Ha! Engish is cool, too. German has its Eszett (ß) and Spanish its eñe (ñ); the world is full of accents and umlauts and other characters that make life interesting and typing difficult. By contrast, English is plain and boring.
But it wasn't always so. We had - ta da! - The Thorn.
From Michael Leclerc of the New England Historic Genealogical Society:
One of the most abused of all letters (and former letters) in the English language is the Thorn. In Latin, the letter was written as Þ (capital) or þ (lowercase). In English, however, the thorn looks like the modern letter “y.” The thorn is no longer used in everyday English. The Thorn was pronounced the same way as the digraph “th” in modern English. In proper usage it is NEVER pronounced as the letter “y.”
It is often found on old gravestones, usually in its y-shape followed by a superscript letter ("Here lies ye body of"), and in the names of stores attempting to appear quaint (Ye Olde Coffee Shop).
Lest you think this is all ancient history, the thorn can also be found in Unicode, on Icelandic keyboards, and in html (þ = þ).
I think that's cool.
