# phoneme /θ/



## Cecilio

Hello.

It seems that the phoneme [θ] does not exist in many languages. It is pronounced like the "th" in the English word "theatre", or "thumb", with a characteristic sound which resembles that of a lisp.

This phoneme can be found in the following languages:

- English
- Spanish
- Greek
- Galician

The question is: are there any other languages of the world with this sound, or phoneme?

Another interesting point: Do all speakers, in all areas, have this phoneme? For example, in Spain only a minority of speakers (less than 40 million, all of the located in Spain) do pronounce this sound. In some parts of Spain and in Latinamerica it doesn't exist.


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## vince

Wikipedia gives a few more examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative

Albanian
Welsh
Icelandic
Northern Sami
Turkmen (another lisping language)


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## cherine

It exists in *Arabic* too.


Cecilio said:


> Another interesting point: Do all speakers, in all areas, have this phoneme?


This is the interesting question indeed 
No, not all speakers of Arabic pronounce it like this (but I'm speaking of *colloquial* forms of Arabic). In the classical Arabic, or the FusHa people are supposed to pronounce it correctly. But in some colloquial forms of the language it is not.
In Egypt we pronounce it as an "s". But I'm not sure about the other Arab countries.


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## Flaminius

Wikipedia lists 11 languages with this phoneme:

Spanish
Greek
Albanian
Welsh
Icelandic
Northern Sami
Hebrew
Arabic
Swahili
Turkmen
Huron


This is by no means an exhaustive list. Let's wait for others to contribute more. I am interested to know if there is any from East Asia.

Flam


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## Chazzwozzer

Can anybody provide a word where this letter used in Turkmen?


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## Flaminius

And Syriac language along with other varieties descending from Classic Aramaic.


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## anthodocheio

What I always wonder about is how it is possible that Spanish speakers in Latin America don't have this phoneme.


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## timpeac

anthodocheio said:


> What I always wonder about is how it is possible that Spanish speakers in Latin America don't have this phoneme.


Because the Spaniards who originally colonised the continent tended to come from those areas of Spain where it was pronounced as /s/. As to why some areas of Spain have /s/ and some /θ/ - I think it's just a function of the different development of Latin in different places. Latin /k/ became /tS/ (that's meant to be "ch" as in English "cheese") in Italian, for example in those parts of speech where it became /θ/ in some varieties of Spanish and /s/ in French.


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## Outsider

The Western varieties of Galician have /s/ instead of /T/.


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## modus.irrealis

Cecilio said:


> Another interesting point: Do all speakers, in all areas, have this phoneme?


There are English dialects where this sound doesn't exist. Wikipedia mentions these two: AAVE and Estuary English.


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## timpeac

Lots of people replace it with /f/ round here. "Three" and "free" sometime cause confusion.


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## modus.irrealis

I've read that [f] and [θ] are very similar acoustically, despite the differences in the way they're produced, and that seems to explain what I always thought was a strange sound change.


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## brian

Interestingly, older ancient Greek θ is generally believe to have been pronounced like the _th_ in _theater_ (according to Erasmian pronunciation), while a later Attic Greek would pronounce θ as a very heavily aspirated _t_ (with an _h_ sound following), a little like saying the words _mist house_ together, concentrating on the _th_.

But then it changed again and I believe today modern Greek θ is again like _theater_.  Moreover, the δ (_d_ as in _dog_) from ancient Greek became the voiced _th_ sound as in _those_. [Someone may have to check my modern Greek facts...]


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## modus.irrealis

brian8733 said:


> Interestingly, older ancient Greek θ is generally believe to have been pronounced like the _th_ in _theater_ (according to Erasmian pronunciation), while a later Attic Greek would pronounce θ as a very heavily aspirated _t_ (with an _h_ sound following), a little like saying the words _mist house_ together, concentrating on the _th_.



