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

June 24, 2006 4:54 PM

Is the 'th' sound native to any languages other than English?
posted by airguitar to writing & language (31 comments total)

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" ( θ ) whose symbol is often used to represent that sound.
posted by furtive at 5:03 PM on June 24, 2006

Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon (dead), among others.
posted by vkxmai at 5:04 PM on June 24, 2006

The Welsh "dd".
posted by popcassady at 5:06 PM on June 24, 2006

Castilian Spanish.
posted by gimonca at 5:06 PM on June 24, 2006

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!
posted by furtive at 5:06 PM on June 24, 2006

Arabic.
posted by gimonca at 5:07 PM on June 24, 2006

Both voiceless and voiced are used in Anglo-Saxon, I am not quite sure about Icelandic. Their names are "eth" and "thorn."
posted by vkxmai at 5:08 PM on June 24, 2006

It seems prevalent to me in spoken Castilian Spanish, not as much in Latin-American.
posted by vacapinta at 5:10 PM on June 24, 2006

vkxmai: both are used in icelandic too.

Yeah, there aren't very many language features that are unique to a single language.
posted by aubilenon at 5:15 PM on June 24, 2006

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!
posted by languagehat at 5:45 PM on June 24, 2006

My hero.
posted by furtive at 5:46 PM on June 24, 2006

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.
posted by jewzilla at 6:24 PM on June 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

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."

See more here.
posted by maxreax at 7:00 PM on June 24, 2006

How odd - I was just today remembering how my high school French teacher couldn't say "Smith" properly - she pronounced it "thmiss".
posted by Guy Smiley at 7:05 PM on June 24, 2006

(Some? All?) Irish dialects of English don't have voiceless or voiced th.
posted by kmel at 7:11 PM on June 24, 2006

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"?
posted by a louis wain cat at 7:56 PM on June 24, 2006

Hindi has two aspirated sounds - one dental, one retroflex - that are represented as 'th' when in English.
posted by anjamu at 8:15 PM on June 24, 2006

Turkmen and Kazakh have a lisp that sounds like "th" but it isn't writter that way.
posted by k8t at 9:06 PM on June 24, 2006

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.
posted by Bud Dickman at 9:18 PM on June 24, 2006

It's used in Sinhalese (and Tamil, I think)
posted by bunglin jones at 1:25 AM on June 25, 2006

"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.
posted by vacapinta at 1:31 AM on June 25, 2006

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.
posted by dmo at 4:45 AM on June 25, 2006

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.
posted by languagehat at 7:39 AM on June 25, 2006

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.
posted by londongeezer at 10:14 AM on June 25, 2006

Related question to the OP: is English the only language that distinguishes theta [θ] & 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.
posted by kittyprecious at 10:51 AM on June 25, 2006

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.
posted by maxreax at 10:52 AM on June 25, 2006

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.
posted by eve harrington at 5:06 PM on June 25, 2006

Modern Greek has /f v θ ð s z/, kittyprecious.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:19 PM on June 25, 2006

Really, londongeezer?

That's remarkable!
posted by Rash at 10:55 PM on June 25, 2006

maxreax - try going to Barcelona and talking about 'Catalan Spanish' and then come and tell us what happens to you...
posted by altolinguistic at 5:50 AM on June 26, 2006

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’.

posted by languagehat at 6:51 AM on June 26, 2006 [1 favorite]