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Comment by turbinerneiter | Hacker News Reader

It's our revenge for the "th", my dear Englishman.

Historically, this sound was denoted by a letter called thorn (Þ, þ), which you may find poetically appropriate.

That’s why we have the "ch" which they cannot sound properly. It always ends up sounding like "sh" or "ck"

I find it hilarious that my compatriots try so hard to learn to pronounce the th when a good many brits just use an f sound.

What you mean bruv?

How to Cockney speakers say words like "fifth" or "sixth" though? I've always wondered. Can't just be "fif", can it?

Fif and Sixf are heard enough here in America; enough that both fif and fifth sound fine to me.

The BBC pronounces 'sixth' as though it was spelled 'sikth'

Native english speaker here.

Hardly anyone enunciates the 'x' in a word like 'sixth'. I say 'sikth' (and I fancy myself a fairly eloquent speaker). It's got too many consonant sounds; the human tongue just isn't agile enough for a word like that. You might get it properly-enunciated by a university don, or certain kinds of very pernickety radio presenters.

Me too. I think that difficulty is restricted to UK and then maybe only England. I know pretty much everyone in Ireland pronounces the 'x', and I don't recall any Scottish people doing it the BBC way. I've no idea about the US, Aus, etc.

YMMV

FWIW, the sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick.

Is “th” the fault of Englishmen or of a German?

Specifically Gutenburg and his hellish press. Before movable type English had the letter “thorn” - perhaps some of the pronunciation problems arose then?

But what do I know? As a nativ spanich spikr, I rimembr bing prplexd

That doesn't make sense. Typesets are just symbols carved into metal. You can just make your own typeset for your own language and in this case all it required was one more letter so the barrier to entry is practically zero.

IIRC the movable type printing press was imported from the continent when printing in England started, and by importing that includes the typesets and staff to operate the printing presses. French printers typesetting English text were not very motivated to establish extra characters.

Random related anecdote: For years the Mormons would distribute their Book of Mormon in German translations but these were printed overseas and they didn't have the 'ß' character, so they used the greek letter β to substitute 'daβ' instead of 'daß', etc. We tend to forget living in the digital publishing age how limiting mechanical workflows can be.

> We tend to forget living in the digital publishing age how limiting mechanical workflows can be.

This β <-> ß confusion endured into the digital age.

For example code page 850 has a character called "Sharp s Small" but it is placed among Greek characters. And several fonts didn't display an ß but a β https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437#cite_ref-21

In this case, the double use was probably intentional (to save space in the limited character set range) but still confusing to the reader when they encountered the wrong glyph.

Yes, of the six letters lost from the English alphabet, thorn and yogh are probably the most consequential for the spelling mess. In this, though, we can safely blame the French. ;)

https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2016/12/07/episode-87-th...

Learning the correct pronunciation of "th" was tough though. :)

I can do it on individual words, but as soon as I speak in full sentences and with speed, it comes out however it wants.

Though and tough aren't a problem though, "thinking" in the middle of a sentence is real tough though.

1. Push your tongue against your upper inner-teeth.

2. Let out all the air out until your tongue separates said teeth

Try the "ll" sound in Welsh. Sounds way cool.

so, German grammarians, irritated by a defect of English, debated long among themselves as to how they could mess up their own language in revenge?

Yes, sadly we lost our ability to tell jokes in the process.

I don't know, as a Dane it seems we spend a lot of time talking about the German sense of humor.

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