Eth

Eth, also called edh, is a special letter in the Latin alphabet. You can find it in old languages like Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian. In the past, people in Scandinavia used it during the Middle Ages, but later they switched to using "dh" and then just "d".

Today, the small version of eth is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. This helps people write down how words sound in different languages, especially when a word has a soft "th" sound, like in "this." This letter helps us understand and share sounds from all over the world.

Faroese

In the Faroese language, the letter ⟨ð⟩ does not make a special sound by itself. It is mostly used to show where words came from. But it can sound soft in many places. When ⟨ð⟩ is before the letter ⟨r⟩, it sometimes sounds like the sound [ɡ] in a few words. In the Faroese alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ comes right after the letter ⟨d⟩.

Khmer

The letter ⟨Ð⟩ is sometimes used when writing Khmer words to show the sound thô.

Icelandic

In Icelandic, the letter ⟨ð⟩ is called "eð". It makes a special sound, like the "th" in "this" when it is between vowels or at the end of a word. This sound is part of one voice sound called /θ/. Usually, the letter thorn ⟨Þ⟩ is used at the start of words for this sound, but ⟨ð⟩ is used in other places. In the Icelandic alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ comes after ⟨d⟩.

Norwegian

In a special version of Nynorsk made by Olav Jakobsen Høyem from Trøndersk, the letter ⟨ð⟩ had no sound. It was only used to show the word's history.

Old English

In Old English, the symbol ⟨ð⟩ was used like ⟨þ⟩ to show a special sound similar to “th” in words like “think” or “this”. Experts do not know what the Anglo-Saxons called this letter. Some think it was called ðæt. Others think it may have been a shorter way to write “ðaet”.

Unlike ⟨þ⟩, ⟨ð⟩ came from changing regular Roman letters. Neither ⟨ð⟩ nor ⟨þ⟩ were in the earliest Old English writings. Studies show that ⟨ð⟩ began to appear around the early 700s and became more common by the 780s. One idea is that the letter came from Irish writing.

During the time of King Alfred the Great, ⟨þ⟩ became more popular and eventually replaced ⟨ð⟩ completely by the Middle English period. Later, ⟨þ⟩ was replaced by writing “th”, especially after the printing press was invented.

Welsh

Some people in written Welsh have used the letter ⟨Ð⟩ to show a special sound. Usually, this sound is shown using the letters ⟨dd⟩.

Phonetic transcription

The symbol /ð/ (U+00F0) stands for a soft "th" sound, like in the word "this." It is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Another symbol, /ᶞ/ (U+1D9E), is also used in phonetic writing. The symbol ᴆ (U+1D06) is part of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

Computer encoding

See also: Unicode input and Alt codes

The letter eth has special codes in Unicode. Unicode is a system that helps computers understand different letters and symbols. These codes are:

• U+00D0 Ð LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH (Ð)
• U+00F0 ð LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH (ð)

These codes come from an older system called ISO/IEC 8859-1, also known as "ISO Latin-1".

Modern uses

A capital eth is used as the currency symbol for Dogecoin, a type of digital money.