Thorn (letter)

Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Infobox grapheme Template:Contains special characters Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic alphabet, Middle Scots, and some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia but was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the rune Template:Runic in the Elder Futhark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

It represented a voiceless dental fricative Template:IPA or its voiced counterpart Template:IPA. However, in modern Icelandic it represents a laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative Template:IPA,<ref name="Pétursson">Template:Harvcoltxt, cited in Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>Template:Sfnp similar to th as in the English word thick, or a (usually apical) voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative Template:IPA,<ref name="Pétursson"/>Template:Sfnp similar to th as in the English word the. Modern Icelandic usage generally excludes the latter, which is instead represented with the letter eth Template:Angbr; however, Template:IPA may occur as an allophone of Template:IPA, and written Template:Angle bracket, when it appears in an unstressed pronoun or adverb after a voiced sound.<ref name="Einarsson 1949">Template:Cite book</ref>

In typography, the lowercase thorn character is unusual in that it has both an ascender and a descender.Template:Efn

Uses

English

Old English

The letter thorn was used in Old English very early on, as was ð, which was called eth. Unlike eth, thorn remained in common use through most of the Middle English period. Both letters were used for the phoneme Template:IPA, sometimes by the same scribe. This sound was regularly realised in Old English as the voiced fricative Template:IPA between voiced sounds, but either letter could be used to write it; the modern use of Template:IPA in phonetic alphabets is not the same as the Old English orthographic use. A thorn with the ascender crossed (Ꝥ) was a popular abbreviation for the word that.

Middle and Early Modern English

File:The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapter 18 (clip).png

"... hir the grace that god put ..." (Extract from The Book of Margery Kempe)

The modern digraph th began to grow in popularity during the 14th century; at the same time, the shape of Template:Angbr grew less distinctive, with the letter losing its ascender (becoming similar in appearance to the old wynn (Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr), which had fallen out of use by 1300, and to ancient through modern Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr). By this stage, th was predominant and the use of Template:Angbr was largely restricted to certain common words and abbreviations. This was the longest-lived use, though with the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of Template:Angbr for Template:Angbr became ubiquitous, leading to the common "ye", as in 'Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that Template:Angbr existed in the printer's types that were imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while Template:Angbr did not.<ref name=Hill>Template:Cite book</ref> The word was never pronounced as /j/, as in ⟨yes⟩, though, even when so written.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The first printing of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 used y^e for "the" in places such as Job 1:9, John 15:1, and Romans 15:29.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It also used y^t as an abbreviation for "that", in places such as 2 Corinthians 13:7. All were replaced in later printings by the or that, respectively.

Abbreviations

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The following were scribal abbreviations during Middle and Early Modern English using the letter thorn:

Barred thorn with superscript e Template:Char Template:Snd The thorn with stroke (or barred thorn) is the earliest abbreviation, it is used in manuscripts in the Old English language. It is the letter Template:Angbr, with a bold horizontal stroke through the ascender, and it represents the word þæt, meaning "the" or "that" (neuter nom. / acc.)
thorn with superscript t Template:Char Template:Snd a Middle English abbreviation for the word the
thorn with superscript t Template:Char Template:Snd a Middle English abbreviation for the word that
thorn with superscript u Template:Char Template:Snd a rare Middle English abbreviation for the word thou (which was written early on as Template:Lang or Template:Lang)

In later printed texts, given the lack of a sort for the glyph,<ref name=Hill /> printers substituted the (visually similar) letter y for the thorn:

Template:Nbsp Template:Nbsp Template:Nbsp Template:Char Template:Snd an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word this
y with superscript e Template:Char Template:Snd an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word the
y with superscript t Template:Char Template:Snd an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word that

Modern English

Template:See also Thorn in the form of a "Y" survives in pseudo-archaic uses, particularly the stock prefix "ye olde". The definite article spelt with "Y" for thorn is often jocularly or mistakenly pronounced Template:IPA ("yee") or mistaken for the archaic nominative case of the second person plural pronoun, "ye", as in "hear ye!".

Icelandic

Icelandic is the only living language to keep the letter thorn. In Icelandic, þ is pronounced þoddn, Template:IPA or þorn Template:IPA. The letter is the 30th in the Icelandic alphabet, modelled after Old Norse alphabet in the 19th century; it is transliterated to th when it cannot be reproduced<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and never appears at the end of a word. For example, the name of Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is anglicised as Hafthor.

Its pronunciation has not varied much, but before the introduction of the eth character, þ was used to represent the sound Template:IPA, as in the word "verþa", which is now spelt verða (meaning "to become") in modern Icelandic or normalized orthography.<ref name="Gordon 1927">Template:Cite book</ref> Þ was originally taken from the runic alphabet and is described in the First Grammatical Treatise from the 12th-century:

Staf þann er flestir menn kalla þ, þann kalla ég af því heldur þe að þá er það atkvæði hans í hverju máli sem eftir lifir nafnsins er úr er tekinn raddarstafur úr nafni hans, sem alla hefi ég samhljóðendur samda í það mark nú sem ég reit snemma í þeirra umræðu. [...] Höfuðstaf þe-sins rita ég hvergi nema í vers upphafi því að hans atkvæði má eigi æxla þótt hann standi eftir raddarstaf í samstöfun.<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> – First Grammarian, First Grammatical Treatise	The letter which most men call thorn I shall call the, so that its sound value in each context will be what is left of the name when the vowel is removed, since I have now arranged all the consonants in that manner, as I wrote earlier in this discussion. [...] The capital letter of the I do not write except at the beginning of a section, since its sound cannot be extended, even when it follows the vowel of the syllable.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> – First Grammarian, First Grammatical Treatise, translation by Einar Haugen