alt Hacker NewsLanguages often simplify as they evolve, dropping "annoying" characters like æ. In fact, it was replaced by "e" (or ae itself) in most cases as the words got imported by other languages.
Languages often simplify as they evolve, dropping "annoying" characters like æ. In fact, it was replaced by "e" (or ae itself) in most cases as the words got imported by other languages.
A personal hypothesis is that additional characters were much simpler in the age of handwriting, most of the history of literacy, compared to the age of print, the current age.
Using handwriting, additional characters are simple and in fact Medieval European scribes used many abbreviations, etc. When you need to set type on a printing press, or even input a character not already on your computer keyboard, the barrier is higher.