# Danish: Soft d - consonant sound



## frugihoyi

hanne said:


> There's a difference here between the "correct" or "proper" pronounciation of god, which ends on ð/th, and which Sepia and I have been talking about, and the more common actual pronounciation which tends to drop the last consonant, which frugihoyi seems to be talking about, and which we write as go' when we need it (as in: Haribo - den er go').
> 
> And I suppose I can somehow see how frugihoyi thinks the stød makes it sound like a diphthong, though I'd never describe it that way, and don't find it accurate either...
> For a start the "diphthong" of go' is much, much weaker than that of English go.


 I think I see what you are saying now. It's a soft d at the end of "god," right? That's nothing like the english "th" and that's why I had to disagree. It makes sense that the correct pronunciation would be with a soft d, but like you said it's more common to pronounce it go'.

<<Moderator note: This thread was split off from another one - Danish Vowel Sounds - because a new topic was introduced.>>


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## hanne

Yes, it's a soft d. It's interesting to see how both Sepia and I automatically reply according to what we know is the "proper" pronounciation, instead of the de facto. A d can't be formally mute in a position like that (as it can in -nd, -ld, etc. endings).

[detour]Another interesting fact is that a considerable number of people (including adults) will start pronouncing these letters when reading a text loud - even though they'd never use them in regular speech. Also words like "kunne", which are often "ku'".[/detour]

And the soft d does have some relations to the English th; think of father vs. fader.


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## berndf

frugihoyi said:


> I think I see what you are saying now. It's a soft d at the end of "god," right? That's nothing like the english "th" and that's why I had to disagree.


Interesting. How would you describe the difference? (As said above, _-d_ following a consonant is a different matter.)


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## frugihoyi

Yeah I still don't see the relation between soft d and th. With th I put my tongue between the teeth and push air out. With soft d, I put the tongue under the bottom teeth and make a d sound. They sound totally different.


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## berndf

frugihoyi said:


> Yeah I still don't see the relation between soft d and th. With th I put my tongue between the teeth and push air out. With soft d, I put the tongue under the bottom teeth and make a d sound. They sound totally different.


What you are describing in English is [θ] as in "tee*th*" [ti:θ]. What is meant here is [ð] as in "*th*is" [ðIs]. [θ] and [ð] are indeed different sounds.

You are describing the Danish soft "d" as a voiced dental plosive [d̪] rather than as voiced dental fricative [ð] as it exists in most varieties of English. I have heard this description many years ago but never managed to verify this in any dictionary or phonological book. Very interesting that you say this. What do native speakers think? Is the Danish soft "d" a [d̪] or a [ð] or are both variants in use?


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## Sepia

frugihoyi said:


> I have no idea what you are talking about. Are you saying that "god" should sound like the English word "goth," but with the "o" of "gold"? Because that is definitely not right and I won't believe you even if you tell me you're Danish.
> 
> I think the Danish word "god" sounds almost exactly like the English word "go."


 

No, you are overinterpreting - I was not talking about whole words in English, only the "th"-phonem like in "weather" or in "with" - it is the same as the "d" in "god" or in "Hedeby" (Formerly written: Haithabu) and that phonem was already written as "th" long before the languages from my corner of the world became "English".

I had figured you'd all be smart enough the pick the right "th" to compare with and not focus on the other ones. 

My protest was directed at the pronounciation "gou" - where does that come from?


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## frugihoyi

Sepia said:


> No, you are overinterpreting - I was not talking about whole words in English, only the "th"-phonem like in "weather" or in "with" - it is the same as the "d" in "god" or in "Hedeby" (Formerly written: Haithabu) and that phonem was already written as "th" long before the languages from my corner of the world became "English".
> 
> I had figured you'd all be smart enough the pick the right "th" to compare with and not focus on the other ones.
> 
> My protest was directed at the pronounciation "gou" - where does that come from?


Really? I don't think this Danish soft d (like in "gade" for example) exists in English at all. In fact I remember many people in my Danish class that had problems pronouncing it and our teacher never told them to pronounce it like any english th. 

Maybe I am still misunderstanding what you're saying. I must admit that I'm not very familiar with IPA and this thread is very confusing to me.

The pronunciation of "god" comes from the first post in this thread.


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## berndf

frugihoyi said:


> Maybe I am still misunderstanding what you're saying. I must admit that I'm not very familiar with IPA and this thread is very confusing to me.


The difference between the two sounds is that [d̪] is a plosive and [ð] a fricative. When pronouncing a plosive the airflow is completely blocked for a brief period of time (in this case by pressing the tongue against teeth and palate) and the air is then suddenly released by opening this blockage. When pronouncing a fricative the air channel is narrowed but never completely blocked.


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## Sepia

frugihoyi said:


> Really? I don't think this Danish soft d (like in "gade" for example) exists in English at all. In fact I remember many people in my Danish class that had problems pronouncing it and our teacher never told them to pronounce it like any english th.
> 
> Maybe I am still misunderstanding what you're saying. I must admit that I'm not very familiar with IPA and this thread is very confusing to me.
> 
> The pronunciation of "god" comes from the first post in this thread.



There is basically no difference between the sofd "d" in "gade" and the "th" in "to bother" or in "whether" - just watch what you are doing with the tongue while saying it. It is nothing new to me that teachers have problems teaching - it is simply a question of imaginatiion, a question of picking one phonem that people know, making them realize how they pronounce it and then putting it into a different context. It is nothing new to me that teachers - especially native speakers - often never cared about such things and never realized how they are actually speaking their native language. 

It is terrible, but it is a fact that things are like that.


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## frugihoyi

Sepia said:


> There is basically no difference between the sofd "d" in "gade" and the "th" in "to bother" or in "whether" - just watch what you are doing with the tongue while saying it. It is nothing new to me that teachers have problems teaching - it is simply a question of imaginatiion, a question of picking one phonem that people know, making them realize how they pronounce it and then putting it into a different context. It is nothing new to me that teachers - especially native speakers - often never cared about such things and never realized how they are actually speaking their native language.
> 
> It is terrible, but it is a fact that things are like that.


 I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree because the d in "gade" and the th in "bother" sound completely different to me.


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## hanne

frugihoyi said:


> I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree because the d in "gade" and the th in "bother" sound completely different to me.


Then I must admit I'm terribly curious to hear how you pronounce those two words, because I agree with Sepia that they're pretty much the same.

Not having the strongest IPA skills in the world I read berndf's explanation of the difference, but had a hard time observing it...

[edit]On wikipedia you can also see that the two sounds indeed use the same IPA symbol.[/edit]


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## frugihoyi

Very strange indeed!


