Eth


Eth is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages but was subsequently replaced with dh and later d. It is often transliterated as d. The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
In Old English, ð was used interchangeably with þ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme or its allophone, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives now spelled "th".
Unlike the runic letter þ, ð is a modified Roman letter. ð was not found in the earliest records of Old English. A study of Mercian royal diplomas found that ð began to emerge in the early 8th century, with ð becoming strongly preferred by the 780s. Another source indicates that the letter is "derived from Irish writing".
The lowercase version has retained the curved shape of a medieval scribe's d, which d itself in general has not. ð was used throughout the Anglo-Saxon era but gradually fell out of use in Middle English, practically disappearing altogether by 1300; þ survived longer, ultimately being replaced by the digraph th.
In Icelandic, ð represents a voiced dental fricative, which is the same as the th in English that, but it never appears as the first letter of a word, where þ is used in its stead. The name of the letter is pronounced in isolation as and therefore with a voiceless rather than voiced fricative.
In Faroese, ð is not assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons; however, it does show where most of the Faroese glides are; when ð appears before r, it is, in a few words, pronounced. In the Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, ð follows d.
In Olav Jakobsen Høyem's version of Nynorsk based on Trøndersk, ð was always silent and was introduced for etymological reasons.
Ð has also been used by some in written Welsh to represent, which is normally represented as dd.
is used in phonetic transcription.
is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

Computer input

The Faroese and Icelandic keyboard layouts have a dedicated button for eth.
On Microsoft Windows, eth can be typed using the alt code + for lowercase or + for uppercase, or by typing using the US International keyboard layout.
On macOS, eth can be typed by activating the ABC Extended keyboard layout and typing.
Using the compose key which is popular on Linux, eth can be typed by typing for lowercase or for capital letters.
On Chrome OS, holding Alt Gr and pressing the D key will result in ð being written. Holding shift or putting Caps Lock on will result in Ð.

Other

Modern uses