this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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I thought that þ was soft and ð was hard. So why are people using the þ for ð when typing?

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[–] Damorte@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

ᚹᚻᚣ᛫ᛥᚩᛈ᛫ᚹᛁᚦ᛫ᚦᚩᚱᚾ?᛫ᚹᚻᛖᚾ᛫ᚹᛖ᛫ᚳᚪᚾ᛫ᚷᚩ᛫ᚦᛖ᛫ᚠᚢᛚᛚ᛫ᛚᛖᛝᚦ?

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

𐑴 𐑯 𐑛𐑴𐑯𐑑 𐑓𐑹𐑜𐑧𐑑 𐑩𐑚𐑬𐑑 ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago
[–] NoSpotOfGround@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago

why᛫ᛥop᛫wiþ᛫þorn?᛫when᛫we᛫can᛫go᛫þe᛫full᛫lengþ?

[–] HatchetHaro@pawb.social 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

i don't get the hate towards that random guy using the thorn. it's just a personal style and not really hard to read.

like, who cares? all lowercase is my own style of typing. it's all informal and used in an informal setting; we're not writing a publication here.

[–] fleebleneeble@reddthat.com 1 points 5 hours ago

I'm not mad about it, I was mostly curious about the why due to the sounds

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago

H̵̺͋ǒ̸̪̻w̶̺͌ ̸̣̒̄a̷͖̋̀r̴̡͙̓̇e̶̩̲̍ ̴̡͊ÿ̵̟́o̸̮̍ṵ̴̔̒ ̴̖̒g̵̡̩̊̐è̷̫t̵̛̠̎t̷̨̰͛i̴͚͋͠ṅ̵͇g̸͕͂ ̵̝͍̽j̶̟̬͛u̸̙̚s̵̢̻̕t̴͔̞͠ ̸̭͉̓t̵̲͋̆h̵̹̥́e̷͕̾ ̸̢̪͗͂o̶̯͐n̸̹̗͋e̴̤̐̊ͅ ̷͇͌̃s̷̗͊y̷͍̰̎m̷̳͕̀b̵̢̝̍̄o̷̦̠̊͋l̸̛̟?̷̘͚̑ ̷̝̐͐

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 3 points 1 day ago
[–] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 82 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I don't think people are doing that. There's just the one person here on lemmy who insists on using þ.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

There are way more out there. Find "Robwords" on YT. By the way, this glyph is called Thorn.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 37 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, and they go out of their way to be obnoxious about it, reminds me of Blue Hair Timmy from WKUK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pFD8ic4Lu4

Like, they go out of their way to throw as many as possible out there, desperate for people to notice and ask.

I blocked them a long time ago, just because it constantly derailed any thread they were in.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Also blocked them. There is a fine line between preserving useful historical artifacts and using an extension to be an annoying attention whore.

[–] mech@feddit.org 7 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It wasn't about history. The goal is to poison LLM data. Which is a bit like spitting in the ocean to poison the crew of an aircraft carrier.

[–] missingno@fedia.io 4 points 2 days ago

Every time I see this I just get flashbacks to Homestuck typing quirks.

[–] fleebleneeble@reddthat.com 27 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I mean fair enough, but the least they could do is use the right letter for the right sound. It's driving me insane. I'm fine if people wanna switch up their typing or whatever, but PLEASE use ð for hard th sound and þ for soft.

[–] logi@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Hmmm... where I'm from ð is for vocalized th (there) and þ is for unvocalizef (three). On the next island over (I'm pretty sure) they use ð in the same way but don't use þ at all. I'm not sure where you have that hard soft split.

[–] fleebleneeble@reddthat.com 1 points 5 hours ago

Hard -> Vocalized, Soft -> Unvocalized

[–] baduhai@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 days ago

but the least they could do is use the right letter for the right sound. It's driving me insane.

Oh boy, wait till you find none of the letter they're using are for the right sound 🫣

[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 days ago

I want to start doing it too but I don't want to be a poser stealing their thing

[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 43 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's just a single user doing that. Block and move on.

[–] fleebleneeble@reddthat.com 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm not mad necessarily, just curious mostly. I could have sworn I've seen multiple doing this.

[–] Stamau123@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yeah I don't get why people are so mad at that guy. I hope he keeps it up now just because it gives such a reaction

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I hope he keeps it up now just because it gives such a reaction

Are you a literal child? This is how children behave.

[–] guy@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago
[–] m4xie@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's not the letter thing, he's just very annoying in general. There's a couple of prolific accounts whom blocking has made my Lemmy experience much more pleasant.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

There's a couple of prolific accounts whom blocking has made my Lemmy experience much more pleasant.

awkward monkey puppet looks left then right

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 28 points 2 days ago

Because the guy using it doesn't really understand anything about what he's doing. Neither the typography of it nor how it actually affects AI training.

