# TH sounds in other languages
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 25, 2026, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957 "2026-02-25T14:30:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/1 "2026-02-25T14:30:54Z")
English has two TH sounds (one voiced? is that the right term?, and one not). I think Castilian Spanish also has the unvoiced one.
Are those the only languages that have the unvoiced TH? Is English the only one with the voiced one?
When people speak English with a foreign accent, those sounds seem to really trip them up (D or Z for voiced TH, S or T for unvoiced). Just curious how unique those sounds are to English.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/2 "2026-02-25T14:39:40Z")
Here’s all the languages that use the unvoiced th sound:
> **[Voiceless dental fricative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative)**
>
> A voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to most English-speakers as the "th" sound in "think".
> Though rather rare as a phoneme among the world's languages, it is encountered in some of the most widespread and influential ones. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨θ⟩. The IPA symbol is the lowercase Greek letter theta, which is used for this sound in post-classical Greek, an...
Here’s the ones that use the voiced one:
> **[Voiced dental fricative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_dental_fricative)**
>
> A voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to most English-speakers as the "th" sound in "father".
> The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for this sound is eth, ⟨ð⟩, which was taken from the Old English and Icelandic alphabets, and which in those languages could stand for either a voiced or unvoiced (inter)dental non-sibilant fricative. Such fricatives are often called "interdental" because they are often produced with the tongue betw...
Standard Arabic and Greek seem to be the big ones.
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### Author:  [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/3 "2026-02-25T14:46:09Z")
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> Standard Arabic and Greek seem to be the big ones.
Thanks! I’m not enough of a linguist to parse most of those wiki pages and whether the sound in other languages is the same – there are so many notes on those tables!
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### Author:  [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/4 "2026-02-25T15:49:13Z")
The ones that came to my mind were Welsh (spelt “dd” as in Dafydd) and Spanish (“z”- “Una cerveza, por favor”), but thanks for the authoritative link.
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### Author:  [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/5 "2026-02-25T16:03:41Z")
Top of my mind is Icelandic what has separate letters for them, **Þ** and **ð**
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/6 "2026-02-25T16:18:32Z")
> [@leahcim](#):
>
> Top of my mind is Icelandic what has separate letters for them, **Þ** and **ð**
But apparently not in Swedish, at least not since the ancient days of Old Norse where it was represented by the thorn character **Þ**. Swedish-born airline captain Petter Hörnfeldt, who produces a lot of aviation videos on YouTube under the banner “Mentour Pilot”, has a moderate
accent that I presume is Swedish. When he talks about “engine thrust” or “thrust levers” it always sounds a lot like “trust”.
BTW, Petter is an absolutely marvelous fellow and extremely knowledgeable, and makes these videos with the noble goal of instilling better safety practices in present and aspiring pilots.
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### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/7 "2026-02-25T16:20:00Z")
Fun fact: in the faux-old-timey descriptor “ye olde,” the y in “ye” is meant to represent the first of those characters (a.k.a. “thorn”) as it existed in Old English.
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### Author:  [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/8 "2026-02-25T16:52:26Z")
> [@RitterSport](#):
>
> > [@pulykamell](#):
> >
> > Standard Arabic and Greek seem to be the big ones.
>
> Thanks! I’m not enough of a linguist to parse most of those wiki pages and whether the sound in other languages is the same – there are so many notes on those tables!
I remember having difficulty with these sounds when I was learning some Greek years ago.
It seemed subtle but distinctively different.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/9 "2026-02-25T17:02:00Z")
I wonder if we have any native Greek speakers here. The IPA symbols are the same, but there can still be some variation, as there are various degrees of precision and extended symbol sets in IPA (and also it may depend on dialect.)
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### Author:  [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/10 "2026-02-25T17:37:30Z")
> [@Ellecram](#):
>
> It seemed subtle but distinctively different.
Sort of like the soft CH sound in German (ich, durstig), which is almost, but not quite, an SH in English.
> [@PatrickLondon](#):
>
> The ones that came to my mind were Welsh (spelt “dd” as in Dafydd)
The Welsh one – is that voiced or no?
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### Author:  [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/11 "2026-02-25T19:04:18Z")
I had some difficulty with the letter Delta. It was a softer, voiced fricative sound very similar to the English “th” (this, that) but not a hard “d” as in dog. It was a combination of the 2 sounds which created some difficulty.
So I formed the “th” sound with my mouth/tongue but voiced the d sound.
