English has simply abandoned the letters thorn and eth (and others), which was largely the result of the rise of printing (IIRC). It's interesting to me that t

English has simply abandoned the letters thorn and eth (and others), which was largely the result of the rise of printing (IIRC). It's interesting to me that this happened far enough back that the only time we tend to consider 'th' to be letterlike is when we need to explain pronunciation — e.g. when reaching a kid to read