this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Sure, back yen spelinge was more viebbes baesed yan nott, but if you're gonna bring them back, do it right.
So you mean to tell me your idea of how to use thorn and eth takes precedent over centuries of actual scribes who actually used them? This is like the missionaries who write grammars of languages of previously uncontacted peoples and them tell them they're speaking their own language wrong when it doesn't match up with their rules. Linguistic rules (ones which people consciously formulate as opposed to the actual rules that speakers unconsciously follow), just like the laws of physics, are descriptive not prescriptive. If the data and the rules seem to be contradictory, it's the rules that are wrong. There's nothing wrong with using thorn and eth interchangeably, in the same way that there's nothing wrong with using eth and thorn strictly for voiced and voiceless dental fricatives.
Frankli, þes, þes I do, becas yeþ didnt speak modern Engliș, wiç we do, & to wiç ye ruls aplþ to. Ye misionarþ is verþ wrong to lektur ye nativs on yeir langweig, but is eqali right to lektur yem on Engliș.
There is a right and a wrong way to break the rules. If you're gonna go out of your way to use obsolete ortography, don't half-ass it.
But modern English doesn't use thorn or eth, so there are no rules about using them. There is absolutely no reason to enforce an arbitrary standard on someone using thorn in a historically precedented way. They're not "breaking the rules" in the first place.
On the contrary, they are breaking the rules - of modern English. And I'm disagreeing with their way of doing it.
And yes, this is "right" and "wrong" as a matter of taste more than anything, but then again so is using thorn and eth.
I do just want to point out that every time someone has tried to argue what you're arguing. There's inevitably been an actual expert in the field point out that the way he's doing it is wrong. He doesn't actually understand what he's doing both in terms of using outdated language and how AI works.
Are these experts with us in the thread now? I literally studied Germanic linguistics so I do know a thing or two about eth, thorn and linguistics in general. I'd be interested to hear what you might think would prove that using thorn for both voiced and voiceless dental fricatives isn't historically precedented. As for the AI stuff, I completely agree, but I never took issue with those criticisms.