Re: Oddity of English

From: squilluncus
Message: 41363
Date: 2005-10-13

Within the Germanic language family the voicing of thorn in initial
position, which seems to be restricted to pronominal words, is odd.
I think of the, there, that, them, thou, thee, though, thus ...

This occurred to me. Then shortly afterwards it occurred to me that in
Scandinavian this same type of words have developed from thorn to d,
but others from thorn to t: there - der/där, them - dem, but: thing -
ting, thaw - tö, thin - tunn.

Is there an explanation for this?

Lars