I don't think Erasmian corresponds to the pronunciation of any historical period of Greek. It seems to be basically Attic with some very late pronunciations (θ, φ, χ), some very early (ει), and some which never existed (ευ, maybe υι) thrown in. As far as I've read θ was always (unless you go to Proto-Indo-European) an aspirated t until the first few centuries AD when it switched to it's modern pronunciation.

You're also right about the change that occured with δ (the same thing also happened to other voiced stops β and γ, in that they became fricatives).


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## vince

The ancestors of Dutch and German used to have this sound:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_consonant_shift


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## amikama

Flaminius said:


> Wikipedia lists 11 languages with this phoneme:
> [...]
> Hebrew
> [...]


In Ancient Hebrew, yes, but not in Modern Hebrew (at least not in the Sfaradi accent).


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## Riccardino

[θ] corresponds to the letter "Tha" in arabic, right? I don't know how to write it on my keyboard.


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## cherine

Riccardino said:


> [θ] corresponds to the letter "Tha" in arabic, right? I don't know how to write it on my keyboard.


Yes, it's ث .
As I said, it's not pronounced as "th" in all the Arab countries, in some of them (like Egypt), people pronounce it as an "s" س.


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## ampurdan

I'd say it also occurs in Italian, even though it's not the official pronounciation. I think some people pronounce "z" like Spanish "z", i.e., English "th" in "thing". I remember having heard it in San Marino, for instance.

I would like someone more knowledgeable commented on this.


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## Whodunit

Wikipedia lists more than just 11 languages with this phoneme:

Albanian, Amami, Arabic, Arapaho, Asu, Basadung Hlai, Berta, Budai Rukai, Burmese, Cornish, English, Galician, Greek, Gros Ventre, Gweno, Gwich'in, Hän, Harsusi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Icelandic, Kabyle, Karuk, Kickapoo, Kwama, Lorediakarkar, Masa, Nuorese Sardinian, Romagnol, Saanich, Shawnee, Sliammon Comox, Spanish, S'gaw Karen, Shark Bay, Stoney, Swahili, Tanacross, Toda, Turkmen, Tutchone, Welayta, Welsh, Western Neo-Aramaic, Yavapai

I can count 45 languages, and I believe these are not all. Nevertheless, most of the above language are nearly unknown. 

It does not exist in German, and most speakers of German regard it as a wrong pronunciation of the _s_.


Flaminius said:


> I am interested to know if there is any from East Asia.


If Burmese counts as an East Asian language, I think the word အသံ (kathaN? correct me, if I read it wrong) for "tone" is a good example.


Chazzwozzer said:


> Can anybody provide a word where this letter used in Turkmen?


Wikipedia gives _sekiz_ [θekið] for "eight".


timpeac said:


> Lots of people replace it with /f/ round here. "Three" and "free" sometime cause confusion.


I know that pronunciation from my former English teacher, and I hated it. He was not able to pronounce "fifth" understandably enough (it was something like [fift] or [fifs] or even [fif'f] where he stopped immediately after the final consonant). Is it the case with the native speaker who lack the [θ] phoneme?


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## palomnik

timpeac said:


> Lots of people replace it with /f/ round here. "Three" and "free" sometime cause confusion.


 
It's interesting to note that in Medieval Russia, words borrowed from Greek with the letter θ in them were pronounced like an "f".  The letter θ itself was retained in Russian until 1918, when it was replaced in all situations with ф.


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## elroy

cherine said:


> In Egypt we pronounce it as an "s".


 Are you sure you always pronounce it as an "s"?  Don't you pronounce ثلاثة (MSA "θalaaθa") "*t*alaa*t*a"? 

In Palestinian Arabic, it depends on where you are:

In Jerusalem it is maintained in some words, but not always by everybody. 

In other words, it is pronounced as a "t." 

ثروة (MSA "θarwa"): "*θ*arwe"
مثلاً (MSA "maθalan"): "ma*θ*alan" (or "ma*t*alan" or "ma*s*alan")
بث (MSA "baθ"): "ba*θ*" (sometimes also "ba*s*") 
بعث (MSA "ba`aθa"): ba`a*t*

In some parts of the Galilee, it is consistently pronounced in all words.  The last word given above would be pronounced "ba`a*θ*," which would sound unusual (indeed, foreign) in Jerusalem.  Nobody says "ba`a*s*," though; that sounds very Egyptian.