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## Sepia

hanne said:


> Then I must admit I'm terribly curious to hear how you pronounce those two words, because I agree with Sepia that they're pretty much the same.
> 
> Not having the strongest IPA skills in the world I read berndf's explanation of the difference, but had a hard time observing it...
> 
> [edit]On wikipedia you can also see that the two sounds indeed use the same IPA symbol.[/edit]


 
I suppose we are not talking with Paulie "Walnut" from "The Sopranos" - then, indeed, it would be a different "th"


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## TheGist

I found this thread while looking on the Internet for how to pronounce Danish soft "d". And I was surprised to read here that there is no difference between English [ð] and danish [ð]. If there were no difference, I wouldn't have been looking for the proper way to pronounce it in the first place, because I have no trouble producing English TH. And sure enough, I'm not alone in thinking that these sounds are different. I even read a very interesting thing on a Russian site where one woman was sharing her experience of learning Danish.


> В датском языке есть буква d, которая обозначает звук [l]. Получить этот звук можно путем высовывания языка, произнося что-то среднее между русскими звуками [л] и [д].


(Translation: There is the letter d in Danish, that represents the sound [l]. To make this sound, you should stick out your tongue and pronounce something between the Russian sound [l] and [d].)

And here I should agree with her. It does sound like [L] to a foreign ear. And I think I found an explanation why, on wikipedia. From the article on "Danish_phonology" I learned the following:
Technically speaking, Danish [ð] is similar to the English counterpart. However, there is a difference. It's *not* fricative (like in English) and it's *not* even plosive (as berndf said), but rather an *aproximant*, which could explain why it sounds a little bit like [l] since there is less friction than in the English [ð].


> /v, ð, r/ may have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as pure approximants, and hence being rendered as [ʋ, ð̪, ʁ].


I still don't understand why Danish native speakers can't confirm that these similar sounds are nevertheless different in English and Danish.
I still have difficulty pronouncing Danish [ð], so unfortunately I can't judge from my personal experience.


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## Sepia

TheGist said:


> I found this thread while looking on the Internet for how to pronounce Danish soft "d". And I was surprised to read here that there is no difference between English [ð] and danish [ð]. If there were no difference, I wouldn't have been looking for the proper way to pronounce it in the first place, because I have no trouble producing English TH. And sure enough, I'm not alone in thinking that these sounds are different. I even read a very interesting thing on a Russian site where one woman was sharing her experience of learning Danish.
> 
> (Translation: There is the letter d in Danish, that represents the sound [l]. To make this sound, you should stick out your tongue and pronounce something between the Russian sound [l] and [d].)
> 
> And here I should agree with her. It does sound like [L] to a foreign ear. And I think I found an explanation why, on wikipedia. From the article on "Danish_phonology" I learned the following:
> Technically speaking, Danish [ð] is similar to the English counterpart. However, there is a difference. It's *not* fricative (like in English) and it's *not* even plosive (as berndf said), but rather an *aproximant*, which could explain why it sounds a little bit like [l] since there is less friction than in the English [ð].
> 
> I still don't understand why Danish native speakers can't confirm that these similar sounds are nevertheless different in English and Danish.
> I still have difficulty pronouncing Danish [ð], so unfortunately I can't judge from my personal experience.


 

I can't understand why somebody who is a native English speaker just cathegorically claims they are different phonems without providing any logical argumentation based, on facts, based on phonetics, based on the actual movement of the bodyparts involved in pronouncing them. That is what we are doing and therefore some of are not convinced. 

A soft "d" in "gade" is the tip of your tongue touching the front teeth for a moment, building up a bit of pressure for a short moment and opening again.

And how do you pronounce the "th" in "bother"? (Still excluding Uncle Paulie).


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## berndf

Sepia said:


> A soft "d" in "gade" is the tip of your tongue touching the front teeth for a moment, building up a bit of pressure for a short moment and opening again.


Then they are indeed different. What you are describing is not the voiced English "th" but a dental plosive. The voiced English "th" is a fricative, vibrating sound produced by placing the tip of the tongue between the teeth and letting the air escape between upper teeth and the tongue; the vibrations of the vocal cords are transmitted to the front of the mouth causing tongue and teeth to vibrate.


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## Outsider

[ð] and [ð̪] are different, but very similar sounds. I suppose there is no language that contrasts the two. The latter is the same as the "soft _d_" of Spanish.


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## mnl

Dispite the discussions about the finer details of the pronunciation, I think it is safe to say that there are similarities, and let us see if we can give some  pragmatic advice to the courageous foreign speakers who try to get the soft "d" right. 

Personally, I find the "th" in words like "other", "gather" to be pretty close to the soft d in Danish. This is of course also thanks to the common Germanic roots between the two languages.

However, a "th" at the end of an English word has no parallel in Danish pronunciation: "Bath" is not pronounced like "bad", even if the two words are basically the same. 

It also seems to me that English words of a Latin/Greek/French origin which contain a "th" have a quite different pronunciation of the "th"-sound than similar words of Germanic origin: "Theory" is not pronounced anything like "the", "there", "their", etc. and hence the "th" we are talking about is not the one in "thermometer", "theology", etc.

The last two points just to be sure that we are discussing the same thing.


So, to sum it up: Whether you think they sound the same or not, the "th" in words like "other", "bother", "mother", "gather", "the" and "there" is a good approximation of the soft "d" in Danish. If this simple rule can be of help to you, use it. Danish is difficult enough as it is.


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## berndf

mnl said:


> However, a "th" at the end of an English word has no parallel in Danish pronunciation: "Bath" is not pronounced like "bad", even if the two words are basically the same.


The spelling "th" represents two different sounds in English: a voiceless dental fricative [θ] and a voiced dental fricative [ð]. This is because in old English only the voiceless one, [θ], was phonemic. The original Germanic soft "d" was lost in Old English as in all West Germanic languages. The "soft th", [ð], is nothing but a voiced variant of [θ].


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## Sepia

mnl said:


> Dispite the discussions about the finer details of the pronunciation, I think it is safe to say that there are similarities, and let us see if we can give some pragmatic advice to the courageous foreign speakers who try to get the soft "d" right.
> 
> Personally, I find the "th" in words like "other", "gather" to be pretty close to the soft d in Danish. This is of course also thanks to the common Germanic roots between the two languages.
> 
> However, a "th" at the end of an English word has no parallel in Danish pronunciation: "Bath" is not pronounced like "bad", even if the two words are basically the same.
> 
> It also seems to me that English words of a Latin/Greek/French origin which contain a "th" have a quite different pronunciation of the "th"-sound than similar words of Germanic origin: "Theory" is not pronounced anything like "the", "there", "their", etc. and hence the "th" we are talking about is not the one in "thermometer", "theology", etc.
> 
> The last two points just to be sure that we are discussing the same thing.
> 
> 
> So, to sum it up: Whether you think they sound the same or not, the "th" in words like "other", "bother", "mother", "gather", "the" and "there" is a good approximation of the soft "d" in Danish. If this simple rule can be of help to you, use it. Danish is difficult enough as it is.


