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Eth (Ð, ð; also spelled edh or eð) is a letter
Letter (alphabet)

A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
 used in Old English
Old English language

Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century....
, Icelandic
Icelandic alphabet

The modern Icelandic language alphabet consists of the following 33 letters:It is based upon a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth ?? and the Runes Thorn ?? ....
, Faroese
Faroese language

Faroese , often also spelled Faeroese , is a West Nordic or West Scandinavian language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 12,000 Faroese people in Denmark....
 (in which it is called edd), and Dalecarlian. It was also used in Scandinavia
Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a historical and geographical subregion in northern Europe that includes the Scandinavian Peninsula. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; some authorities also include Finland and some might even include Iceland....
 during the Middle Ages
Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
, but was subsequently replaced with dh
Dh (digraph)

Dh is a digraph consisting of the letters D and H....
 and later d
D

D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled dee , plural dees....
. The capital eth resembles a D with a line partially through the vertical stroke. The lowercase resembles an insular d
Gaelic script

The term Gaelic type, a translation of the Irish language phrase cl? Gaelach , refers to a family of Insular script typefaces devised for writing Irish and used between the 16th and 20th centuries....
 with a line through the top.

The letter originated in Irish writing (Freeborn 1992, 24) as a d with a cross-stroke added.






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Eth (Ð, ð; also spelled edh or eð) is a letter
Letter (alphabet)

A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
 used in Old English
Old English language

Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century....
, Icelandic
Icelandic alphabet

The modern Icelandic language alphabet consists of the following 33 letters:It is based upon a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth ?? and the Runes Thorn ?? ....
, Faroese
Faroese language

Faroese , often also spelled Faeroese , is a West Nordic or West Scandinavian language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 12,000 Faroese people in Denmark....
 (in which it is called edd), and Dalecarlian. It was also used in Scandinavia
Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a historical and geographical subregion in northern Europe that includes the Scandinavian Peninsula. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; some authorities also include Finland and some might even include Iceland....
 during the Middle Ages
Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
, but was subsequently replaced with dh
Dh (digraph)

Dh is a digraph consisting of the letters D and H....
 and later d
D

D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled dee , plural dees....
. The capital eth resembles a D with a line partially through the vertical stroke. The lowercase resembles an insular d
Gaelic script

The term Gaelic type, a translation of the Irish language phrase cl? Gaelach , refers to a family of Insular script typefaces devised for writing Irish and used between the 16th and 20th centuries....
 with a line through the top.

The letter originated in Irish writing (Freeborn 1992, 24) 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 in general has not (but see for instance the Audi
Audi

AUDI AG, is a Germany car manufacturer which produces cars under the Audi brand, . The name Audi is based on a latin translation of the last name of the founder August "Horch", itself the German word for ?hear." Another explanation for the origin of the name is as an acronym for ?Auto Union Deutschland Ingolstadt."...
 logo).

In Icelandic, ð represents a voiced dental fricative
Voiced dental fricative

The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is D....
 like th in English "them", but it never appears as the first letter of a word. The name of the letter is pronounced eþ, i.e., voiceless, unless followed by a vowel. It has also been labeled an "interdental fricative."

In Faroese, ð isn't assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons; however, it does show where most of the Faroese glides
Semivowel

Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllable vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the syllable nucleus of a syllable or mora ; they are not the most prominence part of the syllable....
 are, and when the ð is before r it is in a few words pronounced as . In the Icelandic and Faroese alphabet
Alphabet

An alphabet is a standardized set of letter basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a phoneme, a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past....
s, ð follows d.

In Olav Jakobsen Høyem
Olav Jakobsen Høyem

Olav Jakobsen H?yem was a Norway teacher, telegrapher, supervisor of banknote printing and linguist. He was born in Byneset outside Trondheim, S?r-Tr?ndelag....
's version of Nynorsk
Nynorsk

Nynorsk is one of the two official Norwegian language standard languages, the other being Bokm?l. Just above 10% of the Norwegian population use Nynorsk as their primary written language....
 based on Trøndersk
Trøndersk

Tr?ndersk or Tr?ndsk is the Norwegian dialects spoken in the region Tr?ndelag in Norway and in Frostviken in northern J?mtland, Sweden. The dialect is among other things perhaps mostly characterized by the use of apocope, palatalization and the use of retroflex flaps ....
, the ð is always silent and is introduced for etymological reasons.

In the orthography for Elfdalian, the ð represents a voiced dental fricative
Voiced dental fricative

The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is D....
 like th in English "them", and it follows d in the alphabet.

