# I love being able to pronounce "th"...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [July 10, 2003, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524 "2003-07-10T18:13:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/1 "2003-07-10T18:13:02Z")
…around the foreigners who can’t (or don’t). It makes me feel so exotic. Like people who speak those languages with all the gutteral sounds we don’t have.
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### Author:  [@ace22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ace22)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/2 "2003-07-10T21:18:58Z")
Or people who click. That always amazes me.
And Texans. They’re _practically_ foreign.
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### Author:  [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/3 "2003-07-10T21:34:50Z")
What foreigners don’t “th”?
I ask because I never could tell the difference between the “th” anf the “f” sound, though I can pronounce the two sounds they sound precisely the same to me.
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### Author:  [@bagkitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bagkitty)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/4 "2003-07-10T21:43:14Z")
Francophones have a major problem with the “th” sound, they tend to replace it with a “d” — 'dis, 'den, is what we shall do…
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### Author:  [@Salem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salem)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/5 "2003-07-10T21:45:27Z")
My mother, who was born and raised in Italy, had trouble with certain letter combinations, “th” being one of them. Depending on where it was in the word, it would come out with a much sharper sound, a slightly softened “t” sound. She could never say the word “dirty” correctly either. It always came out “dlirty”. Because she was raised in Northern Italy, her accent was never what the sterotypical Italian accent you hear is (which is generally taken from Southern Italy). She spoke in a much more staccatto manner as oppposed to that lilting, slurred “movie” accent. Much more of a Germanic influence.
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### Author:  [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/6 "2003-07-10T21:54:26Z")
I think English is the only major language with the “th” sound.
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### Author:  [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/7 "2003-07-10T21:58:16Z")
What about Casillian Spanish?
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### Author:  [@scout1222](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scout1222)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/8 "2003-07-10T22:34:44Z")
Yeth, dan, I think you are onto thomething.
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### Author:  [@Publius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Publius)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/9 "2003-07-10T22:49:16Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Super Gnat \*
> \*\*I think English is the only major language with the “th” sound. \*\*
Arabic has three letters that would be associated with “th” in English. First, there’s ﺙ , pronounced roughly like the “th” in “think.” Second, there’s ﺫ , pronounced roughly like the “th” in “then.” Finally, there’s ﻅ, pronounced roughly like ﺫ, only throatier and more emphatic.
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### Author:  [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/10 "2003-07-10T22:55:32Z")
Greek has it too.
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### Author:  [@elfbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfbabe)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2003, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/11 "2003-07-10T23:10:13Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by bagkitty \*
> \*\*Francophones have a major problem with the “th” sound, they tend to replace it with a “d” — 'dis, 'den, is what we shall do… \*\*
My boyfriend’s mother’s from Quebec originally, and she calls tongs “thongs” and vice versa. It’s pretty cool.
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/12 "2003-07-11T00:45:25Z")
Publius… where can I get an Arabic keyboard? 😉
Speakers of certain South Asian languages had problems in years past with “th”… now almost everyone speaks Hindi or Urdu as well as the state dialect, so the problem has mostly disappeared, since both languages have “th-s”…
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### Author:  [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/13 "2003-07-11T01:31:25Z")
The Germans and Spanish speakers can almost choke themselves trying to put “th” in words.
In fact, asking World Series questions and requsting pronunciations of “th” words were the order of the day when rumors had Germans dressing in American uniforms in DubDub2.
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### Author:  [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/14 "2003-07-11T02:13:27Z")
Many of the Asian immigrants here seem to have trouble with the ‘r’ sound. Which makes me wonder why they change their childrens’ names to English ones like Sawah and Loger (hehe)
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### Author:  [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/15 "2003-07-11T04:57:03Z")
Heh, guess not.
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### Author:  [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/16 "2003-07-11T06:19:04Z")
The “th” often disappears in Hiberno-English as well (three is pronounced “tree”, Thursday is “Tursday” etc).
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### Author:  [@Nichol\_storm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nichol_storm)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/17 "2003-07-11T06:49:07Z")
Languages besides English that possess(ed) the “th” sound:
Castilian Spanish, Yapese, Welsh, Arabic, Danish, Pukapuka, Icelandic, Greek, Albanian, Burmese, Sakao, Galician, Hebrew, Fijian, Aramaic, Syriac, Cornish, Avestan, Swahili, Daur, Catalan, Ladino, Ojibwe, Somali, Tamil…
I think the English “R” is actually more bizarre, but if you want something really unusual check out Welsh’s voiceless lateral alveolar fricative “ll” in Llewelyn!
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### Author:  [@refusal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/refusal)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/18 "2003-07-11T11:33:26Z")
As a Scot, I would like to celebrate the voiceless velar fricative in “loch”, “dreich” and “houghmagandie”. It’s also in Gaelic, Welsh, most Germanic tongues including German and Old English, and doubtless Arabic, but them southern Europeans just can’t kkkhhhh like we can.
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### Author:  [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/19 "2003-07-11T11:57:09Z")
Most English people can’t kkkhhhh either, **refusal** (at least not as well as I can). The Dutch, on the other hand, do it a little bit _too well_.
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### Author:  [@Gazelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gazelle)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-being-able-to-pronounce-th/187524/20 "2003-07-11T12:04:11Z")
I love to rrrrroll my Rs.
My best friend can’t do it, for some reason.
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