Myask wrote:
The thorn (Þ/þ), long s (ſ), ash (æ) and ethel (œ) ligatures would have words with you;
Most linguists don't even consider them part of Modern English's orthography though. Historically, yes. Presently, no. They're dead.
Myask wrote:
umlauts (or rather, diaresis, as naïve is from French) and other accents (mêlée) are only lately (decades) dying out. The en-yay ñ will likely not soon (jalapeño).
Those characters are from loan-words however, and were never part of English to begin with. Although you'll see them plenty inside English writing, they're still not native to the English writing system. Drag was correct (pedantry aside as well) , as "English" in a present day sense technically only has 26 characters. Well, there used to be more, but that's a secret to everybody. Classified intel, government secrets, aliens, etc.
Sik wrote:
Actually, é at the end of a word is not dead either because it's needed to indicate that e is pronounced (e.g. maté - no, not the same thing as mate). Note that jalapeño is taken from Spanish as far as I know (where ñ is a letter).
Maté is also a borrowed word too , also Spanish
Well to be more exact, the French borrowed it from the Spaniards, who borrowed it from the Quechua, and now everyone uses it.