Curiously, the article mentions Icelandic for æ, but not for ð or þ, which are still on regular use in modern Icelandic, pretty much in the same Old English meaning of dental fricatives (ð is voiced, þ is voiceless).
Just a small clarification: in OE ð and þ were used interchangeably. Between voiced sounds they were pronounced as in Modern English "then", otherwise as in Modern English "thin".
Thanks for linking this. I'd read previously that the use of the letter y in "ye olde..." was from simplifying the typesetting of thorn but the article here claims eth was used in the original spelling. Is there more to the story or is the article wrong?
Yea I read that too. It might have been wrong. It appears (from this author) that eth was the 'hard TH' (say: that) and thorn was the 'soft TH' (say: with)
Indeed, thin is the examplar given in Wikipedia for /θ/.
It also has further explanation of th is sometimes voiced and sometimes unvoiced depending on context.
One thing to note is that some English speakers pronounce /ð/ and /θ/ as allophones, likely due to their identical orthography. At the beginning and middle of words, it becomes voiced /θɪn/ and /θɪŋ/ (thin and thing) becoming /ðɪn/ and /ðɪŋ/, respectively. At the end of words, it remains unvoiced.
Indeed, and œ would be close Icelandic ö (in ASCII-only systems umlaut ö is still often rendered as oe). The 'yogh sound' for words like 'loch' is really the only one altogether missing from modern Icelandic.
ö in Icelandic and Swedish is phonetically equivalent to ø in Danish and Norwegian.
However the æ in Danish and Norwegian is like the OE one described in the article, between a and e, which is written ä in Swedish. Icelandic does not have that sound, and uses æ in the Latin way, representing the ai diphthong (as in English "fine").
The more common vowels also have fairly different pronunciations in the four languages.
I don't think its racist for a French person to consider 'English' to not be a language proper. The French lady who made the comment made her case remarkably well.
Unfortunately that French attitude is also somewhat apparent in the way many French people speak English. English is not really its own language, so not worth learning properly. (Or at least learn a pronunciation that is close enough to be understood.)
