From: Jim Allan (jallan@smrtytrek.com)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 16:10:35 EDT
Jony Rosenne posted:
> I was under the impression that old English manuscripts did use different
> glyphs for the two sounds of th.
Not that I am aware of.
The two sounds normally indicated by _th_ in modern English were spelled
interchangeably with thorn (_þ_) and eth (_ð_) in Old English and
often in Middle English. This was just a change in spelling convention.
All the spellings are representable in Unicode.
Thorn in later Middle English assumed an open-loop form which was close
enough to _y_ to be confused with it, hence, when thorn as a letter in
itself was forgotten, it was for a time still customary to spell _þe_ as
_ye_ instead of _the_.
As to _gh_, corresponding Middle English words normally used the letter
yogh (_ȝ_). The difference is in spelling. Both spellings are available
through Unicode.
Jim Allan
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