4 ms·

Both used to refer to the same sound (the first sound of thing), which mutated into what we have today (as in the), in part due to surrounding sounds (note, for

Both used to refer to the same sound (the first sound of thing), which mutated into what we have today (as in the), in part due to surrounding sounds (note, for example, that words ending in th are soft/unvoiced). The presence of two different characters has something to do with the integration of Latin and runic alphabets, but the choice of which was used isn't clear to me.

gerdesj 8y ago
"th" can still have several different sounds depending on accent and word. The more obvious are t' ie the northern english eg t' mill (its quite hard to write down for those unacquainted with it). Then, of course we have t'ing for thing in some areas. Often the th in that becomes closer in sound to f when compared to the th in this. I personally have a slightly varied accent that generally homes in on RP and I can make "th" sound quite distinct in different words and contexts from a hard ending to "the" to something sounding similar to "fee" (also "the"). The above variations are in a tiny subset of en_ and across a probably tiny piece of time. Nowadays we have phones and TV etc which I think probably works towards homogenising our vocalisations. I suspect that Old English was a bit more complex than is generally thought, if care is not taken.
- gumby 8y ago
  Well, it's a language that existed for quite a while (probably at least as long as Shakespeare->us) with a small amount of surviving written literature so we really only have glimpses of it. I remember realizing at one point that I had read everything in Old French in the university library, and thinking that that probably meant I had probably read everything surviving in Old French.
  - gerdesj 8y ago
    The term "Old French" is probably as daft as "Old English" 8) I recall my sister in law studied Occitan. Oh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French - another rabbit hole to bookmark for spelunking.
petecox 8y ago
The wikipedia page on the Icelandic alphabet [0] sheds some light, þorn is runic, eð is from 'd'. Icelandic employs a 19th century reconstruction of the old norse alphabet noting that "Various old features, like ð, had actually not seen much use in the later centuries" - which corresponds to their merger into one digraph 'th' in English. The article also notes that the letter ð undergoes a devoicing depending on its surroundings. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_orthography#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_orthography#Histor...
dunham 8y ago
I dug up my old norse text* and thought I'd share the relevant details in case someone finds it interesting (this is Old Norse, not Old English): p.266 > Of these additional letters þ and ð were borrowed from Old English. The rune þ was known already, but its use in manuscript came from England. p.268 > þ in the oldest Icelandic manuscripts was used both for the voiceless sound of th in English thin and the voiced sound in then. About 1225 ð was introduced, and gradually þ came to be used only initially, and ð in other positions. þ then represented only the voiceless sound, while ð, except when following a voiceless consonant (rare, as ð then usually became t) was voiced, as in faðir, við. This is where I got the impression that ð is voiced. *: An Introduction to Old Norse, E.V. Gordon, Oxford Univ. Press.

gerdesj 8y ago

"th" can still have several different sounds depending on accent and word. The more obvious are t' ie the northern english eg t' mill (its quite hard to write down for those unacquainted with it). Then, of course we have t'ing for thing in some areas. Often the th in that becomes closer in sound to f when compared to the th in this. I personally have a slightly varied accent that generally homes in on RP and I can make "th" sound quite distinct in different words and contexts from a hard ending to "the" to something sounding similar to "fee" (also "the"). The above variations are in a tiny subset of en_ and across a probably tiny piece of time. Nowadays we have phones and TV etc which I think probably works towards homogenising our vocalisations. I suspect that Old English was a bit more complex than is generally thought, if care is not taken.

gumby 8y ago
Well, it's a language that existed for quite a while (probably at least as long as Shakespeare->us) with a small amount of surviving written literature so we really only have glimpses of it. I remember realizing at one point that I had read everything in Old French in the university library, and thinking that that probably meant I had probably read everything surviving in Old French.
- gerdesj 8y ago
  The term "Old French" is probably as daft as "Old English" 8) I recall my sister in law studied Occitan. Oh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French - another rabbit hole to bookmark for spelunking.

petecox 8y ago

The wikipedia page on the Icelandic alphabet [0] sheds some light, þorn is runic, eð is from 'd'. Icelandic employs a 19th century reconstruction of the old norse alphabet noting that "Various old features, like ð, had actually not seen much use in the later centuries" - which corresponds to their merger into one digraph 'th' in English. The article also notes that the letter ð undergoes a devoicing depending on its surroundings. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_orthography#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_orthography#Histor...

dunham 8y ago

I dug up my old norse text* and thought I'd share the relevant details in case someone finds it interesting (this is Old Norse, not Old English): p.266 > Of these additional letters þ and ð were borrowed from Old English. The rune þ was known already, but its use in manuscript came from England. p.268 > þ in the oldest Icelandic manuscripts was used both for the voiceless sound of th in English thin and the voiced sound in then. About 1225 ð was introduced, and gradually þ came to be used only initially, and ð in other positions. þ then represented only the voiceless sound, while ð, except when following a voiceless consonant (rare, as ð then usually became t) was voiced, as in faðir, við. This is where I got the impression that ð is voiced. *: An Introduction to Old Norse, E.V. Gordon, Oxford Univ. Press.