At 6:04:46 PM on Tuesday, January 29, 2008, Rick McCallister
wrote:
[...]
> I suppose it also existed in early Gaelic and perhaps long
> ago in some variety of N. French e.g. "faith" < Latin
> fides
In early OFr generally, from Lat. /-VdV-/ when the consonant
subsequently became final, e.g., /nu:dum/ > /nudU/ >
/nuð(U)/ > /nyþ/ > /ny/.
OIr and early MIr <th> was [þ], as can be inferred from ON,
OE, and early ME spellings of Irish words; Thurneysen says
that the modern pronunciation as [h] is well attested from
the 12th century on.
Brian