Comments on: Is the 'th' sound native to any languages other than English?

Question: Is the 'th' sound native to any languages other than English?

airguitar — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:54:54 -0800

Is the 'th' sound native to any languages other than English?

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:03:39 -0800

You're asking about the dental fricative and it exists an a lot of other languages but an easy example would be Greek and their "theta" ( � ) whose symbol is often used to represent that sound.

By: vkxmai

vkxmai — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:04:14 -0800

Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon (dead), among others.

By: popcassady

popcassady — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:06:01 -0800

The Welsh "dd".

By: gimonca

gimonca — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:06:42 -0800

Castilian Spanish.

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:06:47 -0800

Woops, I guess the above link was for the voiceless dental fricative, and I totally ommited the voiced dental fricative, which also applies to your question. Languagehat to aisle 40849!

By: gimonca

gimonca — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:07:52 -0800

Arabic.

By: vkxmai

vkxmai — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:08:42 -0800

Both voiceless and voiced are used in Anglo-Saxon, I am not quite sure about Icelandic. Their names are "eth" and "thorn."

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:10:49 -0800

It seems prevalent to me in spoken Castilian Spanish, not as much in Latin-American.

By: aubilenon

aubilenon — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:15:02 -0800

vkxmai: both are used in icelandic too.

Yeah, there aren't very many language features that are unique to a single language.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:45:03 -0800

it exists in a lot of other languages

Depends what you mean by "a lot." Yeah, it's not anywhere close to unique, but it's pretty rare as phonemes go—or rather they, since there are both voiced and voiceless dental fricatives, as furtive says (the voiced is somewhat more common). Modern Greek, Castilian Spanish, Classical Arabic (but very few modern dialects, notably Iraqi), Albanian, and Burmese have the voiceless version... oh, never mind, I see furtive's links cover the waterfront (except for the sloppy use of "Arabic," which is like calling all the Romance languages "Latin"). Th-th-th-that's all, folks!

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:46:51 -0800

My hero.

By: jewzilla

jewzilla — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:24:32 -0800

Not an answer, but an interesting anecdote: Some Brazilians I've known who were learning English had a hard time with that sound because they were embarassed to stick their tounges out.

By: maxreax

maxreax — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 19:00:11 -0800

By: Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 19:05:42 -0800

How odd - I was just today remembering how my high school French teacher couldn't say "Smith" properly - she pronounced it "thmiss".

By: kmel

kmel — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 19:11:45 -0800

(Some? All?) Irish dialects of English don't have voiceless or voiced th.

By: a louis wain cat

a louis wain cat — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 19:56:06 -0800

You know, I knew it was the case, but it surprises me a bit that the "th" phoneme is rare. It was much easier for me to make that sound as a kid than the standard "s" phoneme. It took a while for me to learn not to lisp, as I recall, and I've gotten the impression that that's not that uncommon. Does lisping occur at all with kids who speak a language without the "th"?

By: anjamu

anjamu — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 20:15:48 -0800

Hindi has two aspirated sounds - one dental, one retroflex - that are represented as 'th' when in English.

By: k8t

k8t — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 21:06:09 -0800

Turkmen and Kazakh have a lisp that sounds like "th" but it isn't writter that way.

By: Bud Dickman

Bud Dickman — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 21:18:05 -0800

When I read this question, my first thought was of the golfer Jose Maria Olazabal, whose last name is pronounced (by sportscasters, anyway) "oh-luh-THAW-bull."

That is all.

By: bunglin jones

bunglin jones — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 01:25:51 -0800

It's used in Sinhalese (and Tamil, I think)

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 01:31:24 -0800

"Castilian Spanish," therefore, doesn't really differentiate it between any other kind of Spanish, unless you also say, for example "Catalan Spanish" or "Galician Spanish"

Not really. I, at least, was using the term to refer to Spanish at is it is spoken on the Iberian peninsula vs. Spanish as it is spoken in Latin- America.

By: dmo

dmo — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 04:45:18 -0800

Does lisping occur at all with kids who speak a language without the "th"?

