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:For an overview of letters that look similar to Ð see Ð (disambiguation)


Ð (capital Ð, lower-case ð) (or eth, or edh, Faroese: edd) is a letter used in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and present-day Icelandic and Faroese. The letter had its origin as a d with a cross-stroke added. The lowercase version has retained the curved shape of a medieval scribe's d, which d itself has not.

In Icelandic, ð represents a voiced dental fricative, as in th in English "them". (As a point of curiosity, however, the name of the letter is pronounced , i. e. voiceless, unless followed by a vowel.) In Faroese, ð is never pronounced, except ð before r as [g] in a few words. In the Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, ð follows d. In Anglo-Saxon, ð may represent the same sound as in Icelandic, or the voiceless th of "thread", both of which were also represented by thorn (þ). Eth was usually used when the diagraph was voiced (as in "the" or "that"). In Middle English, ð was no longer used; the Normans did not like characters in English which did not exist in the Latin alphabet. So they replaced it in words with th, unfortunately making the voiced consonant indistinguishable from the unvoiced one, as the letter þ was also replaced by this digraph.

Lower-case eth is used as a symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet, again for a voiced dental fricative.

See also: Thorn (Þ), Yogh (Ȝ), Wynn (Ƿ)Wynn is a letter in the old English alphabet that came from a rune (ᚹ) by the same name. It was used to represent the sound /w/. In written Old English and Middle English it was borrowed to represent the same sound, as the letter W was a later inve

 

Latin alphabet
  Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Qq | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz  
  Åå | Ææ | Œœ | Øø | Ää | Üü | Õõ | Öö | Ññ | ß | Þþ | Ðð | Çç | Ss | G g | Gg | Hh | Jj | Ss | Uu  

Icelandic language Faroese language Old English languageOld English (also called Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language which was spoken in England around the year 1000. It is a West Germanic language, and is therefore similar to Frisian and Old Saxon. It is also quite similar to Old Norse (and, D-barred ang:Ð

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