That letter is called thorn, and was used in English in the Old English and early Middle English period. Norman-French scribes introduced the ‘th’ digraph which finally ousted thorn.

Arabic also uses both: voiceless is ث (three dots); voiced is ذ So they also associate the voiceless one with t (same character but two dots) and d (same character, but no dot), respectively.

I think the American version of this is pronouncing “th” with a lisp.

(Most varieties of) English and Icelandic retain them - do any other Germanic languages or dialects? Does Faeorese still have them (as it is close to Icelandic after all)?

‘ff’ and ‘th’ (θ) are two other sounds they mix up - usually pronoucing ‘ff’ instead of θ.

I was suprised in a way, as people always assume in Welsh that the ‘ll’ or the ‘ch’ would be the most difficult, but none of my children have had difficulties with those sounds.

It’s always interesting to see a little light-bulb being switched on in the mind of English-speakers when you explain to them that the Welsh ‘dd’ equals the ð sound in ‘that’ and ‘this’. They’ve obviously never realised they were pronouncing two different sounds.

Many Welsh-speakers, (myself included) when we started to write English would write; ‘Ddy boi widd ddy baic’ (The boy with the bike) or other such spellings as it seems much more logical.

-Ben

My brother never used to be able to make the distinction between free and three. We teased him all the time. He does speak mumble language though. However, several years of living in Africa have improved him, though I still find him hard to understand. He also does the “v” thing.