Editing Thorn (letter) (section)

===Icelandic===
[[Icelandic language|Icelandic]] is the only living language to keep the letter thorn. In Icelandic, ''þ'' is pronounced ''þoddn'', {{IPA|is|θ̠ɔtn̥|}} or ''þorn'' {{IPA|is|θ̠ɔrn̥|}}. The letter is the 30th in the [[Icelandic orthography|Icelandic alphabet]], modelled after [[Old Norse orthography|Old Norse alphabet]] in the 19th century; it is [[transliteration|transliterated]] to ''th'' when it cannot be reproduced<ref>{{cite web |url=http://geonames.nga.mil/gns/html/Romanization/Romanization_RomanScripts.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161026165643/http://geonames.nga.mil/gns/html/Romanization/Romanization_RomanScripts.pdf |archive-date=2016-10-26 |url-status=live |title=Icelandic BGN/PCGN 1968 Agreement}}</ref> and never appears at the end of a word. For example, the name of [[Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson]] is [[anglicise]]d as Haf'''th'''or.

Its pronunciation has not varied much, but before the introduction of the [[eth]] character, ''þ'' was used to represent the sound {{IPA|[ð]}}, as in the word "''ver'''þ'''a''", which is now spelt ''ver'''ð'''a'' (meaning "to become") in modern Icelandic or normalized orthography.<ref name="Gordon 1927">{{cite book|last=Gordon|first=E.V.|title=An Introduction to Old Norse|year=1927|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=0-19-811184-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/introductiontool00gord/page/268 268]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontool00gord/page/268}}</ref> Þ was originally taken from the [[runic alphabet]] and is described in the [[First Grammatical Treatise]] from the 12th-century:
{| class=wikitable
|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>{{Citation|title=First Grammatical Treatise|url=http://etext.old.no/gramm/|series=eText|edition=modernized spelling|place=NO|publisher=Old}}.</ref><br/>
– 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>{{Cite journal|last=Haugen|first=Einar|date=1950|title=First Grammatical Treatise. The Earliest Germanic Phonology|journal=Language|volume=26|issue=4|pages=4–64|doi=10.2307/522272|jstor=522272|issn=0097-8507}}</ref><br/>
– First Grammarian, [[First Grammatical Treatise]], translation by [[Einar Haugen]]
|}

[[Image:Latin alphabet Þþ.svg|class=skin-invert-image|thumb|Upper- and lowercase versions of the thorn character, in [[sans-serif]] (left) and [[serif]] (right)]]