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How were the Old English letters thorn and eth pronounced?
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In Old English, the letters thorn (þ) and eth (ð) were used to represent the two fricative sounds of "th" found in modern English.1
These two sounds are:
* The voiceless dental fricative, as heard in the word "thin" (\th).1
* The voiced dental fricative, as heard in the word "then" (\t\u035fh).1
While these letters were often used interchangeably in Old English to represent both sounds, they are distinct characters that historically served to capture the nuances of the language's phonetic structure.1