 

Exactly. Like I also pointed out - and now that I think of it: Icelandic, which is pretty closely related to the languages that evolved into English, don't they have different letters for the different sounds that you'd all write with "th" in English?


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## Wilma_Sweden

mnl said:


> So, to sum it up: Whether you think they sound the same or not, the "th" in words like "other", "bother", "mother", "gather", "the" and "there" is a good approximation of the soft "d" in Danish. If this simple rule can be of help to you, use it. Danish is difficult enough as it is.


Very wise words! Whenever there is a similar phoneme in another language that you can use as a reference, do use it! Once you've lived in Denmark for 20 years or so, you may eventually end up sounding like a native Dane, or not, as the case may be!  I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are regional variations of soft D between different Danish dialects, so why worry unless you're studying the issue as part of an academic phonetics thesis?


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## berndf

Sepia said:


> Exactly. Like I also pointed out - and now that I think of it: Icelandic, which is pretty closely related to the languages that evolved into English, don't they have different letters for the different sounds that you'd all write with "th" in English?


Old English had both letters, Thorn (þ) and Eth (ð), which Icelandic still has today but used them interchangeably as the distinction was non-phonemic in OE.


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## berndf

Wilma_Sweden said:


> ...so why worry unless you're studying the issue as part of an academic phonetics thesis?


For the benefit of those of us who do take an academic interest in phonetics.


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## TheGist

berndf said:


> For the benefit of those of us who do take an academic interest in phonetics.


You don't need to have an academic interest in phonetics to notice the difference between English TH [ð] and Danish soft d [ð̩] or even [ð̞̩] (These little marks under ð indicate the difference according to Wikipedia in the article Danish Phonology.)!!!

I wrote a post in this thread some time ago. At the time, I was only starting to learn Danish. Here's the update: I now watched numerous movies in Danish, and I don't want to boast but I think I'm now pretty good at pronouncing the Danish soft d. In order to accomplish that, I've been going around asking everyone at home "Hvad laver du?" "Hvad hedder du?" "Hvad er det?" or simply "Hvad?". No one understood me, of course, but it helped _me_ understand how to pronounce this interesting sound.  

I imagine why Danish people who wrote here don't see the difference between English and Danish [ð]. They probably never learned how to pronounce English [ð] properly, relying on the similarity between the two. And if they use Danish [ð] when they speak English, no one would correct them, because they are indeed pretty similar, but NOT identical. It might be a so-called "false friend" for the Danes. 

On the other hand, for me it's a totally different story. There's no [ð] in Russian at all. So I first learned how to pronounce English [ð], I learned to hear and differentiate it from other English sounds. Oh, it was a long time ago!  Now I've started to learn Danish and heard Danish [ð] - and what a surprise! - it's obviously a different sound. 

So my recipe for pronouncing Danish [ð] would be: Avoid intense friction (that you would allow in English), just touch the upper teeth but don't force the air through the opening between the teeth and tongue (otherwise you'll end up with excessively fricative sound), make sure you've left enough space for the air to come out freely. You may even stretch the tongue a bit further out, especially in words like "hvad" (I saw this in Danish movies: when someone asks surprisingly "Hvad?", they stick out their tongue so much you might think they're showing disrespect - I'm kidding, of course, but it's pretty obvious for sure.)

Maybe Danish native speakers will laugh or at least smile reading my description, but it's just my look on it. 

So if you pronounce [ð] in Danish "hvad" and English "with" identically, you are either a Dane speaking English, or an English native speaker speaking Danish. 

I'm not saying that it's something very wrong and unacceptable. No! I just want to tell other learners of Danish who notice this difference that they are not alone.


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## Somethingsomething

I think the key to pronouncing the soft D intelligibly is not stress or emphasize sound. In informal speech most native speakers will often leave out the soft d in many words, anyways. 
I would actually say that for someone with problems pronouncing the soft d correctly, it will probably be better for one's intelligibility just to always leave out soft d's, instead of substituting them with hard d's, L's or overemphasized English th-sounds. It might sound a bit dialectal or lackadaisical   at times, but it will almost always be understood.


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## Sepia

TheGist said:


> ..
> 
> I imagine why Danish people who wrote here don't see the difference between English and Danish [ð]. They probably never learned how to pronounce English [ð] properly, relying on the similarity between the two. And if they use Danish [ð] when they speak English, no one would correct them, because they are indeed pretty similar, but NOT identical. It might be a so-called "false friend" for the Danes.
> 
> On the other hand, for me it's a totally different story. There's no [ð] in Russian at all. So I first learned how to pronounce English [ð], I learned to hear and differentiate it from other English sounds. Oh, it was a long time ago!  Now I've started to learn Danish and heard Danish [ð] - and what a surprise! - it's obviously a different sound.
> 
> ...


 

Before you tell us we don't know how to speak proper English, you might spent moment thinking about which "th" we are talking about. I don't want to repeat myself, only point out that the Danish soft D should be pronounced ist exactly how you would pronounce a "th" in "whether".

If you pronounce THAT "th" with air passing your teeth (like here, in "teeth") it is going to sound really, really odd. If you still think we are wrong, please point out the exact differece and tell us which facts you base your assumption on.


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## berndf

Sepia said:


> If you pronounce THAT "th" with air passing your teeth (like here, in "teeth") it is going to sound really, really odd.


I am sorry, but air *is* passing your teeth for an English voiced "th"; it is a fricative, not a plosive; though admittedly less than for an unvoiced "th".


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## Ben Jamin

mnl said:


> However, a "th" at the end of an English word has no parallel in Danish pronunciation: "Bath" is not pronounced like "bad", even if the two words are basically the same.
> 
> It also seems to me that English words of a Latin/Greek/French origin which contain a "th" have a quite different pronunciation of the "th"-sound than similar words of Germanic origin: "Theory" is not pronounced anything like "the", "there", "their", etc. and hence the "th" we are talking about is not the one in "thermometer", "theology", etc.


The explanation is quite simple: the 'th' in bath, theory is a [θ], while in the, there, etc is a [ð]. It might be interesting to read the discussion on the German forum about pronounciation of plosives in English and German.
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1741844

The conclusion was that native speakers of these two languages are not aware of the voicing difference between voiced and unvoiced plosives. They differentiate only by aspiration. Maybe the same is true about fricatives [θ] and [ð]?


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## Sepia

Again "somebody" (mnl) forgets words like "with" or "soothe" - there are several of them even with a "soft d"-sound at the end. The sound exists in English. (I am really repeating myself - for further details, read earlier posts from me).

It would be naive, I think, to suppose they would aways come in the same constellations like DK bad and EN Bath. Why should they? That is not the point here.


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## berndf

Sepia said:


> Again "somebody" (mnl) forgets words like "with" or "soothe" - there are several of them even with a "soft d"-sound at the end. The sound exists in English. (I am really repeating myself - for further details, read earlier posts from me).


