Eth (/ɛð/ edh, uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð; also spelled edh or eð), known as ðæt in Old English,[1] is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese (in which it is called edd), and Elfdalian.
Ð | |
---|---|
Ð ð | |
Usage | |
Writing system | Latin script |
Type | Alphabetic and logographic |
Language of origin | Old English Old Norse |
Phonetic usage | [ð] [θ] [ð̠] /ˈɛð/ |
Unicode codepoint | U+00D0, U+00F0 |
History | |
Development | |
Time period | ~800 to present |
Sisters | None |
Transliteration equivalents | d |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | th, dh |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with ⟨dh⟩, and later ⟨d⟩.
It is often transliterated as ⟨d⟩.
The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Old English
In Old English, ⟨ð⟩ (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with ⟨þ⟩ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone /ð/, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives both now spelled ⟨th⟩.
Unlike the runic letter ⟨þ⟩, ⟨ð⟩ is a modified Roman letter. Neither ⟨ð⟩ nor ⟨þ⟩ was found in the earliest records of Old English. A study of Mercian royal diplomas found that ⟨ð⟩ (along with ⟨đ⟩) began to emerge in the early 8th century, with ⟨ð⟩ becoming strongly preferred by the 780s.[2] Another source indicates that the letter is "derived from Irish writing".[3]
Under the reign of King Alfred the Great, ⟨þ⟩ grew greatly in popularity and started to overtake ⟨ð⟩, and completely overtook it by Middle English. However, ⟨þ⟩ in turn died out by Early Modern English, mostly due to the rise of the printing press,[4] and was replaced by the digraph th.
Icelandic
In Icelandic, ⟨ð⟩, called "eð", represents an alveolar non-sibilant fricative, voiced [ð̠] intervocalically and word-finally, and voiceless [θ̠] otherwise, which form one phoneme, /θ/. Generally, /θ/ is represented by thorn ⟨Þ⟩ at the beginning of words and by ⟨ð⟩ elsewhere. The ⟨ð⟩ in the name of the letter is devoiced in the nominative and accusative cases: [ɛθ̠]. In the Icelandic alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ follows ⟨d⟩.
Faroese
In Faroese, ⟨ð⟩ is not assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons, but it indicates most glides. When ⟨ð⟩ appears before ⟨r⟩, it is in a few words pronounced [ɡ]. In the Faroese alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ follows ⟨d⟩.
Norwegian
In Olav Jakobsen Høyem's version of Nynorsk based on Trøndersk, ⟨ð⟩ was always silent, and was introduced for etymological reasons.
Welsh
⟨Ð⟩ has also been used by some in written Welsh to represent /ð/, which is normally represented as dd.[5]
Khmer
⟨Ð⟩ is sometimes used in Khmer romanization to represent ឍ thô.
Phonetic transcription
- /ð/ (U+00F0) represents a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
- /ᶞ/ (U+1D9E) is used in phonetic transcription.[6]
- ᴆ (U+1D06) is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.[7]
Computer encoding
Upper and lower case forms of eth have Unicode encodings:
- U+00D0 Ð LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH (Ð)
- U+00F0 ð LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH (ð)
These Unicode codepoints were inherited from ISO/IEC 8859-1 ("ISO Latin-1") encoding.
Modern uses
- The letter ⟨ð⟩ (written ) is sometimes used in mathematics and engineering textbooks, as a symbol for a spin-weighted partial derivative.
This operator gives rise to spin-weighted spherical harmonics.
- A capital eth is used as the currency symbol for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency.
See also
- African D – Variant of the Latin letter D used in African alphabets
- D
- D with stroke – Variant of the letter D, used in Sámi alphabets, Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet, and Vietnamese
- Insular script – Medieval writing system common to Ireland and England
- T
- Thorn – Letter of Old English and some Scandinavian languages
References
Further reading
- Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
- Pétursson, Magnus (1971), "Étude de la réalisation des consonnes islandaises þ, ð, s, dans la prononciation d'un sujet islandais à partir de la radiocinématographie" [Study of the realisation of Icelandic consonants þ, ð, s, in the pronunciation of an Icelandic subject from radiocinematography], Phonetica, 33 (4): 203–216, doi:10.1159/000259344, S2CID 145316121
External links
- "Thorn and eth: how to get them right", Operinan, Briem, archived from the original on 2019-07-26, retrieved 2010-08-22
- "Älvdalsk ortografi", Förslag till en enhetlig stavning för älvdalska (PDF) (in Swedish), February 2007, archived from the original (PDF) on February 6, 2007.