sparkle

Haha yeah. Soon after becoming a linguist your first realization is how little everyone else knows about or cares to know about linguistics. Btw I edited to add a little more information if you're interested.

Þorn was in use since Fuþark (Germanic runes) but wasn't used to write Anglo-Saxon until around the 8th century. It died out after the printing press came into use, usually imported from France (or Germany or something occasionally) and not using some characters found in English at the time. Because of the lack of a Þ/þ key, typers started to use "Y" as a substitute (which is why you see e.g. "ye olde" instead of "the olde"). Eventually þorn just disappeared and people used the spellings using "th". A similar thing happened to Yogh (Ȝ/ȝ), where it was substituted for by "Z" (With e.g. "MacKenȝie" yielding "MacKenzie" instead of "MacKenyie") until it disappeared and spellings using "y"/"gh" (or "j"/"ch" when appropriate) replaced spellings using "ȝ".

Ðæt (Ð/ð/đ) was mostly replaced by þorn by Middle English so it didn't get to be slain by the printing press. Wynn (Ƿ/ƿ) was replaced by "uu"/"w"/"u" by Middle English too. Ash (Æ/æ) didn't die off, in large part because it was available on many printing presses of the time due to its usage in French and Latin, but it became obsolete for English words and was mostly used to replace "ae" in loanwords (especially from Latin and Greek).

There were some other funny things in Old English & Middle English orthography; like omitting n/m and writing a macron over the preceding vowel to indicate the sound (like "cā" instead of "can"), in the same way that it occured in Latin/Latinate languages which lead to "ñ" and "ã"/"õ" in Spanish/Portuguese/Galician.

You would HATE being a person who could read in the Middle English era. There was no standardized spelling, people used many different conventions/regional spellings, and it was mostly either phonetic spelling or random French bullshit. Also some earlier writers used really conservative spelling to emulate Old English. It was the wild west out there.

For example, here's a (not comprensive) list of the variant spellings you may see for each second person pronoun:

Singular Nominative 2P:

thou, thoue, thow, thowe, thu, thue, þeu, þeou, thouȝ, thugh, thogh, ðhu; þou, þoue, þow, þowe, þu, þue, þouȝ, þugh, þogh, þo

(after alveolars and in contractions): tou, towe, touȝ, tu, to, te

Singular Objective 2P:

the, thee, thei, thi, thie, thy, ðe, de, þeo, þhe, yhe, ye, þe, þee, þi, þy

(after alveolars and in contractions): te

Singular Genitive, Dative, and Possessive 2P:

(usually before consonants): thi, thy, thei, they, yhi, yi, þhi; þei, þey, þy

(usually before vowels and "h"): thin, thyn, thine, thyne, thien, thyen, thein, theyn, thinne, yin; þin, þyn, þine, þyne, þinne; þines

(female referent): þinre, þire, þinen

(after "t" or "d"): ti, ty, tin, tyn, tine, tines

Plural Nominative 2P:

ye, yee, yeȝ, yhe, yie, iye, iȝe, hye, hie; ȝe, ȝee, ȝhe, ȝie, ȝeo; ge, gie, geo

Plural Objective 2P:

you, yow, youe, yowe, yo, yoe, yogh, yau, yaw, yeu, yew, yhu, yu, yw, yhow, yhou; ȝou, ȝow, ȝouȝ, ȝowȝ, ȝowe, ȝo, ȝu, ȝw, ȝuw, ȝue, ȝiou, ȝeu, ȝew, ȝewe, ȝau, ȝaw, ȝhou, ȝiu, ȝeou, ȝehw, ȝhowe; gou, gu, giu, geu, geau; ou, owe, eou, eow, eow, eo, eu, euwȝ, æu, hou, heou, heu

Plural Genitive & Dative 2P:

your, youre, yowr, yowre, ȝour, ȝoure yowyr, yowur, yor, yur, yure, yeur, yhure, yhour, yhoure; ȝowyr, ȝowur, ȝor, ȝore, ȝur, ȝure, ȝiore, ȝhour, ȝhoure, ȝaure, ȝiure, ȝiwer, ȝeur, ȝeure, ȝeuer, ȝeuwer, ȝewer, ȝewere; gur, gure, giur, giure, giuor, giuer, giuwer, giwer; ihore, ihoire, iure, eour, eoure, eouer, eouwer, eouwere, eower, eowwer, eore, eur, eure, euwer, euwere, eowrum, æure, our, oure, or, ore, ouer, ouwer, ouwere, ower, owur, hour

(early ME): þinen (genitive), þinum (dative), þirum (dative fem.)

Plural Possessive 2P:

youres, yourez, yours, youris, yurs, yowres, yowris, yowrys, yourn, youren; ȝours, ȝoures, ȝouris, ȝourys, ȝowers, ȝores, ȝures, ȝuris, ȝhurs, ȝourn, ȝouren; eowræs

You can find a lot more about Middle English spellings in LALME (A Linguistics Atlas of Late Mediæval English) (electronic version here)

Some of the more innovative spellings come from Northern Middle English/Northumbria (northern England and southern Scotland, though the dialects of the latter would largely split off and develop mostly on its own in the early stages of Middle English and become Scots) and to a lesser extent Midlands Middle English/Mercian, in large part due to significant past influence of North Germanic/Scandinavian languages; i.e., Old Norse, which was somewhat mutually intelligible with Old English and caused/progressed both the loss of inflections and the formation & solidification of Modern English syntax (in particular, Old English syntax shifted to become near-identical to Old Norse syntax; Old English also entirely lost inflection of grammatical gender, grammarical case, etc. and adopted many core vocabulary of Old Norse). Those changes happened primarily to facilitate communication with vikings in the Danelaw, since Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians were very eager to communicate with each other; things like declensions were very different in the two languages (the 12 different declensions of "the" probably weren't fun to deal with for Scandinavians), so Old English speakers started omitting or simplifying them, and they mostly died off in (early) Middle English. English also completely lost dual pronouns (pronouns with exactly 2 referents). Word order was primarily SVO in Old Norse, so Old English's relatively liberal word order (or lack of consistent word order) was simplified/regularized significantly to be more SVO.

Southern Middle English – the dialects of West Saxon and Kent – were significantly more conservative (partly due to having next to no influence from Norse). Those are where many more conservative spellings are from. The West Saxon dialects were the most influential/dominant (especially due to the Kingdom of Wessex' great power) until the Norman Conquest, when East Midlands English (especially around London) took over that role.

Southern American English & Maritime Canadian English varieties were both primarily based on more southern English varieties – specifically, the time's London English and West Country English. Appalachian English was also heavily influenced by Scottish English and the English of northern England. Canadian English in general was based on both Southern and Midlands English. Meanwhile, New England's English was primarily derived from East Midlands dialects. Generally, dialects derived from the time's West Country English are significantly more conservative and more similar to the general speech of ~15th century England, while more Midlands (of the time) influenced American and Canadian varieties are similar to standard ~17-18th century English. Dialects influenced by the time's Scottish English and Northern English also generally contain a lot more conservative Anglic constructions – modern Appalachian/Southern American English varieties and modern Scottish/Northern varieties share a large amount of vocabulary and other features which were lost in other dialects.

Standard varieties of Modern British English are comparatively generally significantly more innovative and don't share many features with Middle & Early Modern English varieties – general British English started diverging greatly from most other English dialects around the mid-to-late 18th century and early 19th century. This is also a reason why Australia and New Zealand English have a lot of features which seem to only partially agree with other English varieties. For example, the trap-bath vowel split, which was partially completed in Australia and is present in certain words, but not all words, and has variation in some words. When Australia was being colonized, Southern English varieties had recently begun undergoing the split, and it was considered a "Cockneyism" until Received Pronunciation was formed in the late 19th century and embraced it; it wasn't fully progressed until around that time, which is why New Zealand English (which came from immigrants in the mid 19th century) mostly agrees with Southern English on those vowels.

The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across. It's physically impossible to settle that in 10,000 years

Elixir? Is that the weird older cousin of Gleam?

mfw non-commutativeness

https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo

REAL

Off the top of my head, a lot. @FlyingSquid, @The_Picard_Maneuver, @AngryCommieKender, @captainlezbian, @DragonTypeWyvern, @Cryophilia, @masquenox, @jimmydoreisalefty, @SatansMaggotyCumFart, @BonesOfTheMoon, @1984, @Cryophilia, @Nurse_Robot. Some of them just have very memorable or kick-ass names (Nurse Robot? Why didn't I think of that???), and some of them are unavoidable on the site.

I also usually remember the active conservative and "centrist" specimens on this site, like intensely_human, IsThisAnAI, TubularTittyFrog, SpaceCowboy, Melvin_Ferd. I tend to strongly disagree with them a lot.

I uninstalled one drive immediately, it's so annoying. It's also really fucky with when it updates files. If I need to use it, I'll go on my browser

Isn't the context about the overthrow of the Russian Empire by communist revolutionaries? Not modern first-worlders? Am I missing something here? Why would "foreign imperialists" be relevant to modern first-worlders?

That being said, to actually answer your line of questioning, it is the correct solution to change society while ALSO overthrowing and locking up the oppressors. That may involve the elite dying, but those deaths are necessary. Peaceful reformism and strict nonviolence policies never works – unless you consider extremely high amounts of unnecessary suffering for innocents to achieve comparatively minor goals as "success" (cough cough Nelson Mandela). Even Gandhi and MLK (who took most of his influence from Gandhi), although nonviolence advocates, were well aware that violence is often necessary to achieve a better future, and much of the work they did was to the benefit of violent/militant revolutionaries (although of course they're portrayed a lot more neutered/"deradicalized", as well as the roles of complete compliance to nonviolence being completely overstated while violent methods are hidden away as if they didn't exist, not even to be mentioned).

After capture though, death pentalty is not the way to go, but life imprisonment is fine and they may have a chance to be released later, mostly depending on their status/loyalty. I'm sure a lot of "revolutionaries" would disagree with me though, but I'm not an "eye for an eye" believer... I suppose if you're in a situation where the former imperialist rulers would likely have power to directly cause damage while detained or incarcerated, or they're likely to escape or be "rescued", then it would be justified to chop off their heads or put a bullet in their cranium.

The core issue is that these people (the oppressors/ruling class) can not be rehabilitated, and are likely to stir up considerable trouble and disrupt when they have the opportunity, either in a bid to regain their power, or out of a large feeling of loss that makes them go nuts. You can't always reasonably ensure that they won't try to fuck shit up in the future.

That's just my view, but of course there are people other than me who are just bloodthirsty for vengeance (my opinion is that they're not thinking all too rationally and it's the same mindset as parents that hit/yell at their kids, they're convincing themselves it's for the greater good but in reality it's just attempting to satisfy their feelings of anger). Either way, I see their lives as considerably less valuable than the lives of the people they oppressed, not because they have an inherently evil soul or something, but because they are already too far gone and only can bring chaos to the world.

I think that's good when the objective is to improve the language. One key thing that holds many languages back is that they're stuck with historical baggage, and it can be pretty difficult to replace/remove "outdated" stuff without breaking everything.

I do not want to be stuck using Python 2, or Scala 2 (although there exist people who use Scala 2 instead of Scala 3).