To be more specific, in Icelandic, þ only occurs initially and is always pronounced, while ð occurs medially and terminally and is always pronounced. In (Modern) Icelandic, Þ is only used to write the voiceless interdental fricative, whereas in Old English, Þ can be used to write either the voiceless or voiced phonemes, and which pronunciation you use depends on its position in the word (whereas which letter the scribe used to write either sound, þ or ð, was dictated by custom, habit, aesthetics, or whimsy). There is a minor difference in pronunciation. The origin is the same-thorn was a rune-letter borrowed into the Latin alphabet in the early Middle ages by Germanic-speaking peoples to write a sound that existed in Germanic but not Latin. That is why the word ye, as in “Ye Olde Booke Shoppe,” is an archaic spelling of the.But I guess it depends on what you mean by "difference". So, thorn was dropped and Y took its place. In the Latin alphabet, the Y was the symbol that most closely resembled the character that represented thorn. Here’s an example: in Old English, a letter called thorn (þ) represented the th sound (as in that) in Modern English. (Our trusty alphabet isn’t the only part of the language that has changed- October used to be the eighth month, and September the seventh.) What is the letter thorn? The ampersand was part of the alphabet? Discover the story behind the symbol here.Īs Modern English evolved, the Old English letters were dropped or replaced. But for some time, the alphabet included the letters of the Latin alphabet, some symbols (like the ampersand), and some letters of Old English. The region they inhabited became known as “Angle-land,” or England.Įventually, Christian missionaries introduced the Latin alphabet, which began to take ahold around the sixth century, and ultimately replaced Anglo-Saxon. The Angles and Saxons came from Germany and settled in Britain in the fifth century. English was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, also known as Anglo-Saxon. How old is the alphabet?īefore we get to the history of specific letters, let’s talk a bit about Old English. The English alphabet, as you likely know, is made up of 26 letters.īut it wasn’t always that way.
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