You wrote earlier





Sepia said:


> A soft "d" in "gade" is the tip of your tongue touching the front teeth  for a moment, building up a bit of pressure for a short moment and  opening again.


If this is how you pronounce the <th> in "with" or "soothe" then you pronounce it wrongly. The tip of the tongue is free and visible between the upper and lower teeth. The positions of the tongue are identical for the voiced (as in "with") and the unvoiced (as in "bath") <th>. The only difference is voicing.


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## Sepia

berndf said:


> You wrote earlierIf this is how you pronounce the <th> in "with" or "soothe" then you pronounce it wrongly. The tip of the tongue is free and visible between the upper and lower teeth. The positions of the tongue are identical for the voiced (as in "with") and the unvoiced (as in "bath") <th>. The only difference is voicing.


 
Webster even uses the same character as the icelandic soft d in the pronounciation of "soothe" ... they do that for a reason.

I wasn't so much into voicing it a bit more or less rather than the fact that there are a lot of th-sounds in the English language that don't let air pass your teeth the way it does in "teeth" or "bath" and it doesn't really make any difference if you look for them at the beginning, within or at the end of words. It is an undisputalbe fact that they exist. 

And I just don't buy the unqualified claim that we just can't speak proper English when we say that they do exist and the same phonem is used for a Danish D. If the argumentation were intelligent enough as to define exactly where the difference would be found, fine. Just claiming they don't exist, when they do, is inacceptable as an argument.


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> The positions of the tongue are identical for the voiced (as in "with") and the unvoiced (as in "bath") <th>. The only difference is voicing.


Since there's a lot of misunderstanding in this discussion, let me try to eliminate one source of possible confusion.  "with" is not a good word to use as an example because it can be pronounced with either the voiced or voiceless "th".  (I can't think of any other word with this characteristic, so one should not conclude that the voicing of 'th' is not well-defined in English.)  But I fully agree with berndf's claim.

Berndf aslo said, "The tip of the tongue is free and visible between the upper and lower teeth."  The tongue can also be behind the upper teeth.  I'm not sure which position is more common.  The perceptual result is the same, for native speakers.

(I had trouble following some of the discussion, so if my comments don't seem relevant, I apologize.)


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## berndf

Sepia said:


> I wasn't so much into voicing it a bit more or less rather than the fact that there are a lot of th-sounds in the English language that don't let air pass your teeth the way it does in "teeth" or "bath" and it doesn't really make any difference if you look for them at the beginning, within or at the end of words. It is an undisputalbe fact that they exist.


They do not exist in standard BE or common AE. We could discuss about Irish accents. But I don't think this is relevant here. There are only two <th> sounds in English and they are both fricatives where air escapes through the upper teeth. The difference is voicing. as the unvoiced <th> has the air being pressed through the teeth as the only sound production, it may be done somewhat more forcefully to produce a clearly audible sound but the principle is the same. 



Sepia said:


> And I just don't buy the unqualified claim that we just can't speak proper English when we say that they do exist and the same phonem is used for a Danish D. If the argumentation were intelligent enough as to define exactly where the difference would be found, fine. Just claiming they don't exist, when they do, is inacceptable as an argument.


I don't dare opine on the Danish "soft d" but I studied English phonology long enough to be able to voice a _qualified _opinion about the English <th>. And I can only assure you once again, in standard BE and common AE there are only two allophones of the <th> and in both air is pressed through the teeth. The difference is only voicing.

Have a look at this video. It explains the sound production very thoroughly from a common AE perspective. Standard BE does not differ in this respect though some regional accents do.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> Berndf aslo said, "The tip of the tongue is free and visible between the upper and lower teeth."  The tongue can also be behind the upper teeth.  I'm not sure which position is more common.  The perceptual result is the same, for native speakers.


The position of the tongue may be slightly asymmetric. But if you "hide" the tongue entirely behind the upper teeth and thereby block air passage through the teeth the the sound starts to shift, either towards [t]/[d] because the sound gets plosive, if you press the tip of the tongue against the teeth, or towards [s]/[z], if you leave a small gap to allow fricative pronunciation.


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## Dan2

After re-reading all the posts, I'd like to try to say a few words to help clarify the discussion.

For review (since this wasn't clear to everyone at the start) both of the "th" sounds in Eng can occur at the beginning, middle, or end of words.
Ex.'s for unvoiced: thin/ether/bath; for voiced: then/either/bathe.

The question is whether the Danish soft d is _identical _to the Eng voiced th or just _similar _to it, with differences.  When posters have said "it's different", that has been meant and/or interpreted in two different ways: 1) it's different from the unvoiced Eng th of "bath";  2) it's different even from the _voiced _Eng th of "bathe".  I think we all agree that (1) is true.  The interesting question is only whether (2) is also true.

When I listen to the soft d on the Danish speakdanish website, it sounds different to me from the English voiced th.  It seems to be more of an approximant than a fricative, with a suggestion of [l] (to the English ear at least). TheGist and Outsider have made similar comments in posts 14 and 17.

The situation is reminiscent for me of that concerning the Spanish between-vowels d (in the Amer Span dialects I'm familiar with).  It's _similar_ to Eng voiced th, but tends to be an approximant rather than a fricative.  (But it has no suggestion of [l], so it's not identical with the Danish soft d.  A mystery for another thread.)

Finally, it wasn't clear to me if Sepia was claiming that Danish soft d is identical to _all_ Eng voiced th or only the voiced th in certain Eng words.  If the first, I guess it's just another of those situations we encounter so often in language, different people hearing the same thing differently.  If the latter, Sepia, can you give us some English words with voiced th that sound _more _ like Danish d and some that sound _less _like it?  (Like berndf, I know of only one Eng voiced th.)  Thanks.


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## Ben Jamin

TheGist said:


