Faroese

{ 20040714,0208 | Philip Newton } "Faroese(sp?) uses eth, though not
thorn. (Apparently, it's not a separate phoneme, though, and current
spelling is at least partly historical/etymological.)"

Faroese... ah, now there's a lang that I first read about in "The
Scandinavian Languages". A pricey volume but if you want to just roll
around in some of the less familiar Germanic languages (unless, of
course, you are Scandinavian), that's the tome for you.

Now Faroese, that's something to really, really roll around in. I say
that because I recall that its phonology and its spelling are about as
distant from each other as is, um, say English... irregular,
unpredictable & lovely. (Not English, I mean, but Faroese.)

I can't recall if there is a phonemic distinction [voice +/-] or not
but I *think* - can anyone cite? I live 3300 miles from Schoenhof's
Books ( http://www.schoenhofs.com ) - that there *is*, only that it is
not related to the letter edh but instead to a lenition of another
letter.

O & how I wish I could access Schoenhof's right now.

"(Though there are languages that use d-bar, such as Croatian and
Vietnamese, but that's not edh; the lower-case letter looks different,
for starters, and the phonetic value is different, too.)"

It's a good point, that. I guess I didn't ever make the mental leap
between the barred-d of Vietnamese (and others) and their obvious
predecessors in eth - don't know why not, but thanks for explicitly
stating that. I would bet that the Vietnamese orthography, for one,
must originate in the eth directly only with its form being regularised
from a lowercase Greek delta form to a lowercase Roman d form so as to
match (& simplify) the orthography. French missionaries & all that. I
don't know anything about Croation so I daren't speculate.

em'ly
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