Talk:Thorn (letter)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Book" This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s quality scale.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s importance scale.

Wynn says (of itself): "The rune was held to represent joy, and is the only rune other than þ to have been borrowed into the Latin alphabet." Could someone who knows these things add a sentence or two about this in this entry? --Spikey 00:14, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Moving this article

I'm going to move this article to Þ today if nobody objects, pros to this:

  • Naturally linked, people are more likely to write [[þ]] than [[Thorn (linguistics)|Þ]]
  • It's in ISO-8859-1, this will cause no trauble.
  • It's in the style of æ,ö,ý... this is one ugly distinction. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:19, 2004 Jun 25 (UTC)
I object. First, I want to say that I love the letter thorn, and have for many years; I fought to have it recognized as a separate letter for the purposes of international sorting (and won). But the name of this letter in the English is Thorn. Further, while "Thorn (linguistics)" was very bad, I already changed that (and all the articles) to "Thorn (letter)". And that took rather a long time. (This back-and-forthing is one of the more unpleasant features of the Wikipedia.) Evertype 09:44, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
hehe here we go. I thought I was going to have problems with the redirects when I discovered my original sally at the subject was not where I put it; but actually, on reflection, so long as we have appropriate redirects in place, I am not really that concerned. Definitely an issue of a low order of severity in any case. I vote we just make sure we have stuff pointing at it from the right angles. Sjc 10:00, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Most English speakers when faced with the thorn's glyph don't recognize it at all. It is far better to list this letter under its name in the English-language Wikipedia.
Perhaps they will after reading the article. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 10:28, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
How will they find the article? Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
It should also be pointed out that not everyone has ISO/IEC 8859-1 as their character set. Many Macintosh users do still do not have support for Thorn or Eth. The convention "Lettername (letter)" should be used for Thorn and Eth, as it is for a number of Greek letters, which are listed under their names as spelled out in English.
I would like the articles to move back to "Thorn (letter)" Evertype 10:18, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
What Macintosh users in particular do not have support for Þ or Ð? Mac OS has always supported character sets alot better than Windows equivalents, especially with Mac OS X.
Any users with OS 8 and OS 9, certainly – and there are many of them, no matter how wonderful OS X is. And most people don't have keyboard access to the letter, certainly (unless they use the Unicode keyboards, which are not supported on all browsers, including Explorer). Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
Furthermore, i think that Thorn (letter) is an overly long and ugly title for an article as opposed to Þ. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 10:28, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
I am sure that you do, as an Icelander. I would like to see some consistency in Wikipedia, that's all. I don't think we should change Eth (letter) to Ð (which would be ambiguous with regard to the Croatian and African look-alikes). Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
Greek letters which can't be written in 8859-1 have to be listed as their spelled out names; but "A", "B", ... are not at Ay (letter), Bee (letter), etc; why should "Þ" be at Thorn (letter)? —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 10:31, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
We do not normally write out Ay, Bee, Cee. Thorn is normally written out. Thorn is an entry in dictionaries. Thorn is the character's name. Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
  • Keep at Þ. We have redirects to handle things. Dysprosia 10:21, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This is inconsistent, and I don't think it buys anything for the end-user. Ævar's argument that it's more convenient for Wikipedians to type in links is pretty bogus. Why not keep it at Thorn (letter)? ÆVar said he was going to move it unless he heard objections. Well, I object. Evertype 11:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
First of all, how is it inconsistent with abcdefghijklmnopqrs letters are at their letter name, unlike numbers which are at int (number).
It's one thing to be idealistic, and another to be practical about the realities of what English-speaking readers will know and recognize. Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
And how is it bogus that it's more conviniant to type it? The previous name was 14 letters, the current one is 13 shorter.
Convenience for the throngs of Wikipedia authors rushing to link this article is one thing. Convenience for actual users wanting to be able to recognize and pronounce article names is quite another. Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
Generally, if you can make the title shorter and more understood thats a good thing, uneeded ()'s behind them should not be used if they can be avoided.
And about that objection notice, that was 25 days ago, I've first now seen you disagree, not that you can watch every page on wikipedia, i just wanted to get any formal complaints then. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 12:14, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
No, I did not see it a month ago. I did spend a considerable time following up links when I made both the Thorn (letter) and Eth (letter) articles accessible to people other than Icelanders and students of Old English. (I was both.) No one said anything when I did that, and so I am quite rightly surprised to see this unwelcome change here.
  • Let's just keep this at Þ, I don't see why this one should be treated differently from æ, ö and ß. Why use long and ugly article names when it may easily be avoided? --Biekko 14:40, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There isn't anything particularly ugly about the article name, though perhaps in retrospect Letter Thorn (Þ) or Letter Þ (Thorn) would be better, with other variants pointing there. And, indeed, why not Letter A, Letter B, etc.? ſ resolves to Long s, while ß does not resolve to Sharp s. This is not user-friendly, and I would like to see the whole thing tidied up. Evertype 18:45, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
I think that (no pun indented) if you have general issues with naming conventions on WP such as that A should be on Letter A, Þ on Letter Thorn (Þ) it should be taken up on WP naming conventions. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 05:39, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)

[edit] Moving back to Thorn (letter)...

