Eth
Ð | |
---|---|
Ð ð | |
Time period | ~800 to present |
Sisters | None |
Transliteration equivalents | d |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | th, dh |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
Eth (
It was also used in
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
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 [
Faroese
In
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
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
- ^ Marsden, Richard (2004). The Cambridge Old English Reader. Cambridge University Press. p. xxix.
- S2CID 163075636.
- ISBN 9780776604695.
- ISBN 9780367581565. Archived from the original(PDF) on 10 July 2022. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
The types used by Caxton and his contemporaries originated in Holland and Belgium, and did not provide for the continuing use of elements of the Old English alphabet such as thorn <þ>, eth <ð>, and yogh <ʒ>. The substitution of visually similar typographic forms has led to some anomalies which persist to this day in the reprinting of archaic texts and the spelling of regional words. The widely misunderstood 'ye' occurs through a habit of printer's usage that originates in Caxton's time, when printers would substitute the <y> (often accompanied by a superscript <e>) in place of the thorn <þ> or the eth <ð>, both of which were used to denote both the voiced and non-voiced sounds, /ð/ and /θ/ (Anderson, D. (1969) The Art of Written Forms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p 169)
- ^ Testament Newydd (1567) [The 1567 New Testament], archived from the original on 2012-01-29, retrieved 2011-01-30.
- ^ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
Further reading
- 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, 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.