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
Phonological history of English high back vowels Phonological history of English high back vowels Most dialects of modern English have two high back vowels: the near-close near-back rounded vowel found in words like "foot", and the close back rounded vowel (realized as central in many dialects) found in words like "goose". This article discusses the history of these vowels in various dialects of English, focusing in particular on phonemic splits and mergers involving these sounds. In the Old English vowel system, there was a pair of short and long high back vowels, and , both written (the longer vowel is often distinguished as in modern editions of