Episode 8: “th” [θ ð]

Think about this: hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong are delving into the sounds represented by the spelling “th” this week. In the course of it, they’ll chat about how the sound is rare in the world’s languages, how it’s formed in various varieties of English around the world, and its use in Spanish.

Show Notes:

The show starts with an Audio Comment from Erik Singer re barred i and they guys’ response.

"th" sounds

In the world's languages, they are fairly rare. 40 languages appear on the WALS "Presence of Uncomon Consonants" map for the /th/ sounds.

Dental, interdental, variability in amount of tongue. Culturally different. Maddieson & Ladefoged in "The Sounds of the World's Languages" studied Americans and Brits, and 90% of the US speakers made interdental articulations, while 90% of the British speakers made dental articulations. Jespersen suggests (in Maddieson/Ladefoged) that articulations are dictated partly by dentition: if you have gaps in your teeth (or none) you may articulate differently.

• "showing the tongue" to aid lip reading in emphatic speech.

IPA Symbol ð:
Eth is used in Old English, Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian. In most languages it represents the voiced dental fricative. Symbol is called [ɛð], while Eth [ɛθ] is a woman's name.

Voicing: voiced
Place: Dental or Interdental
Manner: Fricative

Occurrence: is far more common in English, due to the high frequency of function words with ð sounds in English, such as then, the, they, their, those, etc.

IPA Symbol θ:
Theta symbol is the lowercase Greek letter, which represents the voiceless dental fricative in Greek.

Voicing: voiceless
Place: Dental or Interdental
Manner: Fricative

History: Though the sounds are Germanic in their "roots", almost all Germanic languages have lost /th/ sounds. Only English and Icelandic retain it.

/th/ is part of Castilian Spanish. Known as "Ceceo" [θeθeo] it contrasts with "seseo" . Urban Legend of "Prestige Borrowing"; however, it's not true, as the person credited with documenting the lisp wrote about it 200 years before the use of /θ/ began.

la casa "the house" la caza "the hunt"
distinción /la ˈkasa/ /la ˈkaθa/
ceceo /la ˈkaθa/ /la ˈkaθa/
seseo /la ˈkasa/ /la ˈkasa/

Variations

th-Fronting /f/ and /v/ like in Cockney and other working class accents of Southern English English, AAVE finally
th-Alveolarization /s/ and /z/ like in Parisian French English, African Englishes,
Th-debuccalization /h/ in Scots English (mainly in Glasgow) "three" becomes "hree"
Th-stopping /t/ and /d/ like in Quebecois English, Caribbean English, Nigerian English, and Liberian English, AAVE initially
BUT NOT really in Hiberno-English, some Newfoundland English, NY/NJ English, Indian English, where /th/ becomes more dentalized, so "den/then" aren't homophones.

Icelandic and Danish have lamino-alveolar non-sibilant fricative allophones with teeth fairly far apart. (Sibilance is created "downstream" of the constriction where the turbulence strikes structures beyond the point constriction (e.g. the gum ridge and/or teeth). IPA θ̠ ð̠

Speech Disorders:
Dental/interdental Lisp, as an allophone of /s/ and /z/. "Ethel Thayer; thounds like I'm lithping" —On Golden Pond.