Þ and þ are not in MacRoman (although they're in ISO 8859-1), and there are Wikipedians who are Mac users, so I'll move this back to Thorn (letter). --KelisFan2K5 21:08, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this movement. Apple's Mac-Roman character set, unfortunately, does not have these characters, so it is impossible for users of that character set ever to find this article.

I'll also move Ð back to Eth (letter) since that isn't in MacRoman either. --KelisFan2K5 10:02, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Our target is ISO-8859-1 letters, not MacRoman, there are also some people using legacy systems that don't support other encodings than ASCII etc. And it's not impossible to access the page if your only supported encoding is MacRoman, you can use the redirects or got to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%DE —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 11:53, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)
The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%DE link brought me to fi (lowercase fi ligature) instead of Þ on my old Mac. Also, Þ would appear to old Macs as a box indicating a non-existent character in the font. --KelisFan2K5 13:30, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It's also not in MS-DOS CP 437 (Å, Æ, Ø, Œ, or Ð are also not in CP 437). --KelisFan2K5
How about thorn (letter), anyway our current target for article titles is ISO 8859-1 not Mac Roman, it would probably be more productive for you to take it up on Wikipedia:Naming conventions rather than start moving all articles that are not in Mac Roman but are in ISO 8859-1 (of which there are doubtless thousands). —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:12, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
As far as user-friendliness goes, thorn (letter) makes more sense, since Þ isn't an English letter. I mean, even after we move to UTF-8, we're not going to move Zhao Ziyang to 赵紫阳, are we? --Delirium 00:38, May 23, 2005 (UTC)
I think this should stay at Þ unless we are sure that this would cause errors for computers made in the last few years. The same goes for all letters. — Chameleon 14:07, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this issue should be discussed and dealt with at Wikipedia:Naming conventions since there are other non-English letters in the English WP and a standard should be set. Personally, I would like to keep the article at Þ. On the other hand, Ρ is at Rho (letter) and doesn't even have a redirect from Ρ. Chi (Greek letter) is in the same situation. -Acjelen 14:33, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I have made some comments there. I favour <Englishlettername> (letter) for the English Wikipedia. English-speakers should not be disadvantaged just because the English Wikipedia is used by people who have an easier time with letters like Thorn. Evertype 17:32, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)

All those technical questions about display and character set are academic. Article titles are the names of things, not the things. This article belongs at thorn (letter). (Just as zhe (Cyrillic) doesn't belong at Ж, nor yus at Ѧ). —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 01:48 Z

But the name of B is B, not Be (or Bee), and the WP article title reflects that. Þ should remain the same. -Acjelen 8 July 2005 03:45 (UTC)
Yes, I believe the name of the letter B is B, the name of the Z is zed or zee, and the name of the Þ is thorn. Familiar English letters sometimes stand for themselves, but the thorn is not in that category. (Likewise, Ж can stand for zhe in a Ukrainian text, but this is neither Ukrainian, Old English nor Icelandic Wikipedia, so using Ж or Þ as an article title is undesirable) —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 05:10 Z

[edit] Þ

While there may be an arguement for keeping an article in Wikipedia on the common phrase "ye olde", I think this topic should be covered in the article on the letter thorn. If it is decided that "ye olde" deserves its own page, then that page should certainly agree with the letter thorn page. -Acjelen 05:49, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move to Thorn (letter)

Titles are the names of things, not the things

  • Support  This is my request —Michael Z. 2005-08-5 20:08 Z
  • Oppose. I think the canonical name for a letter is the letter itself. Just like we don't have K at Kay, we shouldn't have Þ at Thorn. dbenbenn | talk 20:52, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support Thorn is the English name for the letter, and has always been; in a stronger sense than Ay, Bee, and so forth. Also, most users of this Wikipedia do not have Þ on their keyboards (I used the edit menu; but WP is for readers). Septentrionalis 21:04, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. In addition to concurring with dbenbenn, I would like to add that many readers will not know the letter by either the sound "thorn" or the sign Þ. Acjelen 21:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support Thorn is the English name for the letter, as attested in the Oxford English Dictionary. which is authoritative. Note that Ay, Bee, and so forth are NOT headwords in the OED. I love the thorn, and have worked to ensure that it was sorted correctly in the default UCS sorting table, but I believe that letter articles in the Wikipedia should be standardized on "Name (letter)" and this has long been my position. We succeeded recently with Beth (letter). The English encyclopaedia should be consistent here, and as no English speaker learns about Þ in childhood (I learned of it when I was 13) and as most English speakers wouldn't even recognize the letter much less be able to type it, we should stick with the English name plus (letter). Evertype 22:54, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support "þ" is not a letter in modern English orthography; therefore it has no place in the title of a page in the English-language Wikipedia. Robert A West 01:49, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Titles should be names of objects, not the objects themselves (and use common names). — Knowledge Seeker দ 18:26, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Agree with Knowledge Seeker. Jonathunder 19:15, 2005 August 12 (UTC)

This article has been renamed after the result of a move request. violet/riga (t) 11:05, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Dbenbenn, of course you can spell the one-letter names of English letters using the letters themselves. But the thorn isn't a letter in the Latin alphabet that's used for modern English. The English-language Wikipedia doesn't use letters of other writing systems in article titles (e.g., Þ, ω, ю, ѭ, 한, 漢). The thorn was part of the alphabet for Middle English, but isn't in the modern Latin alphabet for English.