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## timpeac

Whodunit said:


> I know that pronunciation from my former English teacher, and I hated it. He was not able to pronounce "fifth" understandably enough (it was something like [fift] or [fifs] or even [fif'f] where he stopped immediately after the final consonant). Is it the case with the native speaker who lack the [θ] phoneme?


Yes - [fiff] is quite a probable pronunciation for an English speaker who lacks this phoneme (or rather where the allophone they use to pronounce /θ/, [f], has merged with that of /f/).

In fact, there are two phonemena going on here - the merging of those two phonemes and the tendency in English to reduce consonant clusters. As someone who does pronounce /θ/ as [θ] I nevertheless do reduce the consonant cluster down, and would pronounce "fifth" as [fiθ], especially before a following consonant.


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## cherine

elroy said:


> Are you sure you always pronounce it as an "s"? Don't you pronounce ثلاثة (MSA "θalaaθa") "*t*alaa*t*a"?


You're right. I'm sorry for an incomplete answer 
Yes, in some words the letter ث is pronounced s and in others it's pronounced t.

ثروة (MSA "θarwa"): "*s*arwa"
مثلاً (MSA "maθalan"): "ma*s*alan"
بث (MSA "baθ"): "ba*s*"
بعث (MSA "ba`aθa"): ba`a*t*
ثمانية (MSA "θamaaniya"): *t*amanya
ثمن (MSA "θumn"): *t*omn

Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a rule -or an explanation- why some words are pronounced with an *s* and others with a *t*.


> Nobody says "ba`a*s*," though; that sounds very Egyptian.


Hahaha
Well, it happens that this word is not pronounced like this in Egypt  We pronounced it ba3a*t*.


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## Joannes

WALS mentions 40 languages having (a) 'th'-sound(s). There seems to be no areal pattern, as there is for phonological clicks for example (all concentrated in southern Africa).


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## Hakro

It is quite obvious that some 500 years ago the Finnish language had both /θ/ and /ð/, but as we got our written language via Swedish nobody knew how to write these phonemes. So they chose to write /θ/ as 's' and /ð/ as 'd'. 

For example:
/kæθi/ = käsi (hand)
/kæðen/ = käden (genitive: hand's)

In the very first Finnish texts /ð/  was sometimes written 'dh' but the letter h soon disappeared. The written form ('s' and 'd') later changed the pronunciation of spoken language, and today most of the Finns have real difficulties to pronounce /θ/ and /ð/.


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## Cecilio

Are you suggesting that in this case the writing influenced the pronunciation of the language? Maybe there were other reasons for these changes.

What about other Finno-Ugric languages? Is there any [θ] in them? As far as I know, there isn't.


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## Hakro

Cecilio said:


> Are you suggesting that in this case the writing influenced the pronunciation of the language? Maybe there were other reasons for these changes.


That's what the scientists say, I don't know much about it. You have to remember that in those days Finland was ruled by the Swedes or Finnish officials educated in Swedish. There was no education in Finnish and Finnish was the language of the illiterate peasants.


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## Chike

While its absence in West African languages probably affected the fact that black dialects in the English-speaking parts of the Americas tend to make it into a "t"... it is present in the widest spoken sub-Saharan African language: Swahili.


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## Forero

It is not just the z that differentiates Castilian dialects but also the s.  The Spanish speakers I hear on television and radio and all those I have ever met in person seem to always handle s and z in one of two ways:

1. Pronounce z as [θ] and s as [retroflex s].
2. Pronounce both z and s identically, but not as [θ] and not as [retroflex s].

I have heard that there are more variations in various parts of Andalucia, but I have never heard any of these dialects for myself.

