Anyone up for a revival?Ī useful update from the University of Michigan’s John Lawler:Įth/Edh (ð) and ash (æ) are letters in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and also frequently-used phonemic symbols for English. It still had the same pronunciation and everything, it was just considered to be part of the alphabet and called “ æ sc” or “ash”after the ash Futhark rune, for which it was used as a substitute when transcribing into Latin What you may not know, however, is that at one time the ae grapheme (as it’s now known) was an honorary English letter back in the days of Old English. It’s even still used stylistically in words today, like æther and æon.
You’re probably familiar with this guy from old-fashioned Greek or Roman style text, especially the kind found in churches. Hence naming things like, “Ye Olde Magazine of Interesting Facts” (just as an example, of course).Īnd here’s the old familiar “ash,” as in Cæsar.
And, since French printing presses didn’t have thorn anyway, it just became common to replace it with a y. We replaced it with “th” over time-thorn fell out of use because Gothic-style scripting made the letters y and thorn look practically identical. Thorn, which was pronounced exactly like the “th” in its name, is actually still around today in Icelandic. Originally, it was an entirely different letter called thorn, which derived from the Old English runic alphabet, Futhark. Have you ever seen a place that calls itself “ye olde whatever”? As it happens, that’s not a “y”, or, at least, it wasn’t supposed to be. A must-read over at mental floss features a few more. The other far-flung rejects come from Iceland, Rome, and elsewhere. The sad story is that this most useful letter didn’t make it into the final cut for our 26-letter alphabet. Before too long, however, people just began using thorn for both (and later ‘th’) and so eth slowly became unnecessary.” As such, you’d often see texts with both eth and thorn depending on the required pronunciation. Back in the old days, the difference was much more distinct. “Note that, depending on your regional accent, there may not be much of a difference (or any at all) in the two pronunciations anyway, but that’s Modern English. “Originating from Irish, it was meant to represent a slightly different pronunciation of the “th” sound, more like that in ‘thought’ or ‘thing’ as opposed to the one found in ‘this’ or ‘them.’ (The first is the voiceless dental fricative, the second is the voiced dental fricative). Ever wonder why we use the same letters “th” for the “this” and “thin”? It is not always so in foreign languages – and didn’t have to be in ours.
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