There's a Brazilian soccer player (Romário, I think) who lisps. Getting students to imitate him (which they do easily) is a good way to teach them to produce the new sounds. It seems to me that Lula has a slight lisp as well.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 07:39:51 -0800

Can I nitpick quickly and point out that "Castilian Spanish" is something of a misnomer? What we call "Spanish" is known to its speakers as both "Español" and "Castellano" (albeit less frequently) because Castellano/Castilian refers to the language spoken by the kingdom of Castile. "Castilian Spanish," therefore, doesn't really differentiate it between any other kind of Spanish, unless you also say, for example "Catalan Spanish" or "Galician Spanish" to refer to, respectively, Catalan and Gallego--two languages distinct from Castilian/Castellano/"Spanish."

You can nitpick, sure, as long as you're right, which you're not. "Castilian Spanish" is frequently, and properly, used to differentiate the dialect spoken in north central Spain (whose center is the old kingdom of Castile) from those spoken elsewhere (for instance, in Andalusia and Latin America); its most salient characteristic is the ceceo (pronouncing c/z as /th/), which is what we're discussing here. Galician and Catalan are irrelevant, being different languages entirely.

Hindi has two aspirated sounds - one dental, one retroflex - that are represented as 'th' when in English.

That's irrelevant too. We're talking about sounds.

By: londongeezer

londongeezer — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:14:14 -0800

The letter "Y" as used in quaint English tourist-town phrases such as "Ye Olde Tucke Shoppe" is in fact the runic sign for "th": a survival from more than a thousand years ago when runes were used in the British Isles.

By: kittyprecious

kittyprecious — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:51:18 -0800

Related question to the OP: is English the only language that distinguishes theta [�] & thorn [ð] from [t] & [d] as well as from [f] & [v] and [s] & [z]? I seem to remember English being distinctive for having an unusually robust frontal fricative inventory.

By: maxreax

maxreax — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:52:00 -0800

I meant merely that the name "Castilian Spanish," from where I stand, isn't a good way to distinguish Spanish-as-spoken-in-Spain from Spanish-as-spoken-elsewhere. I understand that a) Castilian Spanish refers to a very specific dialect of Spanish and that b) Catalan and Galician are different languages. But a) that very specific dialect of Spanish is not the same thing as the "Spanish" spoken across Spain and b) I have my own bone to pick with calling the language "Spanish," seeing as there are four different languages in Spain itself; such that from where I stand saying "Castilian Spanish" to refer to castellano is about as useful as saying "Galician Spanish" to refer to gallego (i.e., one could call all the languages "Spanish"--again, I'm not really arguing for a change or anything, it's just a sore spot of mine--seeing as they all exist in Spain).

Again, I'm not disputing the facts; I just meant to point out that "Spanish-spoken-in-Spain" isn't necessarily "Castilian Spanish," nor does it necessarily have ceceo.

I apologize for not being more clear.

By: eve harrington

eve harrington — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:06:43 -0800

another detour, but I used to teach ESL, and the most English-loving person could not help but apologize profusely to foreign-speaking students when teaching ordinal numbers and getting to 'twelfth.' English is a hard one.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:19:06 -0800

Modern Greek has /f v � ð s z/, kittyprecious.

By: Rash

Rash — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:55:03 -0800

Really, londongeezer?

That's remarkable!

By: altolinguistic

altolinguistic — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 05:50:50 -0800

maxreax - try going to Barcelona and talking about 'Catalan Spanish' and then come and tell us what happens to you...

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 06:51:14 -0800

Really, londongeezer?

Well, the basic fact is correct, though "a survival from more than a thousand years ago" is pushing it; here's the OED's discussion:

Another value of y arises from the assimilation of y and þ, the runic thorn (see TH), which had become indistinguishable from each other in some MSS. of the early 14th century (e.g. the Cotton MS. of Cursor Mundi). After 1400 þ fell more and more out of use, and in some scripts was represented only by the y-form in the compendia y^e, y^t or y^at, y^ei, y^m, y^u = the, that, they, them, thou, and the like, many of which continued to be extensively employed in manuscript in the 17th and 18th centuries. Two of these, y^e or {ye} [y with e on top], y^t or {yt} [y with t on top], were retained in printers' types during the 15th and 16th centuries, but often with a form of y somewhat different from that used in other positions. (In Sir John Cheke's translation of the New Testament, a dotted y stands for th.) In manuscript (e.g. in letter-writing) ye lasted well into the 19th century. It is still often used pseudo-archaically, jocularly, or vulgarly (pronounced as ye), e.g. in Lewis Carroll's Ye Carpette Knyghte, and in shop-signs like Y^e Olde Booke Shoppe.