Þ

Þ þ is a letter of the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets. It was also used in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, but was later replaced by the th.

His name is thorn or þorn (/θoɾn/) and derives from the rune ᚦ, also called thorn ("thorn") in Anglo-Saxon and thurs ("giant&# 34;) in Scandinavia.

It has two possible pronunciations:

• interdental cold sorda [θ], like the z Spanish Fox;
• oral sounding [ð], like the d of each.

Icelandic has restricted its use to the first case, using the letter ð (eth) for the second phoneme.

Uses

English

The Þ was used to write Middle English before the invention of the printing press.

William Caxton, the first printer in England, brought with him a set of letters made in Continental Europe, which did not contain Þ (thorn), Ȝ (yogh) nor Ð (eth). So he replaced the letter Þ with a Y . This was not an arbitrary choice by Caxton: in some manuscripts from the early XIV century the letters Y and Þ are already identical.

The is written as YE throughout the King James Edition of the Bible ( century). XVII). In fact, the use of Y instead of Þ is still seen on tombstones and in the idiom Ye Olde ("The old man"), used to give an air of "Old England" to names of establishments, such as Ye Olde English Pubbe ("The Old English Pub"). This circumstance has led to the definite article the often being read, intentionally or not, as yi.

Icelandic

The Icelandic language is the only living language to retain the letter thorn (in Icelandic; þ, pronounced as þoddn, [θ̠ɔtn̥] or þordn, [θ̠ɔrtn̥] in common usage). The letter is the thirtieth in the Icelandic alphabet; it is transliterated to th when it cannot be reproduced and never appears at the end of a word. Its pronunciation has not changed much, but before the introduction of the character eth, the þ was used to represent the sound [ð], as in the word "seeþa", which is spelled seeða (means "to become") in modern Icelandic or standardized spelling. þ was originally taken from the runic alphabet and is described in the first grammatical treatise:

Staf þann er flestir menn kalla ! END kalla ég af því heldur ♪ að það atkvæði hans í hverju máli sem eftir lifir nafnsins er úr er tekinn raddarstafur úr nafni hans, sem alla hefi ég samhljóðendur samda í það mark nú sem ég reit snemma Skal ! standa fyrri í stafrófi en titull þó að ég hafi siðar um han því að hann er siðast í fundinn, en af þi fyrr um titul að hann var aður í stafrófi og ég lét hann þeim fylgæ Höfuðstaf ♪-sins rita ég hvergi nema í vers upphafi því að hans atkvæði má eigi æxla þótt hann standi eftir raddarstaf í samstöfun.

First grammar, first grammatical treaty

For example, the patronymic name of Icelandic athlete Anníe Mist Þórisdóttir is anglicized as Thorisdottir.

Gothic

The þ is used as a romanization of 𐌸 (which, as in English and Icelandic, represents the voiceless dental fricative θ)

Computer representation

The letter has the following Unicode representations:

• Mayuscula .: U+00DE
• Minuscule !: U+00FE

On a normal QWERTY keyboard it can be obtained by the key combinations of Alt plus numpad: Alt+0222 (uppercase Þ) and Alt+0254 (lowercase þ).