3 ms·
Thorn and eth of course still exist in Icelandic, and eth still exists in Faroese. Interestingly, the IPA symbol for the "th" in "the" is eth, but the symbol f
by mathieuh 3y ago
Thorn and eth of course still exist in Icelandic, and eth still exists in Faroese.
Interestingly, the IPA symbol for the "th" in "the" is eth, but the symbol for the "th" in "think" is θ (Greek theta)
"The" = /ðə/
"Think" = /θɪŋk/
Not sure why that is, I'm only an amateur linguist
- BerislavLopac 3y agoAnd Đ/đ also exists in Croatian, but for a completely different sound (something like the "j" in "juice").
- adrian_b 3y agoI do not know if this is the reason, but when reading quickly thorn is very easy to confuse with p or b.
- frogulis 3y agoJust had a browse of Wikipedia and am now more confused. It states that the consonants of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romic_alphabet are the same as were adopted by IPA, except "⟨ñ ᵹ ɹ λ ꞁ⟩ were eventually replaced with ⟨ɲ ɣ ʕ ʎ ʟ⟩ in the IPA". No mention of ⟨θ⟩ in that sentence. However, looking at the table on that page, the "th" in "think" is represented by ⟨þ⟩! Going back to the first version of IPA on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_International_Phonetic_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_International_P... the "th" in "think" is represented by ⟨θ⟩. Looking at the other two major early influences mentioned in that article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Phonotypic_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Phonotypic_Alphabet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeotype_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeotype_alphabet neither uses ⟨θ⟩ for that sound either. By the looks of it, English Phonotypic Alphabet uses a capital theta to represent a vowel sound!