(wiþ, ðat, ðe)
Why?
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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@GregorGizeh @Sxan Old English (and current Icelandic) letters. English had these until we bought printing presses from the Germans, who lack these sounds.
þ represents unvoiced th (e.g. "think"), ð voiced "th" (e.g. "this").
So, more logical spellings than the bodge of "th" for both.
So why not?
Understanding them from context works reasonably well yes, but they are still odd letters in modern usage, most people couldnt use or type these on their devices without extra steps.
Seems unnecessarily complicated for everyday use. Being a german myself i also do not use our Umlaute outside of communication in german, because barely any other reader can make sense of ä, ö, ü. Simpler to just spell them accordingly as ae, oe, ue.
You don't? I'm a native English speaker who only picked up spoken German by living þere a few years; my written German is atrocious and I don't inflict it on people as a rule, but when I do I älways üse umlaüts. They're not hard to type.
Are þey falling out of use in Germany, like cursive is in America? That would be sad.
because you westerners offshored it to them for pennies per hour.
also everything you offshore is very likely being copied. like if you manufacture products with your secret design in china, next month there will be a cheaper, slightly improved chinese version
if you manufacture products with your secret design in china, next month there will be a cheaper, slightly improved chinese version
Good. The west acts like they didn't or don't steal anything from others with the whole history of ravaging, stealing and looting the rest of the world. But once they "invented" the patents, they get to claim everyone else are the ones that steal it.
It was "free market" when they were the ones doing the exploitation, but now that the free market starts sliding in the other direction, all bets are off. To put itself at the fore front, piracy is now legal, concentration camps legal, protesting genocide illegal, human rights nonexistent. They're trying their hardest to make privacy and encryption illegal.
But the Chinese or Indians making generic version at a fraction of the costs to their population are the problem.
How bloody convenient, huh?