Recently, I’ve noticed a few names of women from Hispanic countries of the form Y…th: Yenith, Yulieth, Yenileth, etc. I get that the initial ⟨y⟩ is pronounced similarly to the soft G in English (/dʒ/ or /ʝ/ or maybe /ʝʝ/). But what about the ⟨th⟩? I could only find one woman with one of those names on YouTube pronouncing her name; to my untrained ears, it sounded like a normal /t/ to me. For what it’s worth, she was Colombian. (The only remotely famous person I can think of with one of those names is Panamanian goalkeeper Yenith Bailey, but I couldn’t find a pronunciation guide for her name.)
- Is it just a normal /t/?
- Would the names sound differently if they were spelled with just ⟨t⟩ instead of ⟨th⟩?
Thanks!