Voiceless dental fricative: Encyclopedia - Voiceless dental fricative

Voiceless dental fricative

The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is θ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is T. The IPA symbol is the Greek letter theta, which is used for this sound in Greek, and the sound is thus often referred to as "theta".

The dental fricatives are often called "interdental" because they are often produced with the tongue between the upper and lower teeth, and not just against the back of the teeth, as they are with other dental consonants.

Many commonly spoken languages, such as German, French, Japanese, and Chinese, lack this sound. Native speakers of those languages sometimes have difficulty enunciating or distinguishing it, and replace it with a voiceless alveolar fricative or a voiceless dental plosive.

Voiceless dental fricative - Features

Features of the voiceless dental fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is dental which means it is articulated with the tongue on either the lower or the upper teeth, or both.
• Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Voiceless dental fricative - In English

The voiceless dental fricative occurs in English, and it is the sound denoted by the 'th' digraph in thing and bath. It is different from the sound represented by 'th' in this and the, which is the voiced dental fricative.

In Old English, the letters þ and ð were used interchangeably for this sound and the voiced dental fricative, but they have been dropped from modern usage in favour of the 'th' digraph. Although the same digraph is used for the voiced and voiceless forms, these sounds are not interchangeable in spoken English.

See also: Pronunciation of English th

Voiceless dental fricative - Other Languages

The voiceless dental fricative is relatively rare among the world's languages.

Voiceless dental fricative - Spanish

Peninsular Spanish uses the letter "z" (or "c" before i and e); this is believed to have evolved from an earlier "ts" sound. Latin American Spanish, however, has changed this sound to /s/.

Voiceless dental fricative - Greek

Modern Greek uses the letter θ (theta), the IPA symbol.

Voiceless dental fricative - Albanian

Albanian uses the digraph "th"; unlike English, however, "th" is not used for its voiced counterpart (as in these clothes). Instead, the diagraph "dh" is used for that purpose.

Voiceless dental fricative - Welsh

Welsh uses the diagraph "th"; unlike English, however, "th" is not used for its voiced counterpart (as in these clothes). Instead, the diagraph "dd" is used for that purpose.

Voiceless dental fricative - Icelandic

Icelandic uses the letter þ (thorn). Old English used both þ and ð (eth) indiscrimately for both the voiceless and voiced dental fricative; in modern English both were replaced by the diagraph "th".

Voiceless dental fricative - Northern Sami

Northern Sami uses the letter ŧ.

Voiceless dental fricative - Hebrew

In most vocalizations of modern Hebrew this consonant is not used, but Ancient Hebrew used the letter ת (thav without dagesh. With dagesh it becomes תּ, tav)) for this sound. In several vocalizations, this distinction has been retained (e.g., Teimani).

Voiceless dental fricative - Arabic

Arabic uses the letter "ﺙ" (theh).

Voiceless dental fricative - Swahili

Swahili have adopted the sound from Arabic in loan words, and spell it "th".

See also

• List of phonetics topics

Categories: Pages containing IPA | Fricative

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Voiceless dental fricative", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki