Eth
Eth /ɛð/ is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with
dh and later
d. It is transliterated to
d. Its use has survived in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The capital eth resembles a D with a line through the vertical stroke. The lower case resembles an insular d with a line through the top. The lower-case letter has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The letter originated in Irish writing as a
d with a cross-stroke added. The lowercase version has retained the curved shape of a medieval scribe's
d, which
d itself in general has not. In Icelandic,
ð represents a voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative, similar to the
th in English "them", but it never appears as the first letter of a word. The name of the letter is pronounced; i.e.,
voiceless, unless followed by a vowel.