Did you know “the” is the most popular word in the English language?
An Australian innovator is very aware of that fact and thinks “the” deserves its own symbol.
Paul Mathis has spent over $30,000 developing and promoting a new keyboard character. It would represent “the” in the same way that the ampersand represents “and” or the “@” symbol represents “at.”
Check out the fancy promotional video he’s created to help, uh, spread the word. 🙂
Ћ
[tentblogger-youtube KZRaxXC63RI]
It turns out that adding a new character to millions of keyboards around the world is no easy task. NPR points out one major problem.
Mathis’ symbol for “the” is basically an uppercase “T” combined with a lowercase “h” so that the two letters have the same stem (Ћ). But oddly enough, this character already exists in Cyrillic script, particularly in the Serbian alphabet. It represents the “ch” sound, like in the English word “chew.”
Mathis’ first goal is making it available to the everyday mobile phone owner.
So far, Mathis has focused on encouraging smartphone users to download keyboards that include the new symbol. That strategy might work on Android, where there are numerous custom-designed keyboards in the Play Store, but it faces a major hurdle getting into the hands of iPhone users. iOS doesn’t allow third-party developed keyboards, so Mathis would need to convince Apple his character is worth including in the official iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad keyboard to get any traction on the platform—very unlikely.
What do you think?
Would you use this new character instead of typing the word “the” if it was available on your keyboard?
[via NPR]
Kevin at SiteWizard LLC says
This is an interesting idea. I could maybe see it catching on in third party Android keyboards, but not iOS or on physical keyboards. However on Android, keyboards like Swiftkey are smart enough to guess your next word. The word “the” commonly shows up on-screen before I’ve even started to type it. At most, I have two key-presses to get auto-complete for the word “the”. So if you have a good on-screen keyboard, this is probably unnecessary.
This reminds me of a speaker who tested his audience on their usage of English. He asked them, “Is it possible to end a sentence with the word ‘the?'” A woman in the audience was adamant, saying, “It is grammatically incorrect to end a sentence with the word ‘the!'” She didn’t realize that the question and her answer were both examples of grammatically correct sentences that end with ‘the.'” 🙂
John Hanlon says
Great point. Maybe the creator would have had a better chance 10 years ago before fancy smartphone keyboards.
Thanks for commenting!
Mike M says
With iOS, simply use the keyboard shortcut option (Settings>General) and copy and paste “Ћ” and use it as phrase for the “th” (which will be the shortcut). Once you do that every time you type “th”, it will use Ћ instead.
John Hanlon says
Great tip! I wonder if anyone will actually take the time to do that. Probably not since whoever will read what they wrote won’t know the meaning of Ћ. 🙂
Thanks for the comment!
Eric Dye says
#protip
Bronte says
Forgive my ignorance, but which came first? The @ symbol or people wanting a symbol for ‘at’? Same with ‘&’? Was it because of what the symbol meant that it was called “at”? Could it have possibly ended up as ‘in’ or ‘here’ or something? I don’t really get it.. @ and & are used in coding and web addresses, do you think the ‘the’ symbol would too? Or is it just something to try and make our lives go even faster?
My dad uses ‘v’ (pronounced vuh, not vee) occasionally in place of ‘the’..
John Hanlon says
I’m not familiar with the history of @ and &. That would be an interesting thing to look into.
Thanks for the comment!
James Cooper says
The @ symbol was originally used in accounting and commerce meaning ‘at the rate of’. So something like 5 Apples @ £2.
Over the years it became used for people @ a location, etc. Then it was picked up for email because people were @ a place!
As the video said the ampersand & used to be a letter in its own right!
James Cooper says
I guess the creator of the ‘new’ symbol has never heard of the old ‘Thorn’ letter (looked like Þ).
It did the ‘th’ job for hundreds of years in Old English and other ancient northern European languages!!!
In English it eventually kind of merged with Y (the printing press kind of killed it) but was never meant to sound like a Y. When you see things like ‘Ye Olde Blogger’, it’s really The Old (don’t pronounce the extra e) Blogger!
I think a resurgence of the Thorn is better than a new symbol!
Eric Dye says
Ha! Agreed.