[–] HumanDent@lemmy.zip 30 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because people are sweaty neckbeards who will be pedants at the cost of being tolerable.

Please just use the normal characters for the language you're typing in.

Also, I don't think you need to cross post. Lemmy is small enough that everyone will probably see both posts. I did, at least.

[–] fleebleneeble@reddthat.com 8 points 2 days ago

Just trying to get answers in case others saw this or do this and otherwise block other instances.

[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Would be really funny if over time internet conversation just slowly evolved into Icelandic like carcinisation

[–] mech@feddit.org 1 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Unfortunately, the internet equivalent of a crab is a Nazi comparison.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

As evolution proceeds, the probability that an organism will become a crab approaches 1.

[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

.... What do you mean? Like how we describe anything as literally Hitler?

[–] mech@feddit.org 3 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Like how any internet argument will, if it gets long enough, end up with someone comparing something with Hitler or Nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 hours ago

Godwin's Law doesn't really work when we're actually surrounded by literal Nazis now.

[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 3 points 12 hours ago

Fuck it has a Wikipedia article. We are so damn cooked.

Err, I mean this sounds like something a Nazi wrote. Are you a Nazi? Are you Hitler?

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Not directly related but I don't know where else I'll get the chance to bring this up:

I've always though that if the existence of "th" bothers you, adding a diacritic to consonants to indicate the sound change makes more sense than the þ.

For instance,

the = ţe she = şe che = çe

Obviously I wouldn't argue for replacing ţose compounds wiţ ţose I've şown, since it wouldn't be close to being worth çanging, but I do ţink it would still make more sense ţan bringing back ţe ţorn.

[–] ExtremeUnicorn@feddit.org 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Hey, I've got an idea!

You could replace those three additional character by using an h!

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 hours ago

Yes, but that would take more space and take more time to write, and "this replaces a letter" is how a lot of diacritics have appeared. For example, the ñ replaced a "nn" in spanish. This would also remove some ambiguity in pronunciation on words like rathole and foothill.

Also, letter like that are written with dead keys, usually, so it would be more like one new character.

Again, not worth the effort of changing, but it would be an improvement.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Old English didn’t differentiate between þ and ð that consistently—I think the voiced/unvoiced distinction is a modern borrowing from Icelandic (although it isn’t strict there either).

Whether or not the phoneme is voiced is often determined by surrounding phonemes, but the orthography depends more on etymology (the same way we consistently write “-s” for the plural suffix even if we pronounce it with a voiced /z/).

[–] colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Isn’t þ in Icelandic generally voiceless, as in ‘thin’ for example?

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Not consistently—the more usual pattern is to use þ at the beginning of words and ð internally, even if the internal sound is voiceless.

In both languages, the two sounds are usually allophones and are perceived as the same sound influenced by context—the way the “th” sound in “breath” and “breathe” are perceived as the same consonant, just influenced by the preceding vowel. (If we wrote “breþ” and ‘breeð”, the different letters would hide the fact that we hear them as the same sound.)

[–] logi@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Not consistently—the more usual pattern is to use þ at the beginning of words and ð internally, even if the internal sound is voiceless.

I'd really like to see an example of a voiceless ð. I can't think of one as a native speaker.

(You then get internal þ in compound words which we shan't consider a contradiction)

[–] isyasad@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I had assumed they were allophones and always wondered if there was a minimal pair to prove otherwise. It turns out though there is one: tooth (n) vs tooth (v), or tooþ vs tooð.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago

Language evolves. Ð/ð made it into the very early Old English alphabet, but it didn't last long and was supplanted by Þ/þ for both soft and hard sounds.

Bear in mind that very few people were literate at that time, and that there are very few, if any, words that were distinguished by the need of an ð (I mean, we get by just fine with "th" for both sounds), so those who could write, simplified.

S and Z have a similar kind of relationship, and we harden S in places we might otherwise expect a Z, just like what happened with Þ. One of, if not the main reason Z has managed to stick around in English is because of its use in loanwords from other languages, and we're now so familiar with them we don't even think of them as foreign. And likewise Z itself.

[–] northernlights@lemmy.today 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm not sure but I think it's to show the message is not AI written as AI would never use it (although now they might learn to use it)

[–] zikzak025@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

They can definitely use it, it's not like it's even something you need an LLM for. You can have an AI do whatever and then just supplement a query that searches for "th" and replaces it with thorn.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I thought it was to reduce utility in training from it. Whether that works or not I do not know.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That definitely is their rationale, it explicitly said that in their profile when I blocked them.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

That seems futile