Re: USAGE: English eth

Adam Walker wrote:


> You forgot its compliment thither.

Right.


> And again here, probably because of wherewithall.

I have /'weIRwiDOl/.  In standard orthography, there is
only one 'l' in both withal and wherewithal.


> There's also the noun withers and withershins.

Withers, yes.  I have widdershins, with /d/, but
m-w.com lists withershins as a variant.


>> wreathe,
>
> When it's a verb.  As a noun it has /T/.

As a noun it's spelled "wreath".

> /T/ and /D/ are an odd pair aren't they.

Earlier varieties of English (and some dialects still?)
had no phonemic voicing contrasts in fricatives.  Since then, all
fricative phonemes save /h/ have split (f/v, s/z, T/D, S/Z) but to
varying degrees, and even now there is not very much functional load
on any of these four.

--
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