> You don't need to have an academic interest in phonetics to notice the difference between English TH [ð] and Danish soft d [ð̩] or even [ð̞̩] (These little marks under ð indicate the difference according to Wikipedia in the article Danish Phonology.)!!!
> 
> I wrote a post in this thread some time ago. At the time, I was only starting to learn Danish. Here's the update: I now watched numerous movies in Danish, and I don't want to boast but I think I'm now pretty good at pronouncing the Danish soft d. In order to accomplish that, I've been going around asking everyone at home "Hvad laver du?" "Hvad hedder du?" "Hvad er det?" or simply "Hvad?". No one understood me, of course, but it helped _me_ understand how to pronounce this interesting sound.
> 
> I imagine why Danish people who wrote here don't see the difference between English and Danish [ð]. They probably never learned how to pronounce English [ð] properly, relying on the similarity between the two. And if they use Danish [ð] when they speak English, no one would correct them, because they are indeed pretty similar, but NOT identical. It might be a so-called "false friend" for the Danes.
> 
> On the other hand, for me it's a totally different story. There's no [ð] in Russian at all. So I first learned how to pronounce English [ð], I learned to hear and differentiate it from other English sounds. Oh, it was a long time ago!  Now I've started to learn Danish and heard Danish [ð] - and what a surprise! - it's obviously a different sound.
> 
> So my recipe for pronouncing Danish [ð] would be: Avoid intense friction (that you would allow in English), just touch the upper teeth but don't force the air through the opening between the teeth and tongue (otherwise you'll end up with excessively fricative sound), make sure you've left enough space for the air to come out freely. You may even stretch the tongue a bit further out, especially in words like "hvad" (I saw this in Danish movies: when someone asks surprisingly "Hvad?", they stick out their tongue so much you might think they're showing disrespect - I'm kidding, of course, but it's pretty obvious for sure.)
> 
> Maybe Danish native speakers will laugh or at least smile reading my description, but it's just my look on it.
> 
> So if you pronounce [ð] in Danish "hvad" and English "with" identically, you are either a Dane speaking English, or an English native speaker speaking Danish.
> 
> I'm not saying that it's something very wrong and unacceptable. No! I just want to tell other learners of Danish who notice this difference that they are not alone.


 This was really informative! A bystander can often see more than somebody who is inside.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> The position of the tongue may be slightly asymmetric. But if you "hide" the tongue entirely behind the upper teeth and thereby block air passage through the teeth the the sound starts to shift, either towards [t]/[d] because the sound gets plosive, if you press the tip of the tongue against the teeth, or towards [s]/[z], if you leave a small gap to allow fricative pronunciation.


 There is nothing that hinders you to articulate a fricative with the tongue tip behind the teeth.


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> There is nothing that hinders you to  articulate a fricative with the tongue tip behind the teeth.


I said "*if* you *press* the tip of the tongue against the teeth". And than I said "*or* ... *if* you leave a small gap to allow *fricative* pronunciation". I did not deny the possibility of a fricative pronunciation. I just said this would make it a different sound.


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## Dan2

Regarding English "th" ([θ] and [ð]):





berndf said:


> The tip of the tongue is free and visible between the upper and lower teeth.





Dan2 said:


> The tongue can also be behind the upper teeth.  I'm not sure which position is more common.  The perceptual result is the same, for native speakers.


The last sentence above can be taken two ways, both of which are correct, I believe:
1. The sounds resulting from the two positions may be slightly different acoustically, but the native speaker perceives them as identical.
2. It takes a native speaker (OK, I'm sure there are exceptions) to be able to produce a perceptually-correct English "th" with both tongue positions.

Also note the following, from P. Roach, "English Phonetics and Phonology":
[θ] and [ð] "are sometimes described as if the tongue were placed between the front teeth, and it is common for teachers to make students do this when trying to teach them to make this sound.  In fact however, the tongue is normally placed _behind_ the teeth..."


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> Also note the following, from P. Roach, "English Phonetics and Phonology":
> [θ] and [ð] "are sometimes described as if the tongue were placed between the front teeth, and it is common for teachers to make students do this when trying to teach them to make this sound.  In fact however, the tongue is normally placed _behind_ the teeth..."


Yes, teachers indeed often teach an exaggerated tongue position to foreign students. That's why I was careful to describe the tongue position the way I did, "The tip of the tongue is free and visible between the upper and lower  teeth" and did not write "stick out between the upper and lower  teeth". The tongue is entirely behind the teeth but the tip is on the level of the narrow gap (~5mm) between the upper and lower teeth and visible through this gap (you see it nicely in the video). What I objected to was your description "behind the *upper* teeth" which in my understanding implies a position of the tip of the tongue about a 1cm higher and that produces different sounds, more "d/t-ish", if you press the tip of the tongue against the teeth and more "s/z-ish", if you don't.


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## Casparul

I agree totally with berndf and TheGist. The "th" in "whether" is clearly different from the "d" in "væder".

Many Danes don't hear the difference and I myself was not aware of it until my former girlfriend, a Greek student of philology, said that the Danish "mad" sounded like "mal"!
The tongue is placed lower in Danish and the tip only touches the lower teeth; in English the tip of the tongue also touches the upper teeth.


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## Sepia

Casparul said:


> I agree totally with berndf and TheGist. The "th" in "whether" is clearly different from the "d" in "væder".
> 
> Many Danes don't hear the difference and I myself was not aware of it until my former girlfriend, a Greek student of philology, said that the Danish "mad" sounded like "mal"!
> The tongue is placed lower in Danish and the tip only touches the lower teeth; in English the tip of the tongue also touches the upper teeth.


 
Based on which dialect?


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## Havfruen

For the record, when I was first learning Danish, the soft 'd' sounded most like an 'l' to me. Now soft 'd' is clearly distinct form both 'l' and from 'th'.  Regarding dialect, it was audio language learning material, so pretty standard language and probably closest to sjællandsk.


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## Sepia

At least, it never occurred to me that it was even possible to make a sound that remotely sounds like a soft Danish "d" by touching the lower teeth with the tip of the tongue, and I am trying to figure out if any of the people I know do that, and if so, if it is a regional thing. I tried it out yesterday and found it sounds a bit like it could be a dialect from Sjaelland or even Swedish from the region "Skaane". 

I am pretty sure that none of my closest relatives from DK (Jutland - South) would pronounce a soft "d" with the tip of the tongue touching the lower teeth.


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## Casparul

Sepia said:


> Based on which dialect?


 
Standard pronunciation (rigsmålsudtale).


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## Casparul

Sepia said:


> At least, it never occurred to me that it was even possible to make a sound that remotely sounds like a soft Danish "d" by touching the lower teeth with the tip of the tongue, and I am trying to figure out if any of the people I know do that, and if so, if it is a regional thing. I tried it out yesterday and found it sounds a bit like it could be a dialect from Sjaelland or even Swedish from the region "Skaane".
> 
> I am pretty sure that none of my closest relatives from DK (Jutland - South) would pronounce a soft "d" with the tip of the tongue touching the lower teeth.


 
Although I am no expert in phonetics I am pretty sure of two things:
1) Swedish - whether from Scania/Skåne or not - does not have this phoneme at all.
2) I have never heard a native Danish speaker pronounce the soft d in any other way than the one described above (but, of course, I have heard many people - especially in Jutland - use a hard d where the standard pronunciation would be a soft d).

Incidentally, the (full) IPA symbol for the Danish soft d is [̠ˠ̞ð̠ˠ̞].
Perhaps some phonetically gifted person can confirm that the English [ð̠ˠ̞] does not have the above "dental diacritics".


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## Sepia

Casparul said:


> Standard pronunciation (rigsmålsudtale).



Du ved sikkert godt, at den koeber jeg ikke. De paastaar alle at tale rigsdansk og alligevel kan man hoere forskel om de kommer fra Vestegnen, Amager eller Oesterbro.

