--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Paul David Hansen" <paalhanssen@...> wrote:

>
> Actually, the "th" sound in "these", "them", "those", "think", "thought" and
> "theory" are all the same: "þ".
>
> The "ð" sound is the "th" sound in "bath" and "with", etc.

I'll use X-Sampa phonetic notation [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA ] in square brackets for sounds, e.g. [T], and between slashes for phonemes, e.g. /T/.

In standard varieties of English, including British Received Pronunciation and American General Pronunciation, a phonemic distinction is made between a voiced dental fricative /D/ - as in <these>, <brother>, and for some speakers <with> - and a voiceless dental fricative /T/ - as in <think>, <plethora>, <bath>. As these examples show, either sound can occur initially, medially or finally in a word. Both sounds are spelt <th>.

In Modern Icelandic and Old Norse, there's a single dental fricative phoneme with voiced and voiceless allophones. In the modern language, this phoneme is spelt <þ> at the beginning of a word, or element of a compound, and spelt <ð> elsewhere. The same spelling convention applies in the normalised orthography often used in Old Norse grammars, dictionaries and modern editions of Old Norse texts. Old texts vary a lot in how they spell this phoneme. Some of the earliest medieval manuscripts use <þ> only, and this style is sometimes immitated by later manuscripts of Eddaic poetry. Many scribes used <d> in non-initial position (in the middle or at the end of a word), others used <ð>. There was no ambiguity in using <d> medially and finally, since in these positions the letter always represented a dental fricative in native Icelandic words except when doubled <dd>, in which case it represented a long (geminated) dental stop.

The pronunciation in Old Icelandic was probably similar to the modern pronunciation. There may have been small differences, but I'm not aware of any evidence for such. The following is based on the pronunciation sectin of "Icelandic: Grammar, texts, glossary", by Stefán Einarsson. This book was written in the 1940s, but it's description matches my experience of listening to Icelandic. But my experience is limited, so there may well be subtleties that I've missed.

In Modern Icelandic, the letter <þ>, which only occurs initially, usually represents a voiceless dental fricative [T], as in English <think>. But in unstressed pronouns and possessive adjectives and adverbs it's voiced [D], almost as in English <these>, but a little gentler.

Between voiced sounds, <ð> is a voiced dental fricative or approximant, as in English <these>, but a little gentler: <maður> "man", <fjaðrir> "feathers". Before <k>, it's voiceless, except in the north of Iceland where it's voiced. At the end of a word, it's half voiced (begins voiced and ends voiceless). Often medially between consonants, and sometimes finally in connected speech between consonants, <ð> is ellided (not pronounced).