Acjelen, I don't understand your objection. The article can be found through redirects and disambiguation pages (by typing Þ or thorn), and this article serves to teach the reader its name and pronunciation. —Michael Z. 2005-08-5 21:43 Z

Redirects and disambiguation pages will point readers in either direction. While Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) asks for titles to be in English, other groups in WP stress the opposite, such as WikiProject Classical music. -Acjelen 22:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
The conventions on classical music are irrelevant here. —Michael Z. 2005-08-6 05:47 Z

Unless Dbenbenn is going to propose to move Omega to Ω and so on, the current name of the Thorn (letter) article is inconsistent with Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Not only should an article be titled within modern English orthography, but the title of an article should be the most common name for the thing. I defy anyone to show me a textbook on the history of the English language or a widely-used dictionary that does not use the name, "Thorn", spelled out. Per D.W. Robertson's lectures on Chaucer, the letter was already disappearing medially well before Caxton's time, so we should regard it as belonging to a foreign orthography (Old English). Yes, this means that our articles on Eth (letter) and Ash (letter) are also named incorrectly: once we move Thorn (letter) back where it belongs, we can do those moves as well. Robert A West 02:24, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move of Æ to Ash (letter) or Aesc

Interested persons, please read and vote for or against either proposal at Talk:Æ#Requested move. —Michael Z. 2005-09-27 00:10 Z

[edit] Raspberry emoticon - unsubstantiated

I have put this text here pending substantiation. Evertype 15:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

In modern times, the only main use among the English-speaking populace is online, as an emoticon to depict blowing a raspberry. This is made by users that want to feel superior and showcase more expertise in Net Usage than one who would use a regular "P" to do the same, as in ":-P" (see: Emoticons). [citation needed]

[edit] Icelandic Name

What is the name of the character in Icelandic? I think it would be interesting since that it's the only native alphabet in which the character is commonly used. 81.232.72.53 13:09, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Þorn. Evertype 13:23, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! (New IP) 81.232.72.53 14:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

The article used to contain:

When used as a voiceless interdental fricative, like 'th' as in the English word "thick", then Þ is the only Latin alphabet equivalent to the Greek letter Theta (Θ,θ).

This is incorrect, since Ŧ is used in Sami (as well as phonetic transcriptions) for the sound, so I've removed it. --Ptcamn 01:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

And this article is better off without discussing Theta at all; thank you. Septentrionalis 00:25, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apparent inaccuracies

I've removed the charming anecdote about the thorn being killed by its absence from Caxton's continental alphabets, because so far as I can tell it's simply not true. Caxton uses standard 15th-century orthography, not notably different from the handwritten forms that preceded him, in which <th> was already preferred to <þ>. And when he does use the older spelling (as, for example, in the abbreviation of the as <þ> with superscript <e> directly above), it is unambiguously <þ>, lacking the ascender but quite distinct from any form of <y>. — Haeleth Talk 23:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply to Pmanderson

(Is the implication that OE was originally written without thorn intended? If so, please source)

Not at all; rather, I was trying to avoid making a definite claim either way, as I can't remember what the oldest texts use and I haven't immediately been able to find any sources that say. "Adopted very early" seemed like a reasonable bit of weaselling in the circumstances.  :) — Haeleth Talk 00:00, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Fine, what do you think of my weaselry? Septentrionalis 00:29, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree that your edit was an improvement. It might be worth going even further: "very early" still implies an observable transition of some sort, so one could argue that the question should not even be raised till a citable authority is found. But the current wording looks good to me if you're happy with it. — Haeleth Talk 13:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Odd Redirect

I was redirected here from Ye Olde... there is nothing but a brief mention of Ye Olde as a side note in the discussion of an odd letter I've never heard of-- I clicked on Ye Olde in Stock Phrases! Maybe someone who understands the connection better can clarify the page? 71.76.235.247 02:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Forgot to log in, sorry Kuronue 02:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
The connection is the "Y" in "Ye Olde" - specifically it does not represent the 25th letter of the latin alphabet — it represents the Thorn character which was included in middle English; before it was dropped entirely the form of the letter degenerated somewhat, losing the closure at the top of the loop, making it resemble a latin "Y" (or a K without the lower leg; it was still pronouced as "th" but in modern times that's been forgotten by the mainstream public who see a "Y" (so "Ye Olde" == "The Olde" written with a Thorn character) --Invisifan 14:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/h/o/Talk%7EThorn_%28letter%29_c370.html"