In Old English
Old English language

Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century....
, ð (referred to as ðæt by the Anglo-Saxons) was used interchangeably with þ
Thorn (letter)

Thorn, or ?orn , is a letter in the Old English language and Icelandic alphabet alphabets. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th. The letter originated from the runic alphabet in the Elder Fu?ark, called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune...
 (thorn) to represent either voiced or voiceless dental fricatives. The letter ð was used throughout the Anglo-Saxon era, but gradually fell out of use in Middle English
Middle English

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and about 1470, when the #Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William...
, disappearing altogether by about 1300; þ survived longer, ultimately being replaced by the modern digraph th by about 1500.

The ð is also used by some in written Welsh
Welsh language

Welsh ]], is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh Marches and in the Welsh settlement in Argentina in the Chubut Valley in Argentina Patagonia....
 to represent the letter 'dd' (the voiced dental fricative).

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

The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is D....
, and in IPA usage, the name of the symbol is pronounced with the same voiced sound, as . (The IPA symbol for the voiceless dental fricative
Voiceless dental fricative

The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is T....
 is ?
?

or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....
.)

Computer encoding

  • In the Unicode
    Unicode

    Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
     universal character encoding standard, upper and lower case eth are represented by U+00D0 and U+00F0, respectively. These code points are inherited from the older ISO 8859-1 standard. In HTML
    HTML

    HTML, an Acronym and initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document?by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on?and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded '...
    , eth is represented by the Latin character entities Ð and ð.


  • On UNIX
    Unix

    Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
    -like systems such as Linux
    Linux

    Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
     it can be entered with the Compose key
    Compose key

    On some computer systems, a compose key is a key which is designated to signal the software to interpret the next keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found on the keyboard....
     plus d and - or D and - for the uppercase version when using ISO8859-based locales or Compose key
    Compose key

    On some computer systems, a compose key is a key which is designated to signal the software to interpret the next keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found on the keyboard....
     plus d and h or D and h for uppercase version when using UTF-8
    UTF-8

    UTF-8 is a Variable-width encoding character encoding for Unicode. It is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet the initial encoding of byte codes and character assignments for UTF-8 is backward compatibility with ASCII....
    -based locales.


  • In Microsoft Windows
    Microsoft Windows

    Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
    , to produce the uppercase letter, hold down the Alt
    Alt key

    The Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key....
     and type 0208 on the numeric keypad or type Alt 0240 for lowercase. The US-International keyboard layout allows the letter to be entered by holding AltGr and pressing the letter "d."


Miscellaneous

  • The letter ð is sometimes used in mathematics
    Mathematics

    Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
     and engineering
    Engineering

    Engineering is the discipline and profession of applying Technology and science knowledge and utilizing natural laws and physical resources in order to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and process that safely realize a desired objective and meet specified criteria....
     textbooks as a symbol for a spin-weighted partial derivative
    Partial derivative

    In mathematics, a partial derivative of a function of several variables is its derivative with respect to one of those variables with the others held constant ....
    . This operator gives rise to spin-weighted spherical harmonics
    Spin-weighted spherical harmonics

    Spin-weighted spherical harmonics are generalizations of the standard spherical harmonics and?like the usual spherical harmonics?are complex functions on the sphere....
    .
  • The modern Greek
    Greek language

    Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
     letter delta
    Delta (letter)

    Delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 4. It was derived from the Phoenician alphabet Dalet , but in the Ancient Greek language, it represented a voiced dental plosive ....
     (?
    ?

    or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....
    , d
    D

    D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled dee , plural dees....
    ) has, in general, the same phonetic value, and ð is the only Latin alphabet
    Latin alphabet

    The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
     letter faithfully representing delta's phonetic value. (In Ancient Greek delta represented a d sound).
  • The symbol is mentioned in the Rush
    Rush (band)

    Rush is a Canadian Rock music band originally formed in August 1968, in the Willowdale, Toronto neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, currently composed of bass guitar, keyboard instrument, and singer Geddy Lee; electric guitar Alex Lifeson; and drum kit and lyricist Neil Peart....
     song By-Tor and the Snow Dog in the first verse:
Prince By-Tor takes the cavern to the North light,
The sign of Eth is rising in the air.


See also

  • D with stroke
    D with stroke

    ? is a letter of the Latin alphabet first used in the South Slavic languages. The glyph for d with stroke is formed from D with the addition of a bar through the letter....
  • African D
    African D

    African D is a Latin letter representing the voiced retroflex plosive . Its lower-case form is also used to represent this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet....
  • Insular script
    Insular script

    Insular script was a Middle Ages script system used in Ireland and Britain in the Middle Ages . It later spread to Continental Europe in centres under the influence of Celtic Christianity....


External links