try any Islandic site to see for your self.

Ooooh yes. Thorn is commonly preceded or followed by just about any common consonants used in the Icelandic language. Eth is somewhat more limited in the consonants it usually follows, but not by much.

Ditto for Old English

André

I had a bit more time to check on the constraints on the consonants that can precede eth. In modern Icelandic, by far the consonant that most frequently precedes eth is “r”, as “rð” is a very common combination. You also find “f” and “g” in front of eth in some words, but other consonants seem to be rare.

In Old Norse, you find many more different consonants preceding eth. I just checked a single Old Norse text, the Gylfaginning, and came up with the following in addition to “rð”, “fð”, and “gð”:

“kð” as in “þökð”
“lð” as in “dvalðist”
“mð” as in “ósæmð”
“nð” as in “leynð”
“pð” as in “steypðist”

The eth is usually replaced in modern Icelandic spelling for these words.

I also checked the text of Beowulf and found 100+ instances of “rð” as well as:

“cð” as in “brecða”
“fð” as in “Gifðum”
“gð” as in “mægð”
“hð” as in “fǣhð”
a text fragment containing “lð”
“mð” as in “nymðe”
“nð” as in “cēnðu”

Also, don’t forget that in all these languages (modern Icelandic, Old Norse, and Old English) “y” is a vowel and that it also commonly precedes eth.

In the modern languages, the thing is that AFAIK both Icelandic and Faroese (which also uses the eth and thorn) can form compound words; so assuming eths and thorns can occur at the start & end of words, it’s probably hard to limit the possible combinations. Yes, even the dreaded “fð” exists :-)

Faroese uses ð but not þ.

Oops, sorry!

In modern Icelandic, eth does not commonly occur at the beginning of a word, which is why I needed to do research about possible consonant+eth combinations. Otherwise, as Nina suggested, because many words begin or end with thorn and many words end with eth, these kinds of combinations are quite common.

Thanks, all. I’m just going to assume they should be designed to work with consonants. I was a little confused by what I saw in some existing designs and since I don’t know the first thing it seemed best to ask.