wolframhydroxide

"Mexico" is one of only two cases where I don't follow the "correct" pronunciation as often as possible (the other being 'axolotl', because if I pronounce it with the correct Nahuatl 'sh' sound, nobody knows what I'm talking about). If the topic is brought up, I wait to see how someone else says it. If I'm speaking to my largely-latina students, many of whom are from mexico, then I'm obviously going to pronounce it as an 'h'/'j'. However, many of them also pronounce it with an x when speaking in English, so I just tend to go with 'correct' unless one of my interlocutors says it the american way first. I don't feel particularly bad about this, since the word "Mexico" also comes from Nahuatl, but nobody actually pronounces it the original way in mexico, so I go with whatever my interlocutor goes with first. (For the same reason I'm not going to call Germany "Deutschland" unless I'm speaking to someone whom I know to be German.)

In general, I try to pronounce loan words the correct way in their mother tongue, whether they be Maori, Xhosa, or French. And yes, I know this makes me sound like a pretentious dickwad when I say "Kwah-sahn' ", rather than "cruh-sahnt", and I'll take sounding like a pretentious dickwad over giving in to my American exceptionalism any day.

It may get louder, but does it go to eleven?

"We have managed to replicate the Torment Nexus, from the famous and excellent movie 'Don't Create the Torment Nexus'! Look at how shiny and ominous it is!"

Thank you! This is exactly what happens to Luisa rey in the book, though she manages to survive. Jesus, even her car looks the same.

A fair criticism. Consider: what keyboard do you think they're using to type all those thorns? Are they putting in the Unicode for it each time? Copy pasting it? I'd be willing to bet that they're using an Icelandic keyboard, and then they're just ignoring the fact that they are using it wrong. There is only one language on earth that still uses the thorn, and that language doesn't use it voiced. So no, I maintain that they are using it wrong, objectively, because the only living language that does still use it doesn't use it that way. It irks me in the same way that I am incensed by stupid Americans pronouncing Central American or Chinese names containing the letter "x" as if it's in the word "mix". If it's from Mayan or related languages, or in Chinese, that shit is pronounced "sh". It's just offensive, as someone who studies languages, to see these graphemes being tortured.

Can jou imagine if someone just kept insisting on tjping in Englisj, but tjej replaced everj instance of "h" witj "j", because "tjat's jow it is in Spanisj", but tjen tjej would ALSO use "j" instead of "y", because "tjat's jow it's used in Icelandic", even wjen tjose letters aren't being used to represent tjose sounds?

Wouldn't jou tjink tjat person was a bit of a prick, and probablj just doing it to grab attention, and, oj jeaj, definitivelj wrong?

Indeed. There was a time period when people decided that they didn't need to make the distinction anymore, then they started using "th" entirely. However, my issue is that, as someone who reads both old English and old Norse texts regularly, in both of these languages the eth represents voiced, the thorn voiceless. It churns my guts every time I see them torturing the thorn like that, and so I downvote.

Indeed. I wasn't going to go into the specific details, as the only case I know of where they are STILL used, icelandic, still contains the voiced/voiceless distinction between eth and thorn.

I have tried to tell you, the only reason I keep down voting your comments is that you're using the thorn to represent the voiced dental fricative, which should rightly be rendered as an 'eth': ð

I would personally stop downvoting you if you just made it correct. Ðen, at least, you would be presenting legible þoughts. It hurts my brain, which has spent so many hours reading the þorn used correctly in actual manuscripts, to see it so þoroughly tortured in words like "ðen", "ðan", or "ðough", all of which contain the voiced dental fricative in modern English. It similarly hurts when you use it in "ðe", because nobody has said "the" with a voiceless fricative in 500 years.

As I keep trying to tell everyone, this is not how you actually use a thorn.

The thorn is voiceless, and EVERY SINGLE CASE here in the TLC is voiced (as in the 'th' in 'the'). As such, they should ACTUALLY be using the letter 'eth': ð

This represents the voiced dental fricative.

If you are going to make some ridiculous philological point, you should at least be correct about it, especially when you're coming at it from a sense of traditionalist purity.

Æfter all, ðe æctual ƿay to ƿrite þings using old englisc spelling rules is nearly incomprehensible to ðe modern reader, hƿat ƿiþ all ðe changes æfter 1066. It just makes you seem ecgy and ƿyrd

(Note that I'm actually being fairly lax with the previous paragraph to make it slightly more comprehensible)

Let the record reflect that that is NOT how it's used. The thorn is voiceless, and EVERY SINGLE CASE here in the TLC (and your own comment) is voiced (as in the 'th' in 'then'). As such, they should ACTUALLY be using the letter 'eth': ð

This represents the voiced dental fricative.

Let the record reflect that that is NOT how it's used. The thorn is voiceless, and EVERY SINGLE CASE here in the TLC is voiced (as in the 'the' in 'the'). As such, they should ACTUALLY be using the letter 'eth': ð

This represents the voiced dental fricative.

Honestly, if they used the thorn correctly, I wouldn't have a problem, but they consistently use it for voiced dental fricatives, when the voiced version of thorn is the 'eth': ð. (Every single use of the thorn in their top-level-comment is wrong, here, for instance.)

Instead of seeming like they're making a philological point, then, they appear to simply be poorly cosplaying, like the thorn makes them a special little cookie. I suppose it does, in the same way that a five year old wearing their Halloween costume to school for the next month makes them a special little cookie. Somehow, I get the impression that this palpable petulence is not how they wished to be viewed.