Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩
In English, the digraph [th (digraph)|] usually represents either the dental fricative">dental consonant">dental fricative phoneme or the voiceless dental fricative phoneme . Occasionally, it stands for . In the word eighth, it is often pronounced. In compound words, may be a consonant sequence rather than a digraph.
General description
In standard English, the phonetic realization of the two dental fricative phonemes shows less variation than many other English consonants. Both are pronounced either interdentally, with the blade of the tongue resting against the lower part of the back of the upper teeth and the tip protruding slightly, or with the tip of the tongue against the back of the upper teeth. For some speakers these two positions are in free variation, while for other speakers they are in complementary distribution, the position behind the teeth being used when the dental fricative stands in proximity to an alveolar fricative or, as in myths or clothes. Lip configuration may vary depending on phonetic context. The vocal folds are abducted. The velopharyngeal port is closed. Air forced between tongue surface and cutting edge of the upper teeth or inside surface of the teeth creates audible frictional turbulence.The difference between and is normally described as a voiceless–voiced contrast, the distinction that native speakers are most aware of. They are also distinguished by other phonetic markers: the fortis is pronounced with more muscular tension than the lenis ; and is more strongly aspirated than, as can be demonstrated by holding a hand in front of the mouth as they are spoken.
Phonology and distribution
In modern English, and are distinct phonemes, not merely allophones, as demonstrated by minimal pairs such as thigh:thy, ether:either, teeth:teethe. They are distinguished from the neighbouring labiodental fricatives, sibilants and alveolar stops by such minimal pairs as thought:fought/sought/taught and then:Venn/Zen/den.The vast majority of words in English spelled with have, and almost all newly created words do. However, the high frequency of the function words, particularly the, means that is more frequent in actual use.
As a general rule, in initial position, is used except in certain function words; in medial position, is used except for certain foreign loan words; and in final position, is used except in certain verbs. A more detailed explanation follows.
Initial position
- Almost all words beginning with a dental fricative have.
- A small number of common function words begin with. The words in this group are:
- *1 definite article: the
- *4 demonstratives: this, that, these, those
- *2 personal pronouns each with multiple forms: thou, thee, thy, thine, thyself; they, them, their, theirs, themselves, themself
- *7 adverbs and conjunctions: there, then, than, thus, though, thence, thither
- *Various compound adverbs based on the above words: therefore, thereupon, thereby, thereafter, thenceforth, etc.
- A few words use an initial for : see below.
Medial position
- Most native words with a medial have.
- *Between vowels, followed by a weak vowel: heathen, farthing, fathom, Worthington; and the frequent combination -ther-: bother, brother, dither, either, farther, father, further, heather, lather, mother, northern, other, rather, smithereens, slither, southern, together, weather, whether, wither; Caruthers, Netherlands, Witherspoon.
- *Followed by : brethren.
- A few native words have a medial :
- *The suffixes -y, -ly, -ing and -ed normally leave terminal unchanged: earthy, healthy, pithy, stealthy, wealthy, bothy ; fourthly, monthly; earthing; frothed; but worthy and swarthy have.
- *Some plurals have, as discussed in more detail below: cloths, baths etc.
- *Compound words in which the first element ends or the second element begins with frequently have, as these elements would in isolation: bathroom, Southampton; anything, everything, nothing, something.
- *The only other native words with medial would seem to be brothel and Ethel.
- Most loan words with a medial have.
- *From Greek: Agatha, anthem, atheist, Athens, athlete, cathedral, Catherine, Cathy, enthusiasm, ether, ethics, ethnic, lethal, lithium, mathematics, method, methyl, mythical, panther, pathetic, sympathy
- *From Latin: author, authority. Also names borrowed from or via Latin: Bertha, Gothic, Hathaway, Othello, Parthian
- *From Celtic languages: Arthur ; Abernathy, Abernethy, as an anglicization, though Gaelic has no.
- *From Hebrew: Ethan, Jonathan, Bethlehem, Bethany, Leviathan, Bethel
- *From German: Luther, as an anglicized spelling pronunciation.
- Loanwords with medial :
- *Greek words with the combination -thm-: algorithm, logarithm, rhythm. Exception : arithmetic. The word asthma may be pronounced or, though here the is usually silent.
- A few words have a medial for or : see below.
Final position
- Nouns and adjectives
- *Nouns and adjectives ending in a dental fricative usually have : bath, breath, cloth, froth, health, hearth, loath, mouth, sheath, sooth, tooth/teeth, width, wreath.
- *Exceptions are usually marked in the spelling with a silent : tithe, lathe, lithe with.
- *blithe can have either or. booth has in England but in America.
- Verbs
- *Verbs ending in a dental fricative usually have, and are frequently spelled with a silent : bathe, breathe, clothe, loathe, scathe, scythe, seethe, sheathe, soothe, teethe, tithe, wreathe, writhe. Spelled without : mouth nevertheless has.
- *froth has whether as a noun or as a verb.
- *The verb endings -s, -ing, -ed do not change the pronunciation of a in the final position in the stem: bathe has, therefore so do bathed, bathing, bathes; frothing has. Likewise clothing used as a noun, scathing as an adjective etc.
- *The archaic verb inflection "-eth" has.
- Others
- *with has either or, as do its compounds: within, without, outwith, withdraw, withhold, withstand, wherewithal, etc.
Plurals
- Plural after may be realized as either or :
- *Some plural nouns ending in, with a preceding vowel, have, although the singulars always have ; however, a variant in will be found for many of these: baths, mouths, oaths, paths, sheaths, truths, wreaths, youths exist in both varieties; clothes always has .
- *Others have only /θs/: azimuths, breaths, cloths, deaths, faiths, Goths, growths, mammoths, moths, myths, smiths, sloths, zeniths, etc. This includes all words in 'th' preceded by a consonant and all numeric words, whether preceded by vowel or consonant.
- *Booth has in the singular and hence in the plural for most speakers in England. In American English, it has in the singular and or in the plural. This pronunciation also prevails in Scotland.
Grammatical alternation
In pairs of related words, an alternation between and is possible, which may be thought of as a kind of consonant mutation. Typically appears in the singular of a noun, in the plural and in the related verb: cloth, clothes, to clothe. This is directly comparable to the or alternation in house, houses or wolf, wolves. It goes back to the allophonic variation in Old English, where it was possible for to be in final position and thus voiceless in the basic form of a word, but in medial position and voiced in a related form. The loss of inflections then brought the voiced medial consonant to the end of the word. Often a remnant of the old inflection can be seen in the spelling in the form of a silent, which may be thought of synchronically as a marker of the voicing.Regional differences in distribution
The above discussion follows Daniel Jones' English Pronouncing Dictionary, an authority on standard British English, and Webster's New World College Dictionary, an authority on American English. Usage appears much the same between the two. Regional variation within standard English includes the following:- The final consonant in with is pronounced in northern Britain, but in the south, though some speakers of Southern British English use before a voiceless consonant and before a voiced one. A 1993 postal poll of American English speakers showed that 84% use, while 16% have .
- In Scottish English, is found in many words which have further south. The phenomenon of nouns terminating in taking plurals in does not occur in the north. Thus the following have : baths, mouths, truths. Scottish English does have the termination in verb forms, however, such as bathes, mouths, loathes, and also in the noun clothes, which can be realized without. Scottish English also has in with, booth, thence etc., and the Scottish pronunciation of thither, almost uniquely, has both and in the same word. Where there is an American-British difference, the North of Britain generally agrees with the United States on this phoneme pair.
- Some dialects of American English use at the beginning of the word "thank".
History of the English phonemes
Germanic origins
Proto-Indo-European had no dental fricatives, but these evolved in the earliest stages of the Germanic languages. In Proto-Germanic, and were separate phonemes, usually represented in Germanic studies by the symbols *đ and *þ.- *đ was derived by Grimm's law from PIE *dʰ or by Verner's law from PIE *t.
- *þ was derived by Grimm's law from PIE *t.
The whole complex of Germanic dentals, and the place of the fricatives within it, can be summed up in this table:
| PIE | Proto-Germanic | West Germanic | Old English | German | Dutch | Notes |
| *t | *þ | * | Original *t in initial position, or in final position after a stressed vowel | |||
| *t | *þ | * | Original *t in medial position after a stressed vowel | |||
| *t | *đ | *d | Original *t after an unstressed vowel | |||
| *dʰ | *đ | *d | Original *dʰ in all positions | |||
| *d | *t | *t | or | Original *d in all positions |
Note that this table shows only the basic rules. The actual developments in all of the mentioned languages are more complicated. For more on these phonemes from a comparative perspective, see Grammatischer Wechsel. For the developments in German and Dutch see High German consonant shift.
Old English
Thus English inherited a phoneme in positions where other West Germanic languages have and most other Indo-European languages have : English three, German drei, Latin tres.In Old English, the phoneme, like all fricative phonemes in the language, had two allophones, one voiced and one voiceless, which were distributed regularly according to phonetic environment.
- was used between two voiced sounds.
- was spoken in initial and final position, and also medially if adjacent to another unvoiced consonant.
Development up to Modern English
The most important development on the way to modern English was the investing of the existing distinction between and with phonemic value. Minimal pairs, and hence the phonological independence of the two phones, developed as a result of three main processes.- In early Middle English times, a group of very common function words beginning with came to be pronounced with instead of. Possibly this was a sandhi development; as these words are frequently found in unstressed positions, they can sometimes appear to run on from the preceding word, which may have resulted in the dental fricative being treated as though it were word-internal. This allowed a word-initial minimal pair like thigh:thy.
- English has borrowed many words from Greek, including a vast number of scientific terms. Where the original Greek had the letter, English usually retained the Late Greek pronunciation regardless of phonetic environment, resulting in the presence of in medial position. This allowed a medial minimal pair like ether:either.
- English has lost its original verb inflections. When the stem of a verb ends with a dental fricative, this was usually followed by a vowel in Old English, and was therefore voiced. It is still voiced in modern English, even though the verb inflection has disappeared leaving the at the end of the word. Examples are to bathe, to mouth, to breathe. Sometimes a remnant of the original vowel remained in the spelling, but this was inconsistent. This allowed a minimal pair in final position like loath:loathe.
Dialectally, the alternation between and sometimes extends to other words, as bladder, ladder, solder with . On the other hand, some dialects retain original d, and extend it to other words, as brother, further, rather. The Welsh name Llewelyn appears in older English texts as Thlewelyn, and Fluellen. Th also occurs dialectally for wh, as in thirl, thortleberry, thorl, for whirl, whortleberry, whorl. Conversely, Scots has whaing, whang, white, whittle, for thwaing, thwang, thwite, thwittle.
The old verb inflection -eth was replaced by -s, not a sound shift but a completely new inflection.
Dialectal realizations
In some dialects the "th"-sound phonemes and are pronounced differently from the dental fricatives and. Most common are: substitution with labiodental fricatives and, substitution with alveolar stops and, and substitution with alveolar fricatives and . Fronting and stopping are more common among speakers of English dialects, whereas alveolarization is more common among language learners whose first languages are French, German, or Mandarin. To speakers of varieties in which and are pronounced and, fronting and stopping are generally considered to have less of a marked contrast with the standard pronunciation than alveolarization, which is often more stigmatized.A fourth, less common substitution is for word-initially or intervocalically. This is called debuccalization, and somewhat prevalent in Scottish English.
th-fronting
In some areas, such as London, and certain dialects, including African American Vernacular English and less commonly New Zealand, many people realize the phonemes and as and, respectively. Although traditionally stigmatized as typical of a Cockney accent, this pronunciation is fairly widespread, especially when immediately surrounded by other fricatives for ease of pronunciation, and has, in the early 20th century, become an increasingly noticeable feature of the Estuary English accent of South East England. It has in at least one case been transferred into standard English as a neologism: a bovver boy is a thug, a "boy" who likes "bother". Joe Brown and his Bruvvers was a Pop group of the 1960s. The song "Fings ain't wot they used t'be" was the title song of a 1959 Cockney comedy. Similarly, a New Zealander from the northernmost parts of the country might state that he or she is from "Norfland".Note that, at least in Cockney, a word beginning with can never be labiodental. Instead, it is realized as any of, or is dropped altogether.
th-stopping
Many speakers of African American Vernacular English, Caribbean English, Liberian English, Nigerian English, Philadelphia English, and Philippine English pronounce the fricatives as alveolar stops. Similarly, but still distinctly, many speakers of New York City English, Chicago English, Boston English, Indian English, Newfoundland English, and Hiberno-English use the dental stops instead of, or in free variation with,. Native speakers of most Indo-Aryan languages often substitute the dental fricatives with the voiceless aspirated and voiced dental stops, respectively.In Cockney, the th-stopping may occur when a word begins with . This is also associated with the accent of the English city of Sheffield but such pronunciations are now confined to the very oldest residents of Sheffield.
th-alveolarization
Th-alveolarization is a process that occurs in some African varieties of English where the dental fricatives merge with the alveolar fricatives and. It is an example of assibilation.In rarer or older varieties of African American Vernacular English, may be pronounced after a vowel and before another consonant, as in bathroom.
