• kryptonite@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It’s eth, actually, not thorn.

    I had thought that eth was used in Old English for the voiced “th” and thorn for the unvoiced “th”, but Wikipedia says they were used interchangeably for both sounds.

    You’re right otherwise. Thorn was not available on printing presses because they were being made in countries that didn’t use the letter, which is why the letter Y was used instead until “th” became more common.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth

    • pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      That’s a shame, I would have loved to keep using those thorns and eths. Quite weird to think that they didn’t even want to ask for a few customs pieces for those letters.