# English <th> /ð/, /θ/



## MarX

Hi!

Reading this reminded me that the English TH sound, both voiceless and voiced, is rendered quite differently in different accents, including non natives.

In German and French accents of English, it is often pronounced like S and Z, whereas in Indonesian accent it is often rendered as T and D.
In Cockney English it becomes F and V.

How is it in other accents?

Thanks!

Salam,


MarX


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## Joannes

Native speakers of Dutch often keep it at a /t/ or /d/, native speakers of French tend to pronounce a /z/, although I heard in Québec they pronounce a /t/ or /d/.


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## avok

The French of France may have "s/z" but the French speakers of Quebec have "t/d"


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## Mahaodeh

There are two different sounds for the TH combination, as in _Th_ree and as in _Th_is. In some Arabic dialects the former is pronounced t/s and the latter is pronounced z/d.


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## avok

It is interesting that the Arabic "th" and "dh/th" becomes "s" and "z" respectively in Turkish.

Ex: Ramadhan becomes Ramazan in Turkish.


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## Tamar

Speakers of Hebrew change dh/th to either d/t or s/z, it's quite individual...


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## MarX

avok said:


> It is interesting that the Arabic "th" and "dh/th" becomes "s" and "z" respectively in Turkish.
> 
> Ex: Ramadhan becomes Ramazan in Turkish.


Ramadhan becomes Ramadan in Indonesian.


Are there no other accents where English *th* sounds like *v/f* as in Cockney English?


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## Kangy

In Spanish, the 'hard th' (as in *think*) is rendered mostly as /s/ (_I sink_, instead of _I think_ ). Seldom have I heard it as /f/ (_I fink_), mostly by children. Other times it's pronounced as /t/ just because of spelling (_I tink_).
Then, the 'soft th' (as in *then*) is commonly rendered as /d/ (_Den I saw it_, instead of _Then I saw it_).


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## GEmatt

MarX said:


> Are there no other accents where English *th* sounds like *v/f* as in Cockney English?


Yes.  I'm called Matthew.  Growing up near Zurich, Switzerland, the 'th' was pronounced 'ff' (or occasionally 'ss').  Since they had trouble pronouncing the open English 'a' as well, I became "Meffiu" or "Messiu".  This is not just the case in German-speaking Switzerland with its various dialects; I notice the same in Germany, too.

Around the Geneva area (French-speaking), the 'th' tends to be ignored altogether, and I respond to "Matiou".

(note the "u" of the German is the same as the "ou" in French)


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## Hakro

Finns often pronounce  both voiceless and voiced TH sound as "t". There's no difference between _think_ and _tink_, or between _then_ and _ten_.


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## Outsider

When I was starting to learn English, I recall approximating the voiceless "th" as [f], and the voiced "th" as [d]. 

I don't recall ever using the [s]-[z] pronunciation, which I always felt was a dead giveaway that the speaker was not a native. For example, in English fiction programmes like _Allo, Allo_, the stereotypical Frenchman and the stereotypical German will always use this pronunciation. It sounds so conspicuously foreign!

Another one that stands out a bit, in my opinion, is the pronunciation of the voiceless "th" as [t]. It reminds me of Tweety Bird.


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## elroy

Mahaodeh said:


> There are two different sounds for the TH combination, as in _Th_ree and as in _Th_is. In some Arabic dialects the former is pronounced t/s and the latter is pronounced z/d.


 Just to clarify, Mahaodeh is talking about how some native speakers of Arabic pronounce _Arabic_ words containing these sounds in their own dialects.  This has nothing to do with inability to pronounce them, but with the way their dialects have developed.

I think MarX is asking about how _English_ words with these sounds are pronounced by those who speak English with an accent.

Because both sounds exist in Arabic, Arabic speakers generally pronounce them correctly when speaking English.


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## Nanon

avok said:


> The French of France may have "s/z" but the French speakers of Quebec have "t/d"


 
Then I must be Canadian . Funny, I don't recall having this ingredient in my own personal mixture. 
I belong to the DDT club only when I speak in languages without th sounds. But I can pronounce the voiced and voiceless th in English, and now that I am beginning to learn Arabic, I hope I might be close to sounding correct at least for these two sounds...

Russian: The English th's are transcribed as t/d (т/д).
However the Greek th (Θ like in Athens, Thessaloniki...) is often translitterated in Russian as f (ф).


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## sniffrat

...and in Ireland you will sometimes hear _three_ pronounced like _tree_


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## Dymn

/θ/ also exists in Spain Spanish so that's obviously the sound we use for voiceless th. 

