Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1993 01:41:25 CST From: "Donald M. Lance" Subject: Re: th/dh At the time of the demise of eth and thorn, were pronunciation patterns stable enough for scribes to make firm decisions? E.g., did that handful of function words vocalize initial "th" over a short enough time for scribes to be able to establish a clear pattern? My guess is that the "silent e" would have helped retain the eth. And medial thorn next to voiceless consonants would have had a strong influence operating on it. But then why didn't our predecessors do something about those ambiguous s's when the zed/zee came into common use? Neither Brits nor USians have seemed to want to zedify, though f and v were negotiable. Interesting questions. DMLance