Th-alveolarization is often parodied as typical of French-, Japanese-, and German-speaking learners of English, but it is widespread among many other foreign learners because the dental fricative "th" sounds are not very common among the world's languages. Due to the said ridicule, learners who are unable to realize these sounds sometimes opt for the less marked th-fronting or th-stopping instead of alveolarization.
| IPA | Notes | ||
| ace | eighth | eighth more often merges with eights | |
| bass | bath | bass, the fish; but distinct in dialects with broad A | |
| Bess | Beth | - | |
| breeze | breathe | - | |
| close | clothe | - | |
| close | clothes | - | |
| eights | eighth | - | |
| Erse | earth | - | |
| face | faith | - | |
| force | forth | - | |
| force | fourth | - | |
| frost | frothed | - | |
| gross | growth | - | |
| kiss | kith | - | |
| lays | lathe | - | |
| laze | lathe | - | |
| lies | lithe | - | |
| louse | Louth | - | |
| lyse | lithe | - | |
| mass | math | - | |
| mess | meth | - | |
| miss | myth | - | |
| months | month | - | |
| moss | moth | - | |
| mouse | mouth | - | |
| pass | path | , | - |
| piss | pith | - | |
| purse | Perth | - | |
| race | wraith | - | |
| rise | writhe | - | |
| Ross | Roth | - | |
| ryes | writhe | - | |
| sai | thigh | - | |
| sane | thane | - | |
| sane | thegn | - | |
| sank | thank | - | |
| saw | thaw | - | |
| saw | Thor | In most Non-rhotic accents; specifically those without the Cot-caught merger. | |
| seam | theme | - | |
| seas | seethe | - | |
| seem | theme | - | |
| sees | seethe | - | |
| seize | seethe | - | |
| sick | thick | - | |
| sigh | thigh | - | |
| sin | thin | - | |
| sing | thing | - | |
| sink | think | - | |
| six | sixth | - | |
| size | scythe | - | |
| soar | thaw | Non-rhotic acents with horse-hoarse merger. | |
| soar | Thor | With horse-hoarse merger. | |
| soared | thawed | Non-rhotic accents with horse-hoarse merger. | |
| some | thumb | - | |
| song | thong | - | |
| sore | thaw | Non-rhotic accents with horse-hoarse merger. | |
| sore | Thor | With horse-hoarse merger. | |
| sored | thawed | Non-rhotic accents with horse-hoarse merger. | |
| sort | thought | Non-rhotic accents. | |
| sought | thought | - | |
| suds | thuds | - | |
| sum | thumb | - | |
| sump | thump | - | |
| sunder | thunder | - | |
| sunk | thunk | - | |
| swart | thwart | - | |
| sword | thawed | Non-rhotic accents with horse-hoarse merger. | |
| tense | tenth | - | |
| tents | tenth | - | |
| truce | truth | - | |
| use | youth | - | |
| whiz | with | With wine-whine merger. | |
| wizard | withered | - | |
| worse | worth | - | |
| wrasse | wrath | ||
| wreath | Reece | ||
| wreath | Rhys | ||
| Z; zee | the | The before vowels and silent H; but distinct in dialects where Z is | |
| Z; zee | thee | but distinct in dialects where Z is | |
| Zs; zees | these | ||
| zen | then | - |
th-debuccalization
In many varieties of Scottish English, becomes word initially and intervocalically.Th-debuccalization occurs mainly in Glasgow and across the Central Belt. A common example is for think. This feature is becoming more common in these places over time, but is still variable. In word final position, is used, as in standard English.
The existence of local for in Glasgow complicates the process of th-fronting there, a process which gives for historical. Unlike in the other dialects with th-fronting, where solely varies with, in Glasgow, the introduction of th-fronting there creates a three-way variant system of, and.
Use of marks the local educated norms, while use of and instead mark the local non-standard norms. is well known in Glasgow as a vernacular variant of when it occurs at the start of a word and intervocalically, while has only recently risen above the level of social consciousness.
Given that th-fronting is a relatively recent innovation in Glasgow, it was expected that linguists might find evidence for lexical diffusion for and the results found from Glaswegian speakers confirm this. The existing and particular lexical distribution of th-debuccalization imposes special constraints on the progress of th-fronting in Glasgow.
