I thought it would be cool to change up how I write down things in my bos. These are letters that used to be part of English. I’ve been using ð and þ interchangeably for the ‘th’. ðe or þe for ‘the’; þing or ðing for ‘thing’.
Eth (ð) pronounced like the th sound in words like this, that, or the
Thorn (þ) is in many ways the counterpart to eth; voiceless pronunciation—your vocal cords don’t vibrate when pronouncing the sound—like in thing or thought
Today, the same th letter combo is used for both þ and ð sounds. There is a pronunciation difference—thorn is a voiceless pronunciation and eth is voiced.
Wynn (ƿ) was incorporated into our alphabet to represent today’s w sound. Previously, scribes used two u characters next to each other, but preferred one character instead
Yogh (ȝ) was historically used to denote throaty sounds like those in Bach or the Scottish loch. Most often, the gh substitute is completely silent, as in though or daughter.
Now for vowels:
Ash (æ) In its original Latin, it denoted a certain type of long vowel sound, like the i in fine. In Old English, it represented a short vowel sound—somewhere between a and e, like in cat. In modern English, æ is occasionally used stylistically, like in archæology or medæval, but denotes the same sound as the letter e.
Ethel (œ) also once represented a specific pronunciation somewhere between the two vowels o and e, though it was originally pronounced like the oi in coil. Like many clarifying distinctions, this letter also disappeared in favor of a simpler vowel lineup (a, e, i, o, u) with many different pronunciations.