Talk:Eth

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Ævar, I've been systematically correcting the links for "Thorn (letter)" and "Eth (letter)" to include the parentheticals for the letters neatly. I'd added a disambiguation page since Eth = a letter and Eth = a commune in France, but you've changed this and pointed to the disambiguation page. Wikipedia suggests that pointing to disambiguation pages isn't optimal. Evertype 14:33, 2004 Jul 9 (UTC)

Exactly, it is not optimal, Eth has been at Eth for a long time, people have bookmarks to it and putting a disambig there for a non-notable commune in France is against customs at wikipedia, since the article should be the most common usage, i urge you to move it back. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:01, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I think I'll have to disappoint you, as I've added the suffix -eth to the disambiguation page, and while archaic, is common enough in English to be noteworthy ("My cup runneth over"). It makes more sense to me for Wikipedia to be consistent with "Lettername (letter)", which is why I edited both Thorn and Eth. A number of Greek letters are treated the same way by Wikipedia. And Eth was Edh for a long time too, remember (Eth is the preferred English spelling), so people may have links to either spelling or to Ð or to ð. Evertype 21:52, 2004 Jul 13 (UTC)

I agree with the recent movement from Ð back to Eth (letter). Apple's Mac-Roman character set, unfortunately, does not have this character, so it is easier for users of that character set ever to find this article with its normal English name. Evertype 13:32, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

Erm, Wikipedia doesn't use the MacRoman encoding. Þ and Ð are characters in ISO 8859-1, which Wikipedia does use. --/ɛvɪs/ /tɑːk/ 22:49, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Can someone confirm whether this is accurate? I've seen old texts, and they write the with a thorn rather than an eth, plus I can recall reading that the y is a substitute for the former, and that either letter could be voiced or voiceless. But I'd like someone to make sure before I change this.

In Icelandic, eth is voiced and thorn isn't. But in Old English and Middle English the usage was confused. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 7
In Old English the difference in sounds was allophonic: voiced between vowels. There was very little consistency choice use of letter. -- Gritchka.

In the article, it says that the symbol is found in Old English, Icelandic, and Faroese. It says how it was pronounced in Old English and Icelandic, but not Faroese. Does anyone know how Faroese uses it? Branddobbe

I described it in the article :-)
see: W.B. Lockwood: An Introduction to Modern Faroese Tórshavn 1977 (no ISBN)
Arne List 11:40, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Faroese: In the word maður (man), ð is pronounced like a v.

Contents

[edit] Moving around

I'm going to move Ð to Ð (disambiguation) and Eth (letter) to Ð within the next two days. The reason for this is first that we do not need Ð at Eth (letter) since Ð is in ISO-8859-1 which the english Wikipedia uses and Đ and Ɖ are not the same letter as Ð so the confusion between them is none, since nobody would type in Ð thinking it was a page for Đ or Ɖ (those three do not appear in the same languages so nobody would have them simultaneously on their keyboard).

Furthermore i plan to put this on the top of Ð:

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

This would be in tune with other none-ASCII letters in ISO 8859 which have had redirects for their english names point to the actual letter. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 10:59, 2004 Sep 10 (UTC)

Agreed with those changes. [[User:Anárion|АПА́ДІОП]] 11:02, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tau gallicum?

I wonder if there is a relationship between the eth (and maybe the Đ too) with the "tau gallicum" ("gaulish T") used when writting old gaulish language; gaulish was first written in greek alphabet and the greek theta used for a somewhat similar gaulish, then roman influence made them switch to latin alphabet, which has less letters, and so they used a sort of barred D (which may have derived from the theta maybe?). I'm not a specialist in phonetics, but it seems to me that the usage the eth has some phonetic similarity; could old Norse have borrowed it from gaulish usage?

Srtxg 07:05, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Norman dislike?

In Middle English, ð was no longer used; the Normans did not like characters in English which did not exist in the Latin alphabet. Ð was replaced with th, unfortunately making the voiced consonant indistinguishable from the unvoiced one, as the letter þ was also replaced by this digraph.

This is simply not true, by my understanding. Firstly, <ð> remained in common use until around the end of the 13th century - it is used, for example, in the Layamon text of Cotton Caligula A. ix (c.1275-1300) - that is, at least 200 years after the Norman Conquest. Secondly, it was replaced with <þ>, not <th>; <þ> remained in common use for another two centuries after that. Finally, I am not aware that there ever was a consistent use of <ð> for voiced and <þ> for unvoiced sounds in English, and the supposed Norman dislike of non-Latin letters can be ruled out altogether by the persistence of <þ>, and the introduction of yogh for sounds written <h> in Old English.

I propose rewriting as follows: "Ð began to fall out of use in the Middle English period, and by the 14th century the /th/ sound was consistently written with þ instead."

I was about to express my shock that this valid concern had remained unaddressed for over a year. Then I realised that I posted the unsigned comment above myself, so "fix it yourself" applies. I have duly done so.  ;) — Haeleth Talk 23:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved back to Eth (letter) per policy.

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). "Ð" is not a letter in any form of contemporary English, and both Old English and Middle English are distinct languages from the modern tongue. Robert A West 19:18, 9 August 2005 (UTC) Oh, and if someone feels the need to move it back again, please take it to WP:RM. The default rule on Wikipedia has been elucidated by Jimbo Wales: "My perspective is that if I don't see it on my keyboard, and if I didn't sing it in the alphabet song, it's 'fancy' and therefore should be avoided." We should not do otherwise without consensus. Robert A West 19:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Will you shortly be moving Æ to A-E ligature or Ash (letter) and ß to Sharp s? — Felix the Cassowary 05:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
As I noted elsewhere, æ has been used in English within living memory. On the other hand, ß is not and never has been an English letter, and is so not a valid title for an article in the English Wikipedia; the German Wikipedia is a different matter, of course. Robert A West 06:43, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Quite honestly, I would have no problem with Ash (letter) and Sharp s (letter). Indeed I would like the Wikipedia entries for letternames to be standardized throughout. It staves off argument. Evertype 08:50, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
I also don't have that much of a problem, as long as if this is the logic it's consistent. I just like ð a lot more than any other fake letter :) A'course, the fact that capital eth looks the same as capital d with stroke is probably an extra argument in favor of keeping it separate. Ah well, I retract the implied hostility in my earlier statement... — Felix the Cassowary 10:12, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
I took it as exaſperation, not hoſtility. Hey, perſonally, I am all for re-introducing wer and letting man return to a genderleſs word, but I wouldn't put þat in the Wikipedia eiþer.  :-) Seriouſly, þis iſsue is being debated, in a sliȝtly different context, in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). My view is þat if it is common not to uſe diacritics for þe name in queuſtion (as Handel or Goering) þen þey shouldn't be uſed in þe title, even if it is alſo common to uſe þem. Similarly, we should have "Birhtnoth", not Byrhtnoð, as the title, becauſe the latter is not modern orðography. Robert A West 14:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Can't change the image

I've tried to edit the image and upload it, but it doesn't seem to be accepted. I am not sure why. The edit I want to make is to display Ðð Ðð rather than ðÐ ðÐ because capitals typically precede smalls in alphabet displays of this kind. Evertype 08:47, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Sometimes it takes hours or a day for the cache to catch up to a new uploaded image. I see "Ðð Ðð" right now, so I think it worked. —Michael Z. 2006-01-17 20:39 Z