In accents with th-debuccalization, the cluster becomes, giving these dialects a consonant cluster that does not occur in other dialects. The replacement of with leads to pronunciations like:
- three –
- throw –
- through, threw –
- thrash –
- thresh –
- thrown, throne –
- thread –
- threat –
Assimilation
As with many English consonants, a process of assimilation can result in the substitution of other speech sounds in certain phonetic environments. Native speakers do this subconsciously.At word boundaries, alveolar stops next to dental fricatives assimilate very regularly, especially in rapid colloquial speech, involving both the place of articulation and the manner of articulation: the alveolar stops become dental, while the dental fricatives become stops. The resulting consonant is usually long which may be the only audible cue for the speaker to distinguish particular words.
The alveolar fricatives may become dental as well:
and can also be lost through elision: months, clothes.
In rapid speech, may be pronounced like six.
Them may be contracted to em, and in this case the contraction is often indicated in writing by the apostrophe. Em originally was a contraction of hem, the object form of the original English third-person plural pronoun. In Modern English, em is instead perceived as a contraction of them, and as such its use is deemed inappropriate for formal writing.
Acquisition problems
Children generally learn the less marked phonemes of the language before the more marked ones. In the case of English-speaking children, and are often among the last phonemes to be learnt, frequently not being mastered before the age of five. Prior to this age, many children substitute the sounds and respectively. For small children, fought and thought are therefore homophones. As British and American children begin school at age four and five respectively, this means that many are learning to read and write before they have sorted out these sounds, and the infantile pronunciation is frequently reflected in their spelling errors: ve fing for the thing.Children with a lisp, however, have trouble distinguishing and from and respectively in speech, using a single or pronunciation for both, and may never master the correct sounds without speech therapy. The lisp is a common speech impediment in English.
Foreign learners may have parallel problems. Learners from very many cultural backgrounds have difficulties with English dental fricatives, usually caused by interference with either sibilants or stops. Words with a dental fricative adjacent to an alveolar fricative, such as clothes, truths, fifths, sixths, anesthetic, etc., are commonly very difficult for foreign learners to pronounce. Some of these words containing consonant clusters can also be difficult for native speakers, including those using the standard and pronunciations generally, allowing such accepted informal pronunciations of clothes as and as.
History of the digraph
for /θ/ and /ð/
Though English speakers take it for granted, the digraph is in fact not an obvious combination for a dental fricative. The origins of this have to do with developments in Greek.Proto-Indo-European had an aspirated that came into Greek as, spelled with the letter theta. In the Greek of Homer and Plato, this was still pronounced, and therefore when Greek words were borrowed into Latin, theta was transcribed with. Since sounds like with a following puff of air, was the logical spelling in the Latin alphabet.
By the time of New Testament Greek, however, the aspirated stop had shifted to a fricative:. Thus theta came to have the sound that it still has in Modern Greek, and which it represents in the IPA. From a Latin perspective, the established digraph now represented the voiceless fricative, and was used thus for English by French-speaking scribes after the Norman Conquest, since they were unfamiliar with the Germanic graphemes ð and þ. Likewise, the spelling was used for in Old High German prior to the completion of the High German consonant shift, again by analogy with the way Latin represented the Greek sound. It also appeared in early modern Swedish before a final shift to /d/.
The history of the digraphs for and for Scots, Welsh or German is parallel.
for /t/
Since neither nor was a native sound in Latin, the tendency emerged at the latest in medieval Latin, to substitute. Thus, in many modern languages, including French and German, the digraph is used in Greek loan-words to represent an original, but is now pronounced : examples are French théâtre, German Theater. In some cases, this etymological, which has no remaining significance for pronunciation, has been transferred to words in which there is no etymological justification for it. For example, German Tal appears in many place-names with an archaic spelling Thal. The German spelling reform of 1901 largely reversed these, but they remain in some proper nouns. The name Rothschild is an example of this, being a compound of rot and Schild.Examples of this are also to be found in English, perhaps influenced immediately by French. In some Middle English manuscripts, appears for or : tho 'to' or 'do', thyll till, whythe white, thede deed. In Modern English we see it in Esther, Thomas, Thames, thyme and the old spelling of Satan as Sathan. More recently, the name of the capital of Nepal was often written Katmandu down to the late 20th century, but is now usually spelt Kathmandu.
In a small number of cases, this spelling later influenced the pronunciation: amaranth, amianthus and author have spelling pronunciations with, and some English speakers use in Neanderthal.