Heill Keth, ok þér öll,

> > [P] is a so-called "bilabial fricative"; it is very close to the

[f]

> > that we know, but pronounced without the tongue touching the

teeth

> (as
> > it does in [f], which is therefore called a "labio-dental
> fricative").
>
> When I pronounce "F" in Norwegian, the tongue tip does not touch
> the teeth. But the lower lip touches the upper front teeth.
> I think it is the same way in English. (?)

That was an unfortunate slip of mine; I meant to say "the upper lip
touching the teeth..."; not the tongue.

In English, MI, and Norwegian (and most other Western languages), we
have a labio-dental [f], instead of a bilabial [P]. You may possibly
not ever have heard [P], actually; it's very rare in modern Western
languages, that I know of.

In our pronunciation guide, we did not address the [P] sound; there
is no need. It's much easier for all of us to just pronounce it as
[f], and not much less "realistic". So don't worry about it.

> maybe it means that the THURSE was once pronounced
> followed by a voiceless breath. Wouldn't that be the
> little (miniscule) superscripted "h" that we discussed
> a while ago?

Keth, I encourage you again to read a little bit about phonetics;
what you're saying here doesn't make much sense, though it's always
commendible to be curious :)

A little superscripted "h" marks aspiration in stop consonants (such
as p,t,k). "THURSE" is a fricative, not a stop; we are certain that
the ON "þ" was pronounced as an unvoiced dental fricative [T], just
as it is in Icelandic today, and just as "th" is pronounced in
English today (where it comes from the same root phoneme as the
ON "þ"; it is sometimes voiced in English, such as in "that").

Regarding the development þ > h, it is common in human languages for
unvoiced fricatives to change to [h], which is an unvoiced glottal
fricative. To name some examples, Latin initial [f] became Spanish
[h], syllable-final [s] changed to [h] in Andalucian Spanish, and [x]
changed to [h] in Proto-Germanic. And some ON [T] became [h] in
Faroese, as mentioned; actually, there are signs of the same
development (þ > h) in Icelandic too, though it is by no means
complete, and not even sure to carry through. Anyway, those are just
examples for the various fricatives, from the top of my head.

I did intend to reply to some other writings of yours, but I'll leave
it for tomorrow.

Óskar