dodn’t intentionally use thorn on my midwest.social account - I only started doing it when I created a piefed account as an experiment, and anytime I use it on Midwest it’s by accident - habit.
Whimsic𐑀l ch𐑀r𐑀cters like þ𐑀t 𐑀re wh𐑀t m𐑀ke Lemmy, Lemmy.
One day Lemmy will learn about the multiocular ‘o’.
Be nꙮt afraid
Don’t tell me what to do
Skill issue. Just learn to read English and it’ll be fine.
yeah, we did, which is the reason it’s annoying to see people use letters that were last used hundreds of years ago
Lär dig ett språk som inte är en soppa av motstridiga regler
Skill issue, nauč sa Slovensky a budeš rozumieť aj tomuto.
I’m from Iceland and we have these letters and I think it does make some sense. English spelling is not very good and the alphabet needs some additions and simplification. These are happening today but very slowly most notably in American English but I’d like to see some development.
Þorn is a great letter, I þink it makes sense as a replacement for th like it was historically used. Adding in þe ð is overkill in my opinion since it’s very þese sounds are already represented wiþ þe þorn.
You can still see it in “Ye old whatever” where þe Y is actually a Þ after a lot of iterations. It was always pronounced as a “th” sound.
The internet is for Þorn!
;-Þ
I fiuly agree. In fact, I have a multi-step suggestion:
In Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped to be replased either by “k” or “s”, and likewise “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet.
The only kase in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish “y” replasing it with “i” and iear 4 might fiks the “g/j” anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c”, “y” and “x” – bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez – tu riplais “ch”, “sh”, and “th” rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Slow your roll, Twain
sh → c
ch → tc
kh → x
y and u have their own unqiue sounds associated with them, even if those are not used in English.
By chance, have you ever read the novel Ella Minnow Pea? I feel like you might enjoy it if you haven’t.
> Looks inside
> Unreadable gibberish
I love it.
þese sounds are already represented wiþ þe þorn
Agreed, English orthography doesn’t match pronunciation very well, but what’s the point of changing th to þ if it doesn’t improve that situation? In this phrase, the thorn represents two different phonemes: While terminal th may be pronounced as þ (voiceless) or ð (voiced) depending on the English dialect, for example, ðe would be a different word than þe. Adding a new letter to the alphabet just to replace a perfectly-serviceable digraph would just add another letter to the alphabet.
If we’re gonna bother, I’d say sort out the c / k / ch situation instead.
100% agree, the c, k, s, ch situation is horrible in English when there are plenty of examples of doing it properly all across Europe. ch as č, ç for c that makes an s sound in case it’s in front a or u like Portuguese.
I don’t have issues with English spelling personally and I like how it looks but I see it as one of the least intuitive languages to spell. Letters are silent, double, triple or quadruple duty all over with tons of exceptions. I think English could really use some diacritics like ğ, ç, š for denoting when a letter does not follow a clear and simple rule like “presšure”, “thouğh” and “façade”.
But yeah, there’s no forcing anything anyway ever, it’s all organic evolution but now we don’t have a bunch go lazy monks trying to save pen strokes to advance the writing system further.
I feel like I’m having a stroke trying to read this.
By the amount of hate that user is getting I hope they never stop using that. Keep strong!
Hell, I’m almost tempted to start doing it myself.
Not because I want to see those symbols returned but exclusively for annoying people.
Alas, I am too lazy.
exclusively for annoying people.
Why? Are you 5 years old?
More like a cat looking into your eyes before pushing a vase down.
A blocked user isn’t very annoying, tbh
If I were committed enough to use those symbols the increased effort from creating a sleeper network of alt accounts wouldn’t be too significant.
It takes less effort to block an account than it does to create one. Feel free to waste your time.
Oh, I don’t. Because of my aformentioned laziness.
Đey’re a really easy þing to add to most mobile keyboards ðough, if you wanted to give it a try! Super fun too!
I’m reading these wrong and it makes you sound like you have a speech impediment. So who’s laughing now
We boþ are! :)
bop
Twist
I have no strong feelings about their use, but “fun” seems like a stretch.
I added a thing to my auto-correct that automatically turns “ye” into þe (back when I learned about this, several years back). I always forget about it until I either get to typing too fast and make a space before finishing “yes” or making Kanye jokes (rare these days tbh) or quoting from the King James Bible (much more common than you’d think).
I think þ is just neat and I do wish it would return to þe English alphabet.
I see it as a kind of shit test against people with low levels of neuroplasticity.
… which I entirely support.
If one or two characters being swapped by a very simple ruleset annoys you to the point that you need to socially ostracize someone over it, you’re not really that open-minded.
If this annoys you, you should be equally annoyed by trying to read, for example, the actual text of many of the US’s founding documents and other important writings from that era, because they make frequent use of what is called the ‘long s’, which is often rendered as something like:
ſ - ſ - ſ - ſ
Basically either an f without the cross bar, or even pretty much the integral symbol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
The rules around the usage of this character are much less consistent than the rules being used to bring back the thorn and eth.
