# Initial voiced TH in English **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 25, 2011, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/initial-voiced-th-in-english/600716 "2011-10-25T05:11:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2011, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/initial-voiced-th-in-english/600716/21 "2011-10-27T10:40:22Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Wrong TH. What’s thain? Probably [Thane](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thane) or thegn, although Tolkien spelled it “Thain” when talking about the nominal “boss hobbit”. > [@The Scouring of the Shire](#): > > “…[Pippin’s father, the eldest Took] said that if anyone was going to play the chief at this time of day, it would be the right Thain of the Shire and no upstart.” ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2011, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/initial-voiced-th-in-english/600716/22 "2011-10-27T12:59:51Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > So these words are survivors for some reason. Looking for “a reason” is usually the wrong path in this waters. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2011, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/initial-voiced-th-in-english/600716/23 "2011-10-27T13:33:03Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I’ve found very few Americans or people learning English as a second language even grasp this concept. I can’t recall anything else I learned from Mrs. Watson in fourth grade except this, and the story of her chance encounter with the Beatles. Are you saying people in the US don’t pronounce the difference between voiced and unvoiced ‘th’? I don’t think that’s true. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2011, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/initial-voiced-th-in-english/600716/24 "2011-10-27T13:59:44Z")
Noting that the longer forms in **psychonaut** ’s list are compounds (thereupon, themselves), I’d suggest that the reason most of the longer th- words in English begin with unvoiced th is that they were borrowed from Greek, either directly, as coinages, or via Latin, and initially began with theta, unvoiced th. Classic Greek did not have a voiced th phoneme, though in modern Greek delta has that sound. The Germanic/Scandinavian words tended to be short; the Greco-Latin ones a mix and more commonly long. So most longer th- words ended up with unvoiced th. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2011, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/initial-voiced-th-in-english/600716/25 "2011-10-27T15:03:38Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, I’ve finally had a chance to read over that Wikipedia article (it hadn’t even occurred to me that there would be a Wiki article on this). It looks like the most relevant section is not the part about Germanic origins (after all, oodles of words have Germanic origins, not just the function words), but the part on [Development up to Modern English](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_th#Development_up_to_Modern_English). Still, they only seem to have a single bullet-point on it, and **with a fair bit of uncertainty** : > > > [@](#): > > > > In early Middle English times, a group of very common function words beginning with /θ/ (the, they, there, etc.) came to be pronounced with /ð/ instead of /θ/. **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**. Odd phrasing in the Wikipedia article – my understanding is that the part in red (above) is _unequivocally_ what happened. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/initial-voiced-th-in-english/600716.md?page=1)