You probably know I don't buy that. They all claim to speak standard Danish and still you can tell from their pronounciation where they come from. Sometimes one can even tell from which part of Greater Copenhagen they are from.


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## Casparul

Sepia said:


> Du ved sikkert godt, at den koeber jeg ikke. De paastaar alle at tale rigsdansk og alligevel kan man hoere forskel om de kommer fra Vestegnen, Amager eller Oesterbro.
> 
> You probably know I don't buy that. They all claim to speak standard Danish and still you can tell from their pronounciation where they come from. Sometimes one can even tell from which part of Greater Copenhagen they are from.


 
Eh no, I don't know you - and I don't know what you do or do not believe.
Who is "they"?


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## Sepia

Casparul said:


> Eh no, I don't know you - and I don't know what you do or do not believe.
> Who is "they"?



They = a good deal of relatives of mine for to start with ... and a whole bunch of other people who live in that area. 

I am aware that almost every language has something they call "standard" - however, what spoken language is concerned I see it as a theoretical thing. You simply don't find people who speak 100% "the way they should" to be standard.


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## Casparul

Sepia said:


> They = a good deal of relatives of mine for to start with ... and a whole bunch of other people who live in that area.
> 
> I am aware that almost every language has something they call "standard" - however, what spoken language is concerned I see it as a theoretical thing. You simply don't find people who speak 100% "the way they should" to be standard.


 
You've gone from "they" to "people who live in that area" ... Is this some kind of code language?

There is no way that people "should" talk, but there is one language norm (among many norms) that is considered standard. That was the one I was referring to.

At any rate - as already mentioned - I have never heard any Dane, *including people with regional accents*, pronounce a soft "d" in any other way than the one mentioned in my previous post (I am here disregarding those who don't use a soft "d" at all, but instead a hard "d" or a "j").


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## melisma

The discussion of soft d sounding like l to English speakers is interesting to me, as I also heard 'mad' as 'mal' at first and I had a very hard time connecting the spoken and written word. My boyfriend thought I was completely insane but it's nice to hear that I wasn't the only one!



Sepia said:


> Based on which dialect?



Both those I heard in Odense and in northern Jutland sounded like l to me.


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## Casparul

melisma said:


> *The discussion of soft d sounding like l to English speakers is interesting to me*, as I also heard 'mad' as 'mal' at first and I had a very hard time connecting the spoken and written word. My boyfriend thought I was completely insane but it's nice to hear that I wasn't the only one!
> 
> 
> 
> Both those I heard in Odense and in northern Jutland sounded like l to me.


 
Not only English speakers! Greek speakers and Romanian speakers also hear it. Judging by this thread ... only Danish speakers don't hear it.


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## Geoscan

frugihoyi said:


> I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree because the d in "gade" and the th in "bother" sound completely different to me.



I completely agree with you, Frugihoyi..  The Danish soft 'd' sound is very different to English soft 'th'


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## Geoscan

mnl said:


> Dispite the discussions about the finer details of the pronunciation, I think it is safe to say that there are similarities, and let us see if we can give some  pragmatic advice to the courageous foreign speakers who try to get the soft "d" right.
> 
> Personally, I find the "th" in words like "other", "gather" to be pretty close to the soft d in Danish. This is of course also thanks to the common Germanic roots between the two languages.
> 
> 
> 
> However, a "th" at the end of an English word has no parallel in Danish pronunciation: "Bath" is not pronounced like "bad", even if the two words are basically the same.
> 
> It also seems to me that English words of a Latin/Greek/French origin which contain a "th" have a quite different pronunciation of the "th"-sound than similar words of Germanic origin: "Theory" is not pronounced anything like "the", "there", "their", etc. and hence the "th" we are talking about is not the one in "thermometer", "theology", etc.
> 
> The last two points just to be sure that we are discussing the same thing.
> 
> 
> So, to sum it up: Whether you think they sound the same or not, the "th" in words like "other", "bother", "mother", "gather", "the" and "there" is a good approximation of the soft "d" in Danish. If this simple rule can be of help to you, use it. Danish is difficult enough as it is.



It starts off sort of the same but, really, this sound is quite different..  I remember when I was younger, my mother (who is from Copenhagen) was constantly trying to correct my soft 'd', which I pronounced with the tongue touching the bottom teeth (even though it still sounds identical)..  The best way to pronounce this sound is to stick out one's tongue and let the tongue stiffen - if that makes sense..


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## Sepia

Well, we are still curious to hear how you pronounce the "th" in "bother", "with" and all other words with that sound in it. As you'll see in further posts: We know how we pronounce a Danish soft d, and can describe it phonetically. Simply claiming it is different, without any scientific argumentation is a no-go. 
'
And before you ask, who are "we"? - have a look through the threads and you'll see who else is curious ...

And the fact that Danish "bad" means the same as "bath" is not a valid argument. Just because the words have a common origin does not mean that the "th" in that case is the one we are talking about. Only somebody with a bad German accent would pronounce the "th" in bath and in with the same way.


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## berndf

Sepia said:


> Well, we are still curious to hear how you pronounce the "th" in "bother", "with" and all other words with that sound in it. As you'll see in further posts: We know how we pronounce a Danish soft  d, and can describe it phonetically. Simply claiming it is different,  without any scientific argumentation is a no-go.


/ð/ as in "bro*th*er" is a *voiced variant* of /θ/ as in "ba*th*".  The position of the tongue is the same for the two sounds the difference being that in "bro*th*er" vocal cords vibrate and in "ba*th*" not. It is the same kind of difference as between /z/ and /s/ (e.g. German *"S*onne" vs. English *"s*un"). This has all been described over and over again in this thread. The *two* English "th" sounds and their ways of production and the difference between them is shown in all detail in the video linked to in my earlier post #33. The link is still alive. Please watch it and you will have your answer.


Sepia said:


> Only somebody with a bad German accent would pronounce the "th" in bath and in with the same way.


Nobody ever claimed they sounded the same.


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## zyzzy

When I listen to Danish, I get the impression that the soft d does not only consist of the d itself, but also by the way that it affects the previous vowel when the tongue moves forward towards the teeth, e g in a word like "tid" or "bad", so that you don't really need to hear the actual d sound to know that it's there, which allows the d to be softer than the English th sound. 

Or should I listen to more Danish?


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## matakoweg

melisma said:


> The discussion of soft d sounding like l to English speakers is interesting to me, as I also heard 'mad' as 'mal' at first and I had a very hard time connecting the spoken and written word. My boyfriend thought I was completely insane but it's nice to hear that I wasn't the only one!
> Both those I heard in Odense and in northern Jutland sounded like l to me.



First time I was in Danmark, the soft d sounds to me as L. So the place name Odense sounded as Ulense !!!


