Ye olde letter thorn

[Jayhawker Soule]

Just cause I didn't know ...

The Old English / Norse letter "thorn" is pronounced 'th' and soon evolved as shown ...

So when encountering something such as ...

... the proper pronunciation is "The Old ..."

​

 

[Rakhel]

I am trying to figure out whether you are finally coming out or letting one out.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Just cause I didn't know ...​

The Old English / Norse letter "thorn" is pronounced 'th' and soon evolved as shown ...​

​

One of two middle english letters used for the "th" of modern english. The other was eth or ð. The only other middle english letter which died out that I can think of offhand is yogh or ȝ.

 

[Skwim]

Hey! Thanks for sharing, LOM.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Hey! Thanks for sharing, LOM.

I give (freely, often, and almost always without it being wanted) that which I have most of: useless trivia which even trivia games/shows don't bother with.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

So, was this merely a modern misreading or a centuries-old misreading?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

So, was this merely a modern misreading or a centuries-old misreading?

No, it is not.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So, was this merely a modern misreading or a centuries-old misreading?

It is a centuries old confusion, and one of the reasons that thorn (not to mention eth) was generally replaced by "th" after 1400.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

For some reason 'th' gets no respect. I suspect that the tav sans dagesh originally had that pronunciation as well.

But in the case of the thorn, the 'confusion' was the result of developments in the depiction of the letter leading it to be indistinguishable from the letter 'Y'.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

But in the case of the thorn, the 'confusion' was the result of developments in the depiction of the letter leading it to be indistinguishable from the letter 'Y'.

Yep. Eth died out as the "th" sound(s) shortly before "th" was actually used (end of the 13th century), and in the 14th century, when "th" and thorn appeared side-by-side, the hand of the period was such that "y" and thorn were identical or at least nearly so.

Interestingly (well, to me anyways), yogh was even more of a problem at the time, because it was used in place of an initial "y" quite often, but in medial positions became the hard "g" sound similar to today's German "ch".

 

[Falvlun]

Oh, I can't wait to pull this out when someone pronounces it "Yee Old Tavern". It's gonna be so much fun.

Well. At least for me.

 

[MatthiasGould]

I knew this.