From what I understand, it varies from language to language. In Icelandic, it’s the “eye” sound.
::whacks him over the head with a trout::
Beatings shall continue until you get it right! Ðere´s no point in joining ðe movement if you can´t differentiate between ðe different sounds!
But ‘þe’ is þe actual Middle English spelling of ‘the’; in fact, þe spelling ‘ye’, as in ‘Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe’, comes from þe handwritten form of ‘þ’, which bore a striking resemblance to ‘y’. ‘ð’ sort of dropped out some time after þe Old English period. I þink þe Normans killed it.
So þere! 
No, it makes you a wanker.
Pay attention. 
Thanks!
Yes. Vidæø killed þe rædiø sta®, tü.
This board and Safari don’t play well together, for some reason. I’ve had this problem before when I tried posting Japanese characters. Safari has no problems reading anything, but something gets screwed up when posting. This is the only board I have that problem with.
The workaround I use is to post things that need special characters using Firefox instead. Enabling the Debug menu in Safari makes this relatively easy, since I just go to Debug —> Open Page With> and there will be a list of all installed browsers. Very handy for any other incompatibility problems too, since you can see how other browsers handle things. You can enable the Debug menu with TinkerTool or Xupport, which provide a GUI interface for normally hidden, or command-line only system tweaks.
I’m using Safari 3.0.4 for this post and I don’t have a problem posting æ or œ. More unusual characters might be a problem though. 文字化けかな〜？ On edit: Nope, that seemed to work okay. Try upgrading Safari if you’re having a problem with characters.
Åhh, œkay! Ω≈ç√∫ñµ≤≥÷¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–≠? 
Cøøl…
JRB
Oh good Chirst (Christ’s lesser-known brother), there are few things that piss me off more than when a crossword puzzle tries to be clever by using “ameba.” Except when they use obi. Then I burn with the mild ire of two (2) clothing irons. Two irons I tell you!