If you tried the ‘Ye Olde Tavern’ approach with the long s, you’d end up with Mifsifsippi, or Hufband and Wife, or Fubftantive (Substantive).
It also makes things difficult for people that use text to voice due to being visually impaired.
Fuck the blind, the sexy bastards
This is how Sylvester the cat speaks.
I give you that, however, wat bout lazy writing like tis? Does your TTS have the same level of difficulty? Does it annoy you less because you are more familiar with it? What about people writing without one single punctuation thus messes with the pace of the TTS? What about they inserted a French word in the middle of the sentence and the TTS has its mind deadly set on all English?
True, but that’s also true with basically any decently niche slang terminology or acronyms/initialisms/abbreviations.
Perhaps even emojis? Do TTS solutions handle emojis these days?
I genuienly don’t know.
Language and writing constantly changes by itself, e.g. new generations start to use new short forms, etc. Why do you have to add something artificially? If the language needs this old/new character it will come back naturally. There was a reason it disappeared.
I mean, this person is bringing it back.
Is there some specific threshold or condition set for ‘naturally’?
Is the first person doing it not ‘natural’, and then it… becomes natural, once … more people are doing it?
A trend… typically has to start with someone, or some number of someones.
Lingo, music, art styles, etc typically develop in subcultures and can then later sort of escape into broader culture, albeit usually with some bastardization or reinterpretation.
Why couldn’t you just view ‘bring back a couple characters from Old/Middle English into Modern English’ as a subculture?
Every other element of culture goes through waves of or has movements that are basically nostalgic, retro, remixed.
EDIT:
Or, perhaps put more succinctly by Smash Mouth:
Only shootin’ stars break the mold.
How do you think language changes happen? One or more persons decide to write a specific way for one reason or another, and sometimes it catches on and more people start to do it until it’s an accepted form. Every change to language is artificial.
ee cummings style writing annoys me because the lack of capitalization and punctuation makes things harder to read. I’ll use emojis sometimes because it amuses me to do so but get irritated by the way some people sprinkle them throughout their texts. I loathe when people misuse “literally”, especially when there’s no word (that I’m aware of) that has the original meaning and so using it incorrectly dilutes my use of the word.
It’s okay to be annoyed by the way some people choose to communicate, especially when it makes their writing more difficult to parse, but the idea of distinguishing “artificial” usage is asinine to me. Whether it’s some hipster who learned about the evolution of language and decided to employ some of those outdated characters, a creative trying to make their writing stand out from others, an AI opponent who is trying to poison training data, or just someone who saw others doing it and decided to copy them, it’s all just as artificial as someone who decided to shorten charisma to rizz, the crazy evolution of “based” into its current form, or any of the other shortcuts and changes people have consciously decided to make.
Hell, one reason we don’t use those characters any more is because typesetters needed to standardize on a set of characters and chose to drop certain less frequently used ones in order to make their job simpler. That feels much more artificial to me.
Who defines what is a natural and what is an artificial change?
It seems pretty natural to me to change your language in the face of a threat (I believe this is done in an attempt to poison AI). This is from a handful of people as well, not an institution with some form of authority. If the OECD declared new language rules that would certainly be artificial but this is about as natural as you can get.
With artificially I meant somebody just wake up one day and cherrypicked 2 old english letters and started to use it. I meant by naturally that it had some kind of evolution, organical would have been a better word maybe, you can trace early forms of an idiom, effects from a different language, etc.
So the first person who starts a trend is illegitimate?
Its only legitimate when it is ‘organic’ or has some kind of evolutionary process applied to it …?
Can you be more precise?
All language is artificial in the sense that it is a human invention. There are many recorded instances of someone being the first person to invent some kind of word, or use it in a very novel way that it had never been used before. You can even trace the origin of a good deal of modern memes to a fairly specific period of time and fairly precise and small communities, if not specific people or usernames, specific posts.
(As a random example of someone just outright coining a term: Dan Savage basically just declared that the new word for the mixture of lube and fecal matter resulting from anal sex should just be called ‘Santorum’ after Rick Santorum was particularly heinous in his anti LGBTQ rhetoric and policies)
Almost all languages (other than conlangs or things like morse code) also go through organic/evolutionary variations over time, in certain places, as used by certain groups of people, and can thus also said to be, or to have organic/evolutionary aspects.
So, unless you can clarify with more precision, what I’m understanding you are saying is:
Its not natural and organic untill it becomes more popular and thus ‘evolves’ in some sense as more people using it leads to variations on it.
Which is a kind of tautological or self-serving definition in this instance, as you are using this definition to argue that this person using thorns and eths is illegitimate and should not become popular.
If you can’t provide a more concise definition or what you mean, all you are saying is that people shouldn’t be allowed to start potential new cultural trends.
Which is very conservative and closed-minded.
This exactly how it would naturally resurface. This would be the thing someone would trade back to. Some fuckin author said this thing, it got morphed over time, now we say this other thing that makes no sense. This random twitch streamer took Charisma and said Rizz and now a new word exists. Some random commenter started using μ or whatever and it catches on.
