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
Checked and free vowels Checked and free vowels In phonetics and phonology, checked vowels are those that commonly stand in a stressed closed syllable; and free vowels are those that commonly stand in a stressed open syllable. The terms "checked vowel" and "free vowel" originated in English phonetics and phonology. They are seldom used for the description of other languages even though a distinction between vowels that usually have to be followed by a consonant and other vowels is common in most Germanic languages. The terms "checked vowel" and "free vowel" correspond closely to the terms "lax vowel" and "tense vowel" respectively, but many