For voiced th, /d/ is used, which becomes an approximant [ð̞] in quite a lot of phonetic contexts following the rules of Iberian Romance phonology.


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## Hakro

- This is German Coast Guard, go ahead!

- May Day May Day May Day This is British Cargo XYZ - We are sinking! We are sinking!

- XYZ roger, and tell me, what are you sinking about??


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## Penyafort

Theoretically, we Catalan speakers should mispronounce θ as either _t_ or _s, _following our Italian and French counterparts. And maybe French and Italian Catalans do so.

But since Catalans in Spain also speak Spanish, mainly the North-Central one in which /θ/ exists, in practice most Catalan speakers will say it properly.

Things are a bit different regarding the /ð̞/ sound, because both in Catalan and Spanish it only happens among vowels or after l/r, and usually more as an approximant rather than a fricative. So at the beginning of sentences such as _This_..., expect a /d/.


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## Ansku89

Hakro said:


> Finns often pronounce  both voiceless and voiced TH sound as "t". There's no difference between _think_ and _tink_, or between _then_ and _ten_.


I have also come across people pronouncing both the T and the H.


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## Red Arrow

In Flanders, th is often pronounced like a T or D.
It is always pronounced like a T in Dutch words, for instance "thuis" (home), "thee" (tea) and "theater" (theatre).

I once had a math assistent from France / Wallonia and he said *"sickness"* instead of *"thickness"*. Everyone started laughing, it's obviously *tickness*!


Ansku89 said:


> I have also come across people pronouncing both the T and the H.


Same here.

thin [thɪn]
then [dhɛn]


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## clamor

I often heard s, z / f, z in France. I think most speakers hear /f/ when BE speakers use a voiceless th.


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## Awwal12

MarX said:


> How is it in other accents?
> 
> Thanks!


In my experience, Russians tend to approximate these sounds as usual Russian dentialveolar velarized [s] and [z] (Mutko certainly does). Although I don't really understand Russian speakers who don't even try to articulate [ð] and [θ]. In fact, these sounds simply represent a lacuna in Russian phonology, which can be easily filled, since these sounds relate to Russian [d] and [t] almost exactly how [v] relates to [b], [f] to [p] or [x] to [k] (or common dialectal [ɣ] to standard [g], to that matter).


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## clamor

clamor said:


> I often heard s, z / f, z in France. I think most speakers hear /f/ when BE speakers use a voiceless th.


I meant, RP speakers.

In France _Stranger Things_ (/streɪnd͡ʒɚ θɪŋz/ in AmE) can be frenchified to /stʁɛnd͡ʒœʁ, stʁɛnd͡ʒɛʁ singz/ and _The Voice_ to /zə vɔjs/


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## nimak

*Macedonians* tend to pronounce them as /t/ and /d/.

"T" and "d" are also used to transcribe/transliterate English words/names into Macedonian Cyrillic, so *Smith* is *Смит* (Smit) and *Rutherford* is *Радерфорд* (Raderford).


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## Penyafort

clamor said:


> In France _Stranger Things_ (/streɪnd͡ʒɚ θɪŋz/ in AmE) can be frenchified to /stʁɛnd͡ʒœʁ, stʁɛnd͡ʒɛʁ singz/ and _The Voice_ to /zə vɔjs/



Nice one.

In Spain it'd be  / es'tɾe(j)n(d)ʝeɾ θins/θiŋgs / and /de'βojs/ (<- it'd be said the same if it was The Boys)


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## Red Arrow

nimak said:


> *Rutherford* is *Радерфорд* (Raderford).


Like all scientific words, the th in Rutherford is pronounced like a T.


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## clamor

Penyafort said:


> Nice one.
> 
> In Spain it'd be  / es'tɾe(j)n(d)ʝeɾ θins/θiŋgs / and /de'βojs/ (<- it'd be said the same if it was The Boys)


Interesting!


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## apmoy70

In Greek the problem we have pronouncing English is not the /ð/, /θ/ phonemes but the more "exotic" ones to our untrained ear  /d̥ʒ̊/, /ɹʷ/, /ɐ/, /æ/, /ʌ/ etc.


clamor said:


> _...
> Stranger Things_ (/streɪnd͡ʒɚ θɪŋz/ in AmE) can be frenchified to /stʁɛnd͡ʒœʁ, stʁɛnd͡ʒɛʁ singz/ and _The Voice_ to /zə vɔjs/


For us it's [ˈstrei̯n.ʣ͜eɾ ˈθiŋ.gs], [ðe ˈvɔi̯s]


nimak said:


> ...
> "T" and "d" are also used to transcribe/transliterate English words/names into Macedonian Cyrillic, so *Smith* is *Смит* (Smit) and *Rutherford* is *Радерфорд* (Raderford).