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## Ben Jamin

mnl said:


> It also seems to me that English words of a Latin/Greek/French origin which contain a "th" have a quite different pronunciation of the "th"-sound than similar words of Germanic origin: "Theory" is not pronounced anything like "the", "there", "their", etc. and hence the "th" we are talking about is not the one in "thermometer", "theology", etc.


Do you mean with that, that "th" in _theory _is not sounded, while "th" in _they _is sounded, or you can hear other differences too? What are they? I have never heard or read about them.


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## mnl

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you mean with that, that "th" in _theory _is not sounded, while "th" in _they _is sounded, or you can hear other differences too? What are they? I have never heard or read about them.


To be honest, I am not sure exactly what the differences are, but this Wikipedia page maps out the differences nicely - without trying to explain them, though. I am aware that Wikipedia is not to be considered proof of anything, but in this case I found it to provide some useful input.


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## myfakename

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you mean with that, that "th" in _theory _is not sounded, while "th" in _they _is sounded, or you can hear other differences too? What are they? I have never heard or read about them.



Do you mean voiced/unvoiced? "Th in theory is not sounded" doesn't equal "Th in theory is unvoiced". The first sentence means it's not pronounced.

On topic though, Danish "soft d" sounds nothing like English voiced "th". It's close to the Spanish "soft d" in _na*d*a_, but not exactly the same.


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## berndf

mnl said:


> To be honest, I am not sure exactly what the differences are, but this Wikipedia page maps out the differences nicely - without trying to explain them, though. I am aware that Wikipedia is not to be considered proof of anything, but in this case I found it to provide some useful input.


I am not quite sure what you mean. The article confirms that the most prominent separating feature between /θ/ and /ð/ is voicing and the only other consistent secondary characteristic the article highlights is _energy _which has been mentioned in this thread before as well:


berndf said:


> The difference is voicing. as the unvoiced <th> has the air being pressed through the teeth as the only sound production, it may be done somewhat more forcefully to produce a clearly audible sound but the principle is the same.


Is that (_unvoiced_ vs. _voiced_ and _fortis_ vs. _lenis_) what you mean?


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## mnl

> Is that (unvoiced vs. voiced and fortis vs. lenis) what you mean?


That could very well be what I am hearing, thanks. 

There have been a few comments to my original comment  (back on page 1) from very knowledgeable members, but I'd just like to clear up that that comment was meant as a proposal to collectively come up with pragmatic and maybe even non-academic advice to a non-native speaker regarding the pronunciation of a notoriously difficult sound in Danish. 

I now realize that it was a bad idea, and won't pursue it further.


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## Ben Jamin

myfakename said:


> Do you mean voiced/unvoiced? "Th in theory is not sounded" doesn't equal "Th in theory is unvoiced". The first sentence means it's not pronounced.
> 
> On topic though, Danish "soft d" sounds nothing like English voiced "th". It's close to the Spanish "soft d" in _na*d*a_, but not exactly the same.


Sorry for the error. I meant “voiced” of course. So, do you say that there is a difference of quality between the initial sounds in “they” and “theory”, other than voicing of the first and not voicing of the second? 
(You wrote: _It also seems to me that English words of a Latin/Greek/French origin which contain a "th" have a *quite different pronunciation of the "th"-sound* than similar words of Germanic origin: "Theory" is not pronounced anything like "the", "there", "their", etc. and hence the "th" we are talking about is not the one in "thermometer", "theology", etc.)_


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## myfakename

Well I haven't written that, but I'll reply anyway since it's an interesting topic: for me there may be a very little difference, i.e. *th*eory may be pronounced a bit longer than *th*e. In fast speech, I can sometimes hear the voiced dental approximant /ð̞/ instead of the voiced dental fricative /ð/ (in words like "the").

The interesting thing is, this approximant doesn't sounds like the Danish "soft d" nor the Spanish "soft d". If we imagine the voiced th as a "lisping z", then the sound I'm talking about is a "(very) short lisping z" or "short lisping d". I bet 95% native speakers aren't aware of that sound, maybe because it's an allophone, and it doesn't sound THAT different from the usual voiced th.

But then again, it may be just my ears. I know IPA and its sounds pretty well, but I can't say for sure.


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## berndf

myfakename said:


> for me there may be a very little difference, i.e. *th*eory may be pronounced a bit longer than *th*e.


This is typical for _fortis/lenis_ pairs, cf. _*f*erry/*v*ery, *s*ink/*z*inc, i*c*e/__eye*s*_.


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## Dan2

mnl said:


> It also seems to me that English words of a Latin/Greek/French origin which contain a "th" have a quite different pronunciation of the "th"-sound than similar words of Germanic origin: "Theory" is not pronounced anything like "the", "there", "their", etc. and hence the "th" we are talking about is not the one in "thermometer", "theology", etc.


(The above was first posted two years ago but it's been quoted a couple of times in the last few days.)

Just so that people don't come away with a misunderstanding...

Despite _thermometer_, etc., most common English words with voiceless "th" [θ] are actually Germanic, not of Latin/Greek/French origin: _three, through, think, thing, thick, thin, both, teeth, mouth, youth_, and many others.

Going in the other direction, while it's true that words with voiced "th" [ð] are almost always Germanic, I can think of one common voiced-"th" word that is a Romance borrowing.  (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader...)


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## jollyrajah

Fascinating thread. I agree that the Danish soft d is distinct from the English "th" as in "bother." When I say "gade," I don't touch my top teeth with my tongue. When I say "bother," I do. But many Danes don't even bother to even move their tongue--they make the vowel do all the work.


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## mnl

I can't figure out whether this is a constructive discussion or not, but just for the record, my very personal experience/habit:


If I want to pronounce "gade" correctly, I _do_ touch the top front teeth with the tip of my tongue.
If I pronounce it in my everyday style, I touch the bottom front teeth, and that actually makes for a really bad pronunciation.
I am aware that other dialects avoid the d sound altogether ("gaje"), so there definitely are quite a few possibilities.

And, yes, the way I touch the top teeth when I pronounce "bother" is not the same, and, no, my English pronunciation doesn't really count.


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## Sepia

jollyrajah said:


> Fascinating thread. I agree that the Danish soft d is distinct from the English "th" as in "bother." When I say "gade," I don't touch my top teeth with my tongue. ...



You should, for anyone recognizing it as "gade" - at least for Standard Danish and Greater Copenhagen dialects. What DO you do with your tongue when saying "gade"? There are a few Jutland dialects where ist sounds like "gaje" or even "gaj' ".


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## jollyrajah

Sepia said:


> What DO you do with your tongue when saying "gade"?



My pronunciation is pretty much my mother's Frederiksberg dialect, circa 1960.  The tongue leaves the mouth, and it impedes the flow of air, and maybe it grazes some of the top teeth very slightly (but certainly not to the same extent as in English). But the English "th" sound is completely different to my ear. Otherwise Danish "fader" would sound much like "feather." To my ear, the soft d is one of the most difficult Danish consonants for an American, and you can mark them right away by their inability to make that sound.


