Thorn

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

I hope noone teaches this today. As I understand it, the Old English letters (thorn and eth) were used interchangeably or according to the preferences of the scribe. Since there was no phonemic difference between voiced and voiceless fricatives in OE, it would be very strange for them to have an orthographic distinction between these sounds. Of course the eth functions today as the phonetic symbol (in IPA) for the voiced interdental fricative.

- Matt Gordon


On 2/10/10 2:26 PM, "Bill Palmer" <w_a_palmer at BELLSOUTH.NET> wrote:

If Anglo-Saxon is still taught as it was in the 1960's "thorn" represents
devoiced  "th", and "eth" represented the voiced version.

Bill Palmer

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