English alphabet 24 letters of the Latin alphabet first (including ampersand), then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note "ond" (⁊), an insular symbol for "and": In the orthography of Modern English, thorn (þ), eth (ð), wynn (ƿ), yogh (), ash (æ), and ethel (œ) are obsolete. Latin borrowings reintroduced homographs of ash and ethel into Middle English and Early Modern English, though they are largely obsolete (see "Ligatures in recent usage" below), and where they are used they are not considered to be separate letters (e.g. for collation purposes), but rather ligatures. Thorn and eth were both replaced by
Deseret alphabet unlike other American pioneers, the Mormon pioneers were from New England as opposed to the American South. As such, many of the vowels in the Deseret alphabet have since merged in the modern era: they are no longer distinguished in many dialects of English. Speakers who exhibit the father–bother merger no longer distinguish (𐐪) and (𐐱), and so both father and bother would be written with 𐐪: as 𐑁𐐪𐑄𐐲𐑉 and 𐐺𐐪𐑄𐐲𐑉 as opposed to as 𐑁𐐪𐑄𐐲𐑉 and 𐐺𐐱𐑄𐐲𐑉. For those with the cot–caught merger, (𐐫) and (𐐱) are no longer distinguished: both cot and caught are thus written by them