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## Sepia

Aaahhhh, I see what you mean. I totally forgot about them. I wouldn't say they are an extinct speciea, but they are probably almost as rare as that pronounce "cykel" with an "ee" sound - see-kel - and not with an ü like in all other words like by, ny etc.

In up through the 60es that was still heard (while I was a small kid)  - especially on Danish national television. The last guy I knew who spoke like that is - providing he is still alive approx. 100 years old. 

It is pretty odd, that there could even be a "Frederiksberg dialect" (which probably at the same time was a sociolect), because it is such a small enclave surrounded from all sides by absolute 100% working class areas where people spoke other quite different dialects.


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## pyprok

What do you think about this explanation which I took from dansk.nu website?
(I've been given this website as a reference since I'm studing danish at sprogcenter midt)



> Nogle udtaler ikke lyden [ð] rigtigt, men siger [l] i stedet for. Når man siger [l], er tungen oppe bag fortænderne i overmunden.
> 
> Når man siger [ð], er spidsen af tungen nede bag fortænderne i undermunden.
> 
> Kig i et spejl, om tungen bliver nede. Hvis den ikke gør det, så prøv at holde den nede med noget.


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## Sepia

I'd say, two out of three are correct. The illogical part is the third statement: How are you going to press down the tongue with an object and still not opening the gap between the tongue and the front teeth?

True is that you touch the lower part of the front teeth with the tip of the tongue for the [ð] sound and the upper part of them for the l sound. However, one important part is missing concerninge the l; you let air flow around the middle part of the tongue - otherwise it becomes an n.


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## infirmier_qc

I definitely find the soft d the most difficult sound of the Danish phonology. Could anyone give me any tricks or pointers as to how to correctly pronounce this very interesting feature of the language?


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## Lugubert

First, I'm not a native of either English or Danish, but have lived for several months in Britain and Denmark.


pyprok said:


> dansk.nu said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Nogle udtaler ikke lyden [ð] rigtigt, men siger [l] i stedet for.  Når man siger [l], er tungen oppe bag fortænderne i overmunden.
> Når man siger [ð], er spidsen af tungen nede bag fortænderne i undermunden.
> Kig i et spejl, om tungen bliver nede. Hvis den ikke gør det, så prøv at holde den nede med noget.
Click to expand...

I liked this first post! The explanation perfectly matches some of my Danish _d_'s. Many of mine tend to be much more towards glottal slops or central vowels than to any of my [l]'s.

(Some?) *initial *Danish _d_'s seem to me to be quite another kettle of fish. _Dage_ ('days') would in my ears have a [d̥]; a voiceless lenis. But the final in _god_ often almost disappears before reaching my ears. And intervocalic _d_'s are ...

Take _bade_ (bathe). My Danish _d_ is much more relaxed and even indistinct than my English [ð], which has my tongue tip more upwards from the lower teeth and slightly more rigid.

And Danish _god_. Extremely relaxed _d_, almost a faint glottal stop. Am I influenced by Jutlandish?


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## Sepia

Could be you are - however, I am not too sure where you have the glottal stop. In some regions they don't even pronounce the "d" in "god", by the way. 

"Bade" is a good example. You just leave out "ba..." and you've got "the" (=English article). A worrd cannot start with a soft d. Never.


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## infirmier_qc

Så er det noget rigtigt, at den danske D  har en sund tæt på et L, men med tungen nedad?


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## Sepia

Huh? If you put it that way a lot of sounds would be similar. It is a bit like sayint that a left hook to the jaw is similar to a cross to the solar plexus, because in both cases the hand is hitting something. Sure, that is true as well. However, that is not the way I would teach boxing ...


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## Sepia

Huh? If you put it that way a lot of sounds would be similar. It is a bit like sayint that a left hook to the jaw is similar to a cross to the solar plexus, because in both cases the hand is hitting something. Sure, that is true as well. However, that is not the way I would teach boxing ...

Oh, yes, most important: At the end of the motion the tongue is touching the upper teeth to pronounce a "d". So I really do not see where it is pointing downwards.


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## bicontinental

infirmier_qc said:


> Så er det noget rigtigt, at den danske D  har en sund tæt på et L, men med tungen nedad?





  I wouldn’t say so. I realize that this is how these two sounds are frequently perceived by the non-native ear but to me the Danish “l” sound is very different from that of the Danish soft “d” (which again is very different from the English ‘th’ (the voiced dental fricative as in _bathe_).

  We can look at the words _at_ _male_ (to paint) vs. _at_ _made_ (to feed). The “l” in “at ma*l*e” is articulated by making contact between the tip of the tongue and the back of the upper front teeth/the front part of the hard palate. The soft “d” in “at ma*d*e” and in “rø*d*grø*d* me*d* flø*d*e” is in normal speech pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the back of the lower teeth. I think the confusion with the English “th” happens when the Danish soft “d” is exaggerated for instance in situations when we speak slowly to improve clarity of speech during which the tongue may approach an interdental position with a slight protrusion of the tip: røøødddgrøøddd meeddd fløøødddee...
Bic.


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## berndf

infirmier_qc said:


> Så er det noget rigtigt, at den danske D har en sund tæt på et L, men med tungen nedad?





bicontinental said:


> ...pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the back of the lower teeth.


I presume this lowering of [ð] to [ð̞] (this is how the sound is transcribed in text books) is responsible for some lateral airflow which causes the identification as [l] by non-native speakers because in most languages [l] is the only lateral consonant.

@bicontinental: When you as a native speaker pronounce the sound, how would you rate the proportion of frontal and lateral airflow?


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## Sepia

Biocontinental brought up something interesting - the word "fløøødddee" - Give it a try with that, BUT touch your front teeth right after the fff. That is, where the "l" is supposed to be. See what happens: it turns into "føødddee". 
Now it shouldn't be difficult to anyone to observe where the "l" sound and the "soft d" sound is generated.


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## bicontinental

berndf said:


> I presume this lowering of [ð] to [ð̞] (this is how the sound is transcribed in text books) is responsible for some lateral airflow which causes the identification as [l] by non-native speakers because in most languages [l] is the only lateral consonant.
> 
> @bicontinental: When you as a native speaker pronounce the sound, how would you rate the proportion of frontal and lateral airflow?





  Hi berndf,

  I find it interesting that so many non-native speakers incl. phoneticians and linguists hear the Danish soft “d” [ð] sound as lateralized...I´m afraid I fail to hear it myself  In my opinion the [ð] is associated with a frontal airflow _only_ and I, therefore, find that there is a distinct difference between “l” and  “ð” . The difference in tongue position and airflow doesn´t allow for any overlapping between the two consonants in word sets like hade-hale, made-male, gade-gale, smide-smile etc. The “l”, of course, has a lateral airflow since the position of the tongue blocks a frontal airflow. 
Bic.


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