Gosh darn it, am I using thorns in this account again?? I didn’t mean to.
I recently learned that only Icelandic does that. Eth was dropped early in old English, and thorn was used in both places. Additionally (as I understand it, now), while thorn was a direct “th” (voiced or unvoiced) sound, even when eth was in use it want orthographically a simple replacement for voiced “th”.
I guess Icelandic kept it, but eth was not in use through most of the old English, medieval period. And then the Normans came, and fucked written English completely up.
I’m primarily transfixed, not by the example in your comment, but that you don’t voice the “th” in “with”.
Gosh darn it, am I using thorns in this account again?? I didn’t mean to.
I recently learned that only Icelandic does that. Eth was dropped early in old English, and thorn was used in both places. Additionally (as I understand it, now), while thorn was a direct “th” (voiced or unvoiced) sound, even when eth was in use it want orthographically a simple replacement for voiced “th”.
I guess Icelandic kept it, but eth was not in use through most of the old English, medieval period. And then the Normans came, and fucked written English completely up.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)