I would guess that [retroflex s] for s is older than [θ] for z, that some speakers merged s with z by changing [retroflex s] to [s] (the usual s sound in most other languages) or sometimes [h], and that others developed the [θ] sound for z to assure that it would not merge with s.

I am curious whether native speakers somewhere in Spain distinguish [retroflex s] from [s] in everyday speech.


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## Cecilio

In the "Sólo español" (Spanish only) forum there is a thread in which this issue is being currently discussed. This is the link: la pronunciación española de la c/z ¿tiende a desaparecer?


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## xeneize

Yes this sound it does exist in Sardinian, even if only in the Nuorese variant.
It always sounded to me as a spanish heritage, but now I guess it's a feature much more ancient, I would'nt doubt about it, it could also be pre-romanic, and the fact that Nuorese Sardinian is the most conservative form of Sardinian language makes me think it could be the case.
In Italian, yes it's true you could find it in some local variants, but it's not at all widespread, and, besides, it's unknown to most italians, and very difficult to pronounce for them, i'd say impossible without a good training.
It appears in the San Marino-Emilia Romagna area because of the influence of Romagnol.


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## tom_in_bahia

timpeac said:


> In fact, there are two phonemena going on here - the merging of those two phonemes and the tendency in English to reduce consonant clusters. As someone who does pronounce /θ/ as [θ] I nevertheless do reduce the consonant cluster down, and would pronounce "fifth" as [fiθ], especially before a following consonant.


 
I was just talking about this the other day with my students. I gave the following two "nasal" examples to my students of situations where in normal speech I would probably not pronounce theta.

months (/m-carrot-n-unreleased t-s/)*
strenghts (/s-t-r-E:-engma-k-s/ _...in this case the t sound moved to a velar consonant after the engma_)

Another interesting one for me (though it's edh, not theta) is that I pronounce clothes to rhyme with close in normal speech.

*For months, I'm not sure if it's an unreleased t or not, because it more or less comes out like the ns cluster present in words like sense or tense which to me also have the same final sound as scents or tents. (any thoughts on that?) 
**Note that in the singular of the previous examples, the theta is present for me, although with an intruding /k/ between the engma and theta.


Chike said:


> While its absence in West African languages probably affected the fact that black dialects in the English-speaking parts of the Americas tend to make it into a "t"... it is present in the widest spoken sub-Saharan African language: Swahili.


 
This could be explained because Swahili was not a frequent native language of extracted slaves. Also, remember that the slaves went through a lot of cultural washing by the time they arrived to the US (an English speaking country). For example, many slaves from Angola, Moçambique, the Ivory Coast/"French" West Africa went through Brazil before being sold to Caribbean powers and finally arriving in the South of the US. The areas of slave extractions spoke many different languages, but if Swahili existed (or exists) in these regions, it was probably more of a commerce/trade lingua franca. Many slaves in the US south were already speaking Pidgin languages for in-group communication that revolved around Portuguese, French, Dutch and English mixed with a lot of common vocabulary in (not !only! Black) populations in Brazil, the Caribbean and the South.

So, I would agree that the th (voiced and unvoiced) became v/f in modern AAVE dialects because of the effects of the mixing of many peoples lacking this phoneme and possibly it's lack in some dialects of English of people who settled the areas of the Caribbean and the South of the US (Does the Scottish accent contain theta? Did it in the period of colonization?)

Also, is it possible that Swahili gained this phoneme because of it's contact with Arabic?? Just a question.


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## Outsider

tom_in_bahia said:


> I was just talking about this the other day with my students. I gave the following two "nasal" examples to my students of situations where in normal speech I would probably not pronounce theta.
> 
> months (/m-carrot-n-unreleased t-s/)*
> strenghts (/s-t-r-E:-engma-k-s/ _...in this case the t sound moved to a velar consonant after the engma_)
> 
> Another interesting one for me (though it's edh, not theta) is that I pronounce clothes to rhyme with close in normal speech.
> 
> *For months, I'm not sure if it's an unreleased t or not, because it more or less comes out like the ns cluster present in words like sense or tense which to me also have the same final sound as scents or tents. (any thoughts on that?)


