Date:  Fri, 3 Dec 1993 16:46:51 +0100

From:  Hans Vappula <guchw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GD.CHALMERS.SE>

Subject: Eth and thorn - why did they vanish?



Can anyone tell me why the letters eth and thorn were discarded and

expelled from the language. I heard somewhere that the reasons had

something to do with these letters being pagan runes (?).

Thorn, as you may know, was the third letter of the futhark - the

16-character one as well as the one with 24 characters. Of course, you

couldn't use such things when writing in (then) Catholic England, so they

were discarded. Was this actually the case?

As I wrote in my earlier posting, they would have been useful even today.



//Hans Vappula, Gothenburg Universities' Computing Centre, G|teborg, Sweden

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Hans Vappula * guchw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gd.chalmers.se * hans.vappula[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gd.gu.se ([AT SYMBOL GOES HERE] = at sign)