Language Trainers Blog

Thorn, or þorn (upper case Þ, lower case þ), is a letter in the Icelandic alphabet, pronounced as a voiceless dental fricative (’th’ as in the English ‘thin’).

In Old English, the letter thorn was used to represent either the voiceless or voiced dental fricative (’th’ as in the English ‘that’).  Its use continued through most of the Middle English period, but it started to be replaced by ‘th’ in the 14th century.  The shape of thorn also began to change around this time, and in some cases became indistinguishable from the letter Y.  ‘Th’ had almost completely taken over by this point, and thorn remained only in some abbreviations, such as thorn with a superscript ‘e’, as a short form for ‘the’.  The arrival of the printing press essentially erased any old form of thorn, and it was thereafter represented by ‘Y’.  This resulted in the printed form ‘ye’, and we still see the use of ‘Ye Olde…’ to imply antiquity.  I imagine few people owners of Ye Olde Tea Shoppes know that ‘ye’ should still be pronounced ‘the’, not /ji:/ (’yee’).

Unfortunately (in my mind) the most likely place you will see thorn in English these days would be as part of a cheeky emoticon (smiley).  :-Þ is a person with their tongue sticking out.

Now if someone asks if you’ve done anything interesting today, you can tell them you were looking at þorn on the internet.

The capital of Thailand is abbreviated by all Thais to Krung Thep, and referred to as Bangkok, meaning literally ‘grove of the wild plums’. But, bearing in mind that there are no spaces between words in written Thai, its full correct name is:

Krungthephphramahanakhonbowonratanakossinmahintharayuthayamahadilokphiphobnovpharadradchataniburiromudomsantisug

meaning: City of Angels, Great City and Residence of the Emerald Buddha, Impregnable City of the God Indra, Grand Capital of the World, Endowed with the Nine Precious Gems, Abounding in Enormous Royal Palaces which resemble the Heavenly Abode where reigns the Reincarnated God, a City given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm.

It rather leaves the Welsh

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwillantysiliogogogoch

meaning St Mary’s Church by the pool of the white hazel trees, near the rapid whirlpool, by the red cave of the Church of St Tysilio in the shade.

At the other end of the scale are three places called A (in Denmark, Norway and Sweden), and two more, in Alaska and France, called Y.

Here’s an interesting quote about Roosevelt’s reaction to a caricature once drawn of him that was being passed around the office. Sounds like rather a nice chap.

When he was Police Commisioner in New York… he came to dine one evening in great glee. He had gone to his office that morning and found the personnel at Police Headquarters gathered around a letter delivered by the postman; clerks and stenographers were tittering nervously, and hesitated to show it. “And here it is,” he said, pulling it out of his pocket. It bore no other address than a pair of glasses over a double row of clenched teeth. He was enchanted. “Few men, “ he said, “live to see their own hieroglyph.”

Marjorie Terry Chandler, Roman Spring: Memoirs, 1934