An unreleased "t" is completely different from a "th". See this previous discussion. Perhaps you meant an unreleased "th" (I can't type phonetic symbols).


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## tom_in_bahia

I don't think I was really clear on the subject. What I meant was that my -nths combination (in the plural: months) works out to rhyme with words like runts or punts, where the t is barely audible so that the word "dunce" actually rhymes as well. Interestingly, when I say suns/sons it doesn't have this feature.

Anyway, in most situations, my theta is present. It just seems I'm following the syllable reduction tendency of English.


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## J.F. de TROYES

Whodunit said:


> If Burmese counts as an East Asian language, I think the word အသံ (kathaN? correct me, if I read it wrong) for "tone" is a good example


I suppose you want to write the word အသံ /*əthaN*/ which actually means a voice, a sound, an intonation.

This phoneme pronounced *θ *or *ð *is very usual in Burmese, but doesn't seem to appear in all the languages of the same linguistic group (as far as I know neither in Tibetan nor in Sgaw Karen).


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## darnil

The question is easy in terms of historical phonetical change: In medieval Spanish there were NO [θ] sound, and the /s/ phoneme (written s-, -s or -ss-) had apparently the same sound it has in present-day English or French which has been kept in Andalucía or America (sorry, but in Sp. "America" is a continent, not a single country). I guess that it was what you called "retroflex s" (postalveolar, coronal, etc. were the names i heard when studying it).


In the Middle Ages, then, there were four sounds:
- c/ç (somewhat similar to [ts], an unvoiced affricate alveolar)
- its voiced counterpart (written <z>: voiced affricate alveolar, something similar to [dz]);
- <-s-> (only in the middle of a word, a voiced fricative alveolar, much like French [z];
- <s-, -s, -ss-> which corresponds to present-day /s/

The process seems to have been:
1. De-voicing: [ts] and [dz] merged in [ts] and so did [z] and [s],which both became [s];
2. De-affrication: the [ts] became something like [θs] which originated [θ] in central and northern Spain (including most dialects of Galician , which is a different language) and [s] in the south, the Canary islands and America.​*So, the final (so far) solution is:
- In Castille: ts + dz > θ ; z + s > s (dento-alveolar, the furthest possible s from [θ])
- In the rest: ts + dz > s ; z + s > s (retroflex, as before, since there is no need to differentiate between sounds)

Hope this is clear (and exact)!*


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## Forero

Welcome to the forum, Darnil.

I used the term "retroflex" for the type of s sound used in Castille.  "+postalveolar +coronal" I think can describe the same sound.  I have heard that it is the older sound for s.

In other words, the old ts sound became θ in Castille, but ts and s[retroflex] merged to s[alveolar] in most other places.

"Dento-alveolar" might describe the Mexican s, but not the s that is farthest from θ.

It makes sense that the  θ sound might have been  θs after being originally ts (in brazo) and dz (in decir).

I have heard of a theory in which the Castillian  θ might have come about from Greek influence (confusion of Spanish zeta with Greek θeta since it no longer sounded like Greek zeta). I don't know what historical evidence might support such a theory though.


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## sokol

modus.irrealis said:


> I've read that [f] and [θ] are very similar acoustically, despite the differences in the way they're produced, and that seems to explain what I always thought was a strange sound change.


This is correct, acoustically both sounds are very close, even closer than [θ] and [s]. The substitution with [s] is due to the point of articulation (which is the same, approximately, for [θ] and [s]).

But if foreign loans are loaned "by hearing" (and not by script) then this transformation even would seem the more logical one (rather than substitution with [s]):


palomnik said:


> It's interesting to note that in Medieval Russia, words borrowed from Greek with the letter θ in them were pronounced like an "f".  The letter θ itself was retained in Russian until 1918, when it was replaced in all situations with ф.


With Russian though script also might have played a role. The Greek letter for [θ] was used in Old Cyrillic (the Fita; only used in loans and foreign words, and for numbers, and - I think - pronounced consistently as /f/).

