Re: Scripts
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, July 8, 2002, 5:16 |
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On Sunday, July 7, 2002, at 01:57 , Tristan McLeay wrote:
> On Sun, 2002-07-07 at 11:46, Tim May wrote:
>> Tristan McLeay writes:
{snip}
>> D'oh. Obvious when you think about it, but I'd never considered what
>> the diference between an upper and lower case thorn was. Does eth
>> look different too?
>
> Yeah, a capital eth is Ð. The curved look of the lowercase eth (ð) comes
> about, I think, because of the way Irish scribes wrote lowercase D's so
> that the looked like an eth without the cross.
The old English and the old & modern Irish scripts are just variants of
the 'insular script' version of the Roman alphabet common to both
islands before the Normans started replacing it in England with later
continental models.
The upper & lower case thorns and edhs are still used in Icelandic.
Ray.