Just thorn? Or eth also? Old English, like Icelandic to this day, had two letters denoting two different pronunciations that we now write with the pseudo-digraph th. The complication of modern English is that the contribution of other languages has multiplied the pronunciations that we represent with this pair of letters. To make any phonetic sense, one would want a separate letter to represent each phoneme. English may be too much of a mongrel tongue to support such systematic phonemic representation.

No, not eth too, just thorn. Actually, not really thorn either. Merely a new single character condensing the "th." I agree, English is too much of a mongrel language to start niggling such phonimic details (lest we end up with 40 more characters in our alphabet). Since we don't establish such distinctions now with our current usage of the "th" combination I see no reason to start. I'm thinking more along the lines of how the English employed the "Y" character as a pseudo-thorn as a space saver.

Certainly not a critical typographic issue. Just a little design project I've flirted with for personal entertainment off and on over the years.

dm

Merely a new single character condensing the "th."

but which "th"? the voiced or the unvoiced? i think that's the whole of what John was getting at... that if you're going to do one, you should do the other. and if you're going to start with "th" then why stop there? how bout one for "ch" and "sh" ad infinitum.

Wuns yu start asking wy inglish duz not hav a rashnel sistem of speling, yu very kwikly hit a brik worl. For historikel reezonz wee ar stuk with a mes, in wich the absens ov a thorn karakter iz the leest ov our difikulteez. Peesmeel introdukshon ov wun mor leter leevz so many mor seareeus problemz that it duzznt seem wurth dooing.

I understand your point, and it is a good one. That's why I would limit it to just a "th" character. The English scribes an