ψΩ

[NomadicSky]

I got the idea the idea from the no letter "h" tread

What if in the English alphabet there were characters for the "sh" and "ch" sounds
something like
ψ=ch
Ω=sh

So church would be ψurch
shop would be Ωop

you get the idea

[Chingo360]

That is like a greko-anglosaxon hybrid, haha it sure would be hilarious

[chunkeymonkey13q]

Perhaps such letters would exist for a while and then go extinct, since they could easily be represented by other letters and so therefore would be obsolete?

[DominusNovus]

Originally Posted by NomadicSky

I got the idea the idea from the no letter "h" tread

What if in the English alphabet there were characters for the "sh" and "ch" sounds
something like
ψ=ch
Ω=sh

So church would be ψurch
shop would be Ωop

you get the idea

Wouldn't church be ψurψ?

Also, I always thought we should assing k the ch sound. We've got c for the k sound, and k kinda looks like a c and an h pushed together.

[Ivan Druzhkov]

Could it be possible to use the "Ч" (ch) and "Ш" (sh) letters from the Cyrillic-based languages?

Heck, call Leo, he might be helpful on this.

[MrP]

Ah, as a Classicist, I think it could get confusing. Maybe different symbols, but using one that Ancient Greek uses as a "ps" and the other it uses as a long "o" to represent "ch" and "sh"? Seems iffy to me, given that the people who'll initially be writing this will be the people in the population most likely to know Greek . . .

[Susano]

Bah, Englsih wouldnt need an own ch letter. German, yes (two even), but English... I mean, your ch is mostly just an dj/tsh kinda thing. So dΩ or tΩ would do nicely enough for it :P

[Flocculencio]

IIRC one of the reasons why 'thorn' and 'eth' fell out of use was nothing to do with them being obsolete- it was merely a practical decision AFAIK.

When Caxton set up the first English printing press the type he had was produced on the Continent which didn't have eth and thorn. He substituted the unused 'Y' (which in Middle English was written 'i' or 'ie' e.g. 'onlie' for 'our 'only') which is why we get 'ye' for 'the'. However, 'ye' was never actually pronounced /yi:/.

However for some reason it became common practice to use 'th' instead of 'y'.

It's just one of those things- like the 18th C (and possibly earlier AFAIK) fashion for using long '∫' for 's' at the beginning and in the middle of a word and short 's' at the ends of words, hence, ∫hips.

Or the dropping of ash 'æ' in favour of 'ae' in British English or just plain 'e'. However, Old English ash was pronounced differently from the letter used in later times. Ash was pronounced /æ/ (as in 'that' /ðæt/) while the later æ was pronounced /i:/ (as in encyclopædia).

However, just like with the other double blind, nothing changes except for the fact we'd use different letters.

[Flocculencio]

Originally Posted by Susano

Bah, Englsih wouldnt need an own ch letter. German, yes (two even), but English... I mean, your ch is mostly just an dj/tsh kinda thing. So dΩ or tΩ would do nicely enough for it :P

Well phonetically, English 'ch' is /t∫/. Even the phoneticists haven't seen fit to come up with a single phonetic symbol for it

[Max Sinister]

Because they don't need it, and because it's really a combination of two phonems - 't' and 'sh'.

The Russians even have one letter for the English 'shch' (Chrushchev). In German, that would be even seven letters to write (schtsch)!

[fortyseven]

it would save on typing to type ψ instead of tsh. I was inspired to make my own alphabet alteration thread though I have thought of it before.

[Paul Spring]

I think the best way to have this happen would be to have missionaries from the Roman church do the same thing that Orthodox missionaries did with Cyrillic - design an alphabet that was more tailored to the actual sounds of the language for the people they were trying to convert rather than using the Latin alphabet wholesale. If that happened, sounds like the English "sh" and "th" would get their own letter in the alphabet, instead of having to be formed from 2-letter combinations. The missionaries might end up using Greek letters to represent some sounds that Latin didn't have any letters for.

[NomadicSky]

Could it be possible to use the "Ч" (ch) and "Ш" (sh) letters from the Cyrillic-based languages?

I guess so it doesn't really matter I was just using two random characters I didn't give it much though

Чhurч, чhase, чarmed yeah that works but it looks a bit to much like u
Maybe borrow something easy to draw but unique from the rest of our alphabet

[Flocculencio]

Originally Posted by Paul Spring

I think the best way to have this happen would be to have missionaries from the Roman church do the same thing that Orthodox missionaries did with Cyrillic - design an alphabet that was more tailored to the actual sounds of the language for the people they were trying to convert rather than using the Latin alphabet wholesale. If that happened, sounds like the English "sh" and "th" would get their own letter in the alphabet, instead of having to be formed from 2-letter combinations. The missionaries might end up using Greek letters to represent some sounds that Latin didn't have any letters for.

Thats not how it was done though- they just used letters from the already present Runic alphabet to represent the sounds of English.

a æ b c d ð e f g h i l m n o p r s t þ u w x y with rare occurrences of k and z.

Why take from yet another foreign language when you've got native letters up to the task (which is what they did otl). As I said before two letter 'th' is a relatively late and anomalous occurence after eth and thorn fell out of fashion.

[Mayhem]

Originally Posted by Flocculencio

IIRC one of the reasons why 'thorn' and 'eth' fell out of use was nothing to do with them being obsolete- it was merely a practical decision AFAIK.

Forgive me for asking, but what're "eth" and "thorn"?

[Max Sinister]

Two old letters today only used in Icelandic. They stand for the two 'th' sounds (as in 'thing' and 'the' respectively).

Oh, and another one thing: If 'ye' stands for 'the' because some printer decided to use 'y' for 'th', what about 'thou', 'thee' and 'thine'?

[Flocculencio]

Originally Posted by Max Sinister

Oh, and another one thing: If 'ye' stands for 'the' because some printer decided to use 'y' for 'th', what about 'thou', 'thee' and 'thine'?

'Y' stood for 'th' only in print. In spoken English the 'th' was pronounced so as to distinguish printed 'ye' for 'the' from spoken 'ye' for 'you'. I assume the same thing happened with 'thou', 'thee' and 'thine' though I can find any info at the moment. I suppose 'ye' for 'the' has more public visibility since it would have been used on signs and the like.

As for 'thou' in its various forms, they were falling out of use anyway and were generally only used in informal contexts between friends or by superiors to inferiors. If used in a formal context, calling someone who was not a friend and who was equal or superior in rank to you 'thou' would have been a horrible insult.

The reason we see it used in a religious context today is that by the 18th C, 'thou' had come to attain an air of archaic formality and so was used in prayerbooks without regard to it's actual earlier connotations.

[Flocculencio]

Originally Posted by Mayhem

Forgive me for asking, but what're "eth" and "thorn"?

Just to elaborate on what Max said.

Eth is 'ð' and thorn is 'þ'. In Old English and some dialects of Middle English they were voiced and voiceless 'th' respectively (th in 'them' is voiced and th in 'thick' is voiceless)

[Mark]

Back in the 1980s, there were proposals to make a phonetic English alphabet. You ended up with more letters, but once you learned the sound, you could read. Also, spelling tests would disappear.

The Hangul (Korean) alphabet was developed in the 1500s and is very phonetic. Supposedly, the each letter's shape reflects the shape of the tongue and/or mouth when making that sound.

[fortyseven]

Ya I've read about Hangul. Looks very simple.