[smiθ], [ˈɾa.ðer.fɔrd]


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## clamor

nimak said:


> *Macedonians* tend to pronounce them as /t/ and /d/.
> 
> "T" and "d" are also used to transcribe/transliterate English words/names into Macedonian Cyrillic, so *Smith* is *Смит* (Smit) and *Rutherford* is *Радерфорд* (Raderford).


_In France : _*Smith *[s̪mis̪], *Rutherford* probably [ʁyt̪ɛʁfɔ̈ʁ̞d̪]


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## Linnets

English ⟨th⟩s are two of the most difficult sounds and different languages that don't have those sounds have their own solution to the problem:

in Italian /θ, ð/ are usually pronounced [t, d];
in French, German and some eastern European languages [s, z] are preferred;
in Cockney they are [f, v].
European Castilian has /θ/ as a phoneme and [ð] as an allophone, so they tend to use [θ, d]

My question is: are these differences completely random or are they caused by an inner feature of the phonemic structure in the languages?


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## Welsh_Sion

Because of our proximity geographically to England and English, I guess we don't have any problems in pronouncing their different types of <th>.

However, when it comes to Welsh orthography, /θ/ is always written as <th> and /ð/ is always <dd>. Both are very rare in initial position of native Welsh words, with probably <th> just shading it over <dd> in dictionaries and lexicons. (I have heard that we are the only Indo-Europeans to have <dd> or /ð/ initial position - but I can be told differently.)

However, both <th> and <dd> do exist plentifully as _*secondary* _forms in initial position. The former derives from aspirate/spirate mutation of <t>, where appropriate; the latter is a soft mutation of <d>. again where this applies.

Incidentally, <th> medially or at the end of a word may indicate a Latin etymology in Welsh: *saeth < Lat. sagitta *'an arrow', *porth < Lat. portus* 'a door'/'a port'.


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## sound shift

Welsh_Sion said:


> (I have heard that we are the only Indo-Europeans to have <dd> or /ð/ initial position - but I can be told differently.


I know nothing about this, but Wikipedia appears to be telling you differently: see "Aromanian", here.


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## Welsh_Sion

Maybe we're at cross purposes here - and I didn't explain clearly. Again, I don't know how true it is, but, it seems /ð/ is represented by <z> in Aromanian.

However, I don't see anyone else with <dd> as word initial with this sound. Again, I can stand corrected.

(Attempts to write the letter as <dh> and <ð> in Welsh during the 16th century came to naught.)


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## AquisM

Cantonese speakers (at least in Hong Kong) usually approximate /θ/ with */f/* and /ð/ with */t/ *(since Cantonese does not have voiced stops or fricatives).


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## Drakonica

In Polish anglicisms:
/ð/ -> d - /de best of de best/
/θ/ -> f - /friler/


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## kentix

My professor (from Germany) when I took a course on Martin Luther pronounced the class name:

"Loozer and zuh Philawzafee of Face"

Luther and the Philosophy of Faith

I have a science/tech degree but I really enjoyed the class and the professor.


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## elroy

kentix said:


> "Loozer and zuh Philawzafee of Face"
> 
> Luther and the Philosophy of Faith


I would expect "Loo*s*er"?


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## Frank78

Red Arrow said:


> Like all scientific words, the th in Rutherford is pronounced like a T.



Really? From my gut feeling and memory of my physics classes I would say rather /d/ than /t/.


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## Red Arrow

Frank78 said:


> Really? From my gut feeling and memory of my physics classes I would say rather /d/ than /t/.


What I meant was: Like all scientific words *in Dutch*, the th in Rutherford is pronounced like a T.
I say [ɾʏtəʁfɔʁt].


Red Arrow said:


> Same here.
> 
> thin [thɪn]
> then [dhɛn]


Just to clarify: this only happens in Flanders when speaking English or saying English names that haven't been naturalized. People that can't say the dental fricatives resort to [th dh], [th d] or [t d]. The pronunciation of th as [s z] or [f v] is completely unknown here.


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## kentix

elroy said:


> I would expect "Loo*s*er"?


I can only tell you what he said. Maybe it was between a z and an s.


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