Re: The letter Sharp S and the English language

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Monday, March 25, 2013 1:12:22 PM UTC-7, Eryndlia Mavourneen wrote:

 
> It has been many, many years since I looked at Old or Middle English; however, it would make sense that during the time of the Norman invasion, which created Middle English (French influence), there would be a mix of writing styles, just as there was a mix of spellings and pronunciations.  As a couple of for instances, final "e" was pronounced as in Brook-e, and a combination of French (the court) and English (the commoners) was frequently used to help ensure clarity of intent as in "Cease and desist!"

I think it's also the Normans' fault that we don't have wonderful letters like thorn and yogh and edh in English any more.  Too bad.  Wouldn't it be better if we could write something like

wiþ Ada.Text_IO;
procedure Display_Value (B : Boolean) is
begin
   if B ðen
       Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("true");
   else
       Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("false");
   end if;
end;

Clearly our world would be improved if we could write that.  Or maybe that's just the Guinneſs in me talking ...

                        -- Adam