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Edh

Edh (or eth or ) is a letter (capital Ð, lower-case ð) used in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and present-day Icelandic and Faroese. The letter had its origin as a d with a cross-stroke added. The lowercase version has retained the flowing shape of a Medieval scribe's d, which d itself has not.

In Icelandic, ð represents a voiced dental fricative, as in th in English "them". In the Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, ð follows d. In Anglo-Saxon, ð may represent the same sound as in Icelandic, or the voiceless th of "thread", both of which were also represented by thorn (þ). In Middle English, ð was no longer used.

Lower-case edh is used as a symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet, again for a voiced dental fricative.

See also: Þ, Yogh, Œ

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump