Thorn (Þ, þ) Due to most printing presses not having the letter thorn available, it became common practice to use a y instead, leading to "ye". So, the next time you see "Ye Olde Brick Tavern" or something similar in your travels, you'll recognize that it's really just saying "The" after all.
Here's an example: in Old English, a letter called thorn (þ) represented the th sound (as in that) in Modern English. In the Latin alphabet, the Y was the symbol that most closely resembled the character that represented thorn. So, thorn was dropped and Y took its place.
The modern digraph th began to grow in popularity during the 14th century; at the same time, the shape of ⟨Þ⟩ grew less distinctive, with the letter losing its ascender (becoming similar in appearance to the old wynn (⟨Ƿ⟩, ⟨ƿ⟩), which had fallen out of use by 1300, and to ancient through modern ⟨P⟩, ⟨p⟩).
ð survived into Early Middle English, but gradually fell out of use in Middle English, disappearing altogether by about the end of the 13th Century. The reason these letters fell out of use, is that the style of the time favored the use of “th” instead.
There are four letters which we don't use any more ('thorn', 'eth', 'ash' and 'wynn') and two letters which we use but which the Anglo-Saxons didn't ('j' and 'v'). Until the late Old and early Middle English period, they also rarely used the letters 'k', 'q' and 'z'.
In dictionaries, j, q, and z are found the least, but some of the words are rarely used. And if you value the opinion of cryptologists (people who study secret codes and communication), x, q, and z make the fewest appearances in the writing scene.
The letter Ash, or, "æ" is named after the Futhark rune ash, and can most commonly be recognized for pronunciation in such words as encyclopedia/encyclopædia.
The form of the modern letter Y is derived from the Greek letter upsilon. It dates back to the Latin of the first century BC, when upsilon was introduced a second time, this time with its "foot" to distinguish it.
It wasn't until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, an Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds.
“You already know the rule that English words don't end in i or j. Today you will learn the rest of the rule, which states that English words usually don't end in u or v.”
The "original" Glastonbury thorn was cut down and burned as a relic of superstition during the English Civil War, and one planted on Wearyall Hill in 1951 to replace it had its branches cut off in 2010.
After Gustang met Baam and recognized him as the son of Arlen Grace, Gustang officially gave this Thorn fragment to Baam.
Yogh (ʒ) was a letter of the alphabet in Middle English. According to the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary, yogh was used to "represent the sound (y) and the voiced and voiceless velar fricatives."
The letters Q and Z were essentially left unused outside of foreign names, while the letter K was used by some writers but not by others.
R was possibly pronounced like a trill (like sometimes in Spanish, or by some Scottish English speakers), or as a flap (like a trill, but only once - like by some Irish speakers, or in most cases in Spanish), or similarly to how it is pronounced in Southern British English or General American today.
ð and Ð (eth): Old English scribes could also represent the "th" sound with the letter ð (the capital letter version looks like a capital D with a short horizontal line: Ð). The letter is called "eth," pronounced so that it rhymes with the first syllable in the word "feather."
Q without U is used to represent sounds not often found in English but typical in Semitic languages. Loan words such as Qur'an and Iraq are examples of Q's guttural /k/ sound. (Want to learn more about loanwords?
As you can probably guess, the letter Z is the least commonly used letter in the English alphabet. (In American English, this letter is pronounced “zee.”) The letter Q is the second least commonly used letter. In English words, Q is almost always followed by the letter U.