: Re: If I write a word with a letter that isn't used, will I confuse my reader? Background So I recently had my first ever issue with the spelling of places in my novel. Someone pronounced a

@Shakeerah107

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Using þ in a story will not bring it back as a letter in English. So keep that in mind if you decide to use it.

As for whether an average reader will know how to pronounce these letters, the answer is not really. In fact, some people have seen thorns in older texts, especially those using blackletter, and mistaken them for y's, which is why some people trying to give an establishment an older feel will use "ye olde" in the name or description and believe the pronunciation to be /ji:/ instead of /ðeː/.

Using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in an appendix or other pronunciation key will help accurately portray how the words are pronounced (see the last sentence of the prior paragraph for an example). The IPA is the best way for conveying pronunciation. However, the average reader does not know the IPA. So using the IPA will not help most readers, which means relying on a less precise system to convey pronunciation if you want to have the pronunciation guide be accessible to a wider audience.

I, personally, have used thorn, eth, ash, and ø in my stories, but I don't expect most of my readers to be able to pronounce the words containing those letters properly. In fact, I have one character mispronounce Friðuswiþ's name several times to the point of her agreeing to have him call her Frith. I include this in the story because the main character, like the reader, comes from a different culture and is not used to the pronunciation of Friðuswiþ's language; by doing this I let the reader know it is fine if they don't know how to pronounce her name, as not even the main character can figure it out at first.

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