Eth

Eth, also called edh, is a special letter used in the Latin alphabet. You can see 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 too, but later they started using the letters "dh" and then just "d" instead.

Today, the small version of eth is used in a tool called 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 the word "this." This little letter helps us understand and share sounds from all over the world.

Faroese

In the Faroese language, the letter ⟨ð⟩ does not represent a specific sound on its own. It is mostly used to show the history of words. However, it can act like a soft sound in most places. When ⟨ð⟩ comes before the letter ⟨r⟩, it is sometimes pronounced 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, and like the "th" in "think" in other places. 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 created by Olav Jakobsen Høyem based on Trøndersk, the letter ⟨ð⟩ did not make a sound. It was added only to show the history of the word.

Old English

In Old English, the symbol ⟨ð⟩ was used just like ⟨þ⟩ to show a special sound similar to the “th” we use today, like in “think” or “this”. Experts aren’t sure what the Anglo-Saxons called this letter. Some think it was called ðæt, while others believe it might have been a short way to write the word “ðaet”.

Unlike the older ⟨þ⟩ symbol, ⟨ð⟩ came from changing the regular Roman letters. Neither ⟨ð⟩ nor ⟨þ⟩ appeared in the very first Old English writings. Studies show that ⟨ð⟩ started showing up around the early 700s, becoming 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⟩ itself 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 the sound /ð/. 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," and 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, 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, which is a type of digital money.