Another Greek letter, Theta, sounded more similar to the “this, that, bath” sound we use in English.
That’s all I recall and this was many years ago so I could be way off the pronunciation norm for this letter/language.
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### Author:  [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/12 "2026-02-25T19:09:12Z")
> [@RitterSport](#):
>
> > [@Ellecram](#):
> >
> > It seemed subtle but distinctively different.
>
> Sort of like the soft CH sound in German (ich, durstig), which is almost, but not quite, an SH in English.
A very similar situation.
I experienced some difficulty when learning to pronounce certain German words.
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### Author:  [@Quondam\_Mechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quondam_Mechanic)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/13 "2026-02-25T19:21:47Z")
A Bengali friend told me of a set of 4 phonemes in Hindi (IIRC) – aspirated D, aspirated voiced dental fricative, unaspirated versions… I’m probably mis-remembering (since I couldn’t reliably distinguish the sounds.) Anybody here know about them?
BTW, the German sound of “ch” varies with dialect; my parents’ Austrian German had a guttural version.
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### Author:  [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/14 "2026-02-25T19:24:34Z")
> [@Quondam\_Mechanic](#):
>
> BTW, the German sound of “ch” varies with dialect; my parents’ Austrian German had a guttural version.
The Bavarian accent also had a bit of a guttural component. I believe the two dialects have similarities.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/15 "2026-02-25T19:58:38Z")
Welsh also has separate letters for them. Th (considered a single letter, and alphabetized after T) is the unvoiced as in “thin”; Dd (considered a single letter, and alphabetized after D) is the voiced one, as in “this.”
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/16 "2026-02-25T20:48:34Z")
> [@Ellecram](#):
>
> the “this, that, bath” sound we use in English.
Those are two different sounds. It is voiced in the first two words and unvoiced in the last.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/17 "2026-02-25T21:20:29Z")
Yep. This, that, bathe are voiced. Bath (no e) is not.
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### Author:  [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2026, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/18 "2026-02-25T21:47:04Z")
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> I wonder if we have any native Greek speakers here.
Disclaimer:
My grandfather and grandmother came off the boat from Greece, and my father spoke Greek until he went to kindergarten, then had to learn English very quickly. But my father died when I was young and my Greek language skills are a bit limited. There is also a fair amount of difference between the Greek language spoken in West Virginia and the Greek language spoken in Greece.
Greek has two “TH” letters.
The first is the letter Theta (uppercase Θ lowercase θ). In my experience, this is pronounced exactly like the English “TH” in “thin”.
The second is the letter Delta (uppercase Δ lowercase δ). This sound is sometimes translated as “TH” (the same sound as in “the”) and sometimes as “D”. In my experience, it’s more of a combination of the two. It is sometimes written as “DH” when converted to English sounds. I have noticed that a lot of Americanized Greeks (like me) lean more towards the “D” sound. Many English speakers are familiar with the word “delta”, but in Greek the word is pronounced more like “thelta”, and you might be tempted to write the pronunciation as “dhelta”.
As I understand it, in ancient Greek, theta was pronounced more like the “TH” in “the” and delta was pronounced more like the English “D”, but those sounds shifted over time.
To get the “D” sound as in “dog”, modern Greek uses the letter combination “ντ” (nu tau). For example, the Greek word for tomato is “ντομάτα” (ntomata) and is pronounced “domata”. However, when used at the end of a word, “ντ” is pronounced like the English “nd”.
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2026, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/19 "2026-02-26T06:04:49Z")
To mega-nitpick, yes they have two separate letters, as English used to have. But the sounds in Icelandic are /θ̠/ and /ð̠/ in IPA-ese, with the little line under it. Alveolar instead of dental.
Among letters, modern Faroese has “only” Ð/ð.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2026, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/20 "2026-02-26T08:27:59Z")
Hebrew used to have a TH sound (certain instances of the letter ת - but never at the beginning of a word), but it was lost in most dialects over the years. In Ashkenzic dialects, it evolved into an “S” sound, while in Sephardid dialects it evolved into a “T”. Modern Hebrew, in general, is based on Sephardic Hebrew, which means that the “T” is now predominant.
Take the old Hebrew word “Shabbath”: Ashkenazim pronounce it “Shabbas” or “Shabbes”, Sephardim and Israelis pronounce it “Shabbat”, while Greek translations of the Bible kept the TH but changed the SH to S, giving us “Sabbath”, which is how it came to English
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