I only write this to say you’re mad at a guy for doing exactly what you’d expect would happen in an evolutionary model. You are predicting a thing and getting mad at a prediction. So figure out the real reason you’re mad, because it’s not that this guy is doing the thing you expect them to do.
It gets under my skin because people seem to think the only ones that read their messages online are native English speakers, and totally disregard those who are perhaps learning the language.
Again, a reasonable concern… sort of, if you presume people are choosing to learn English primarily by reading lemmy comments…
… but this is also true for any decently niche lingo, slang, dialects, initialisms/abbreviations/acronyms, figures of speech, aphorisms, all kinds of things that do not really translate well/directly into other languages.
all of the stuff you mentioned will be constantly used by a lot of people, which means it’ll be good to learn those things. something like thorn replacing th is just annoying to read because we have already established the sounds “th” can make, and replacing it by a different letter is really weird to read.
i at least know how it’s supposed to be pronounced because of a youtube video i watched a while back, but most people probably won’t know.
Right, but this boils down to ‘I find the the thorn annoying, but not that other stuff.’
If more people used it… then more people would use it, and learn it.
Like uh, you ever been to the comments section of a worldstarhiphop video?
Yeah, if you’re not from or in the communities that comment there, chances are, something like half the words and terms are going to be indecipherably alien to you, and probably, you will them ‘annoying’.
… But millions of people write and speak like that every day.
It just isn’t ‘proper English’, its AAVE, it’s mixed with a whole ton of regional and local and even hyperlocal slang, it’s some other kind of something like a pidgin language between English and some other language.
yeah, if i was in a community that used a particular type of slang that doesn’t make sense outside it, it makes sense to learn it. but, switching letters that already work as is doesn’t make any sense if you’re gonna do it everywhere
most people won’t want to learn about FPS game slang if all they play is stardew valley.
seeing what looks like “panks”, “pat”, and “youp” is really annoying to read because i’m not used to the shape of “th” being that of a “p” with an extra line. if i didn’t know what sound thorn is supposed to make i would be staring at those words for minutes before understanding the “th” was replaced with a weird “p”
for exmple, if one unimportnt lettr is missing from a word, it’s really easy to stll read the text. but if yλu replace a letter with λne yλu’re nλt used tλ reading and that lλλks nλthing like the λriginal λne, it becλmes harder and mλre annλying tλ read.
of course thogh i changed a letter that is used in most of the sentence. it’d be harder to know what was replaced if there weren’t as many of that letter.
“I find it annoying and hard to read”.
Valid opinion!
I personally disagree, I don’t find it annoying or hard to read.
I think its stylistically interesting, based in the actual history of English, and may encourage people to try to look up those weird characters, learn what they mean, how they were used.
M4yB3 1 ju5t 4ppr3c1At3 th1s s4m3 w4y 1 appr3c147e c10wn1n6 0n n00bz w/ 1337 h4x0r sp33k.
Just another weird, fun dialect.
I don’t think using one single antiquated character (just the one, because that makes sense) makes for a dialect.
We’ve got a lot of people saying that swapping in either one or two antiquated characters makes it significantly difficult to read, if they don’t know how to interpret the characters.
Maybe dialect is the wrong term, what would you call l33t sp34k?
Thats a fairly close equivalent, though it swaps out more characters and also has its own vernacular, vocabulary.
Huh! That’s really interesting because I didn’t find any of those difficult to read at all. My brain just kinda went “that’s a fancy o” and then read it like normal.
yeah it’s easier when it’s a character that switches a vowel since vowels are more used. also, i’m not a native english speaker so that might make it harder for me too.
Joke’s on you, I read Homestuck, I’ve been trained to put up with the weirdest typing quirks you can imagine.
I am now having PTSD flashbacks to reading Homestuck, damn youuuuu!!!
Yah that is really annoying you’re so right
@[email protected] except only using þ not ð
They’re such a poser.
The archaic letters are one thing, but I cannot abide the comma splice!
I much prefer IPA if we’re going to change standardized written English.
The IPA would be terrible as an English alphabet, English has like a bazillion accents so the written language would actually become less standardised. Imagine you cross the border into Scotland and now you have to put a bunch of /ɹ/s at the end of words because the local accent is rhotic.
In fact, IPA for English used in England doesn’t match the actual pronunciations.
Don’t threaten me with a good time XD
sounds fun
Similar problem, but we could also start using Shavian
Fascinating. How do you pronounce a joined “kp” without inadvertently inserting a glottal stop? Is there any word, in any language, that uses this?
EDIT: Also, “shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible?” I just found a nice homework assignment.
Maybe it’s because I’m overtired but I just read that normally
I used to work with a guy, 30+ years older than me. He’s the only person I heard use overtired. I doubt he’s still alive.
I never asked him, so I’ll ask you- what’s the difference between tired and overtired?
Overtired is more tired
You’re tired at 11 pm, overtired at 3 am?
That’s a good way of thinking about it
ȝouþ*
Sorry, it’s just soup to me
me too, it could just be random greek letters at that point and it wouldn’t make a difference
Disagree wiþ ðe second person, but to each ðeir own
