AI overview
Þ (called "thorn") is a letter that was used in Old English and Icelandic to represent the "th" sound. It's historically important because it shows how different languages have used various symbols to write sounds that modern English now spells with two letters together.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Writing system
- Adapted from Futhark and Futhorc into Latin script
- Type
- Alphabetic and logographic
- Language of origin
- Old English language , Old Norse language
- Sound values
- [ θ ] , [ ð ] , [ θ̠ ] , [ ð̠ ] , [ tʰ ] , [ z ] , / θ ɔːr n /
- In unicode
- U+00DE, U+00FE
- Development
- ᚦ Þ þ
- Time period
- ~800 to present
- Descendants
- ꝥ
- Sisters
- None
- Transliterations
- Θ , th
- Associated graphs
- th, dh
- Writing direction
- Left-to-right
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
Þ (minuscule: þ), called thorn or þorn (/θɔːrn/ thorn), is a Latin-script letter used in the Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic alphabet, Middle Scots, and some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia but was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the rune ᚦ (Thurisaz) in the Elder Futhark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic.
It represented a voiceless dental fricative [θ] or its voiced counterpart [ð]. However, in modern Icelandic it represents a laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative [θ̠], similar to th as in the English word thick, or a (usually apical) voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative [ð̠], similar to th as in the English word the. Modern Icelandic usage generally excludes the latter, which is instead represented with the letter eth ⟨Ð, ð⟩; however, [ð̠] may occur as an allophone of /θ̠/, and written ⟨þ⟩, when it appears in an unstressed pronoun or adverb after a voiced sound.