In English dialects where [θ] is substituted with [f] this might be for a different reason, though - not necessarily acoustic ones.


Old Germanic of course had, as already mentioned, [θ] phonemes (both voiced and voiceless); Icelandic still has, and English, while all other Germanic languages (as far as I know) have substituted the [θ] sounds with other phonemes.
(So, if you like, you can count all Old Germanic languages/dialects in.)


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## darnil

Forero said:


> I used the term "retroflex" for the type of s sound used in Castille. "+postalveolar +coronal" I think can describe the same sound. I have heard that it is the older sound for s.
> 
> In other words, the old ts sound became θ in Castille, but ts and s[retroflex] merged to s[alveolar] in most other places.
> 
> "Dento-alveolar" might describe the Mexican s, but not the s that is farthest from θ.
> 
> It makes sense that the θ sound might have been θs after being originally ts (in brazo) and dz (in decir).
> 
> I have heard of a theory in which the Castillian θ might have come about from Greek influence (confusion of Spanish zeta with Greek θeta since it no longer sounded like Greek zeta). I don't know what historical evidence might support such a theory though.


Yes, of course: you’re right about coronal, dento-alveolar, and retroflex. I’ve never been good at using these terms.

But I think that there has been a misunderstanding: according to what I remember from my studies loooooong ago, the process in Castille was:

z [dz] > [θs] > [θ]               fazer > hazer > hacer [aθér]                   Interdental and unvoiced

c/ç [ts] > [θs] > [θ]               caçar > cazar [kaθár]​
-s-                      [z] > [s]            rosa [rróza] > rosa [rrósa]                        Retroflex [s], farthest from θ.
s- / -ss- / -s       [s] > [s]            passo [páso] > paso [páso]                                  (you were right)

While in the South / in Atlantic Spanish:
z                         [dz] > [θs] > [s]    fazer > hazer > hacer [asér]                    
c/ç                      [ts] > [θs] > [s]   caçar > cazar [kasár]
Keeps the original alveolar [s]
-s-                       [z] > [s]                  rosa [rróza] > rosa [rrósa]
s- / -ss- / -s        [s] > [s]                  passo [páso] > paso [páso]

I have heard of a theory in which the Castillian θ might have come about from Greek influence (confusion of Spanish zeta with Greek θeta since it no longer sounded like Greek zeta). I don't know what historical evidence might support such a theory though.

Well, the greeks were here… from the ¿8th? century B.C. to roman times and then back with Justinian, in the ¿6th? Century AD. But the first attested cases of [θ] in Spanish come from the XVI / XVII centuries…
I also heard (in Argentina) an even more (let’s say only farfetched) theory: “One king (nobody knows which one) had a lisp, and he ordered everybody to pronounce like him…” There are people who accept this as a fact.


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## Christo Tamarin

sokol said:


> palomnik said:
> 
> 
> 
> It's interesting to note that in Medieval Russia, words borrowed from Greek with the letter θ in them were pronounced like an "f". The letter θ itself was retained in Russian until 1918, when it was replaced in all situations with ф.
> 
> 
> 
> With Russian though script also might have played a role. The Greek letter for [θ] was used in Old Cyrillic (the Fita; only used in loans and foreign words, and for numbers, and - I think - pronounced consistently as /f/).
Click to expand...

 
In Medieval Bulgaria and Russia, there were words borrowed from Greek which contained letters θ and Ф. Both Greek sounds θ and Ф were dificult to Slavophones at that time. There is indications that the letter Ф was sometimes pronounced as П(P): Stephanos => Stepanъ/Степанъ. However, I have no idea how the letter θ was pronounced at the time.

After the weak yers disappeared (the old Slavic sounds *ъ* and *ь* are called yers), the sound Ф(f) appeared in the Slavic phonology as the voiceless variant of В(V). Happy to hear that, Russians began to use that sound for both letters θ and Ф. As Bulgarians lived near to Greece, they replace(d) the Greek θ with T. Turks do the same.


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