# TH sounds in other languages **URL:** \ **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:** 2
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/21 "2026-02-26T12:59:37Z")
Castilian Spanish has the voiceless “TH” sound (θ), spelled with “Z” or with “C” before “E” or “I” (ce, ci). But it also has the voiced “TH” sound (ð) as an allophone of “T” and “D” when it is next to some other consonants (“a **d** minículo”, “a **t** mosférico”, “amíg **d** ala”, “anéc **d** ota”). It is not its own separate grapheme, but it definitely exists as an allophone to other dental / alveolar consonants. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/22 "2026-02-26T16:19:26Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > 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 How about “shibboleth” eh? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/23 "2026-02-26T16:26:03Z")
Pronounced “Shibbolet” in modern Hebrew, or “Sibbolet” if you’re a TRAITOR. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/24 "2026-02-27T10:38:12Z")
The linguistic term for the on without voice is “devoiced.” My mother was a linguist. I read a lot of her books and even took some linguistics classes myself. I’m qualifies to teach ESL, and to get the certificate for that in Indiana, you need a couple of undergrad 300-level linguistics classes. Anyway, and interesting thing about voiced and devoiced pairs of consonants is that voiced implies devoiced within a language. That is, if a language uses the voiced version of something, (THere) in this discussion, it will also have the devoiced version (THink). If a language has B, it has P, and if it has J, it has CH (as in chat), but not necessarily the other was around. A language can have P without B. [discussing “th” sound]: > [@PatrickLondon](#): > > The ones that came to my mind were Welsh (spelt “dd” as in Dafydd) > [@RitterSport](#): > > The Welsh one – is that voiced or no? Pretty sure it’s devoiced. The voice version, IIRC, is uncommon as a final consonant. There are lots of sounds that are common as initial sounds but otherwise uncommon, common as final sounds, but otherwise uncommon, etc. [further discussing “th” sound]: > [@PatrickLondon](#): > > Spanish (“z”- “Una cerveza, por favor”), but thanks for the authoritative link. I’ve heard a lot of Spanishes, and I’m pretty sure this is a signal of Castilian Spanish. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/25 "2026-02-27T11:03:09Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > If a language has B, it has P, Arabic has B but no P. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/26 "2026-02-27T11:09:02Z")
In isiZulu and related languages, “th” does occur in the written version, but pronunciation is “tʰ” , effectively ‘T’ to people who don’t speak the language. For example the word “three” or “third” is “isithathu”, and while I do not know how to write phonemes formally, this would be something like… Isi (click sound) tah too. There are a number of different click sounds that do not appear in Western languages. People who are fluent won’t think you are weird for pronouncing the click “th” but they would be certain that you are a second language student who is struggling to master the basics! Edit, now I think of it, we have an isiXhosa phrase, “Batho Pele” (“People First”) which uses the soft “th”. I guess translating formerly unwritten language to text gets quite complicated. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/27 "2026-02-27T11:41:42Z")
- transcribing, not translating. Lest someone like our wonderful @Johanna comes in to chastise me for a silly error… ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/28 "2026-02-27T12:22:04Z")
This is a very interesting conversation to me. Slightly off-topic, but posters have mentioned sounds that foreigners can’t distinguish, for example: > [@scudsucker](#): > > but pronunciation is “tʰ” , effectively ‘T’ to people who don’t speak the language. I’ve always found this interesting, and it shows how much pre-processing gets done before your conscious mind “hears” something. Non-native speakers can find it hard not only to pronounce unfamiliar consonants and pronouns, but even to hear that there is a difference between some. I knew someone whose name was spelled Yi, and some people pronounced it “Yee” and some “Eee”. He was a native Chinese speaker and I asked him whether it was Yee or Eee and he said, “?? You’re saying the same thing”. Clearly different to me, but there’s probably a Mandarin (I assume) consonant that’s somewhere between the two. Anyway, back to thee and thou. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/29 "2026-02-27T12:52:01Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > The linguistic term for the on without voice is “devoiced.” I’ve typically heard “voiceless” or “unvoiced.” “Devoiced” is when a normally voiced sound becomes voiceless in certain contexts. (Like how “have to” becomes “haff to” in rapid speech for many/most people.) ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/30 "2026-02-27T14:21:25Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > I’ve always found this interesting, and it shows how much pre-processing gets done before your conscious mind “hears” something. Developmentally, this starts to occur around 6 to 8 years old. Children who learn a second language (with different phonemes) learn it easily up to that age. After that, your brain actually learns new languages differently, and it becomes more difficult to learn new phonemes. East Asians for example have difficulty learning the difference between L and R sounds once they get past that age, English speakers have difficulty with the QH sound in Arabic. It is possible to learn sounds that your language lacks when you are an adult, but it is much more difficult than it is for a child to learn them. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/31 "2026-02-27T18:32:45Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > That is, if a language uses the voiced version of something, (THere) in this discussion, it will also have the devoiced version (THink). That’s not true in Klingon, which, for example, has /v/ but not /f/, and /ʂ/ but not /ʐ/. It’s one of several features of the language that deliberately violate rules that normally apply to human languages. Marc Okrand, the designer of the language, is a linguist and built a number of such linguistic in-jokes into the language’s phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/32 "2026-02-27T19:23:40Z")
Better example, I think: Somali has a “b” sound but not a corresponding “p” from what I can tell. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/33 "2026-02-27T21:22:23Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I’ve heard a lot of Spanishes, and I’m pretty sure this is a signal of Castilian Spanish. “z” is not pronounced as a voiced th in any variety of Spanish. The “c” and “z” in “cerveza” are the same sound (an unvoiced th or an s depending on region). ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/34 "2026-02-27T21:49:59Z")
Apparently the sound exists in Ladino (Spanish derivatives spoken by Sephardi Jews). ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2026, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/35 "2026-02-28T00:11:29Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > If a language has B, it has P, […] but not necessarily the other was around. A language can have P without B. You just described the inverse of Arabic and Mongolian. They have /b/ but no /p/. Proto-Semitic \*p became Arabic /f/. Proto-Mongolic p went through the stages p \> f \> h \> zero, leaving no trace. Manchu has p \> f like Arabic. Japanese has p \> f \> h and stopped at h, which is reflected in kana spelling. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/36 "2026-03-01T01:11:02Z")
It exists in standard Castilian Spanish also as a pronunciation of d in words like “miedo” and “casado”, but this is only a stopover on the way to the sound being deleted completely as casao. In general cross-linguistically the two th sounds are unstable and tend to fall out of the phonemic inventory of any language that has them, so English will probably lose both in due course. Anecdote time - I remember as a child a young English boy wanted me to say “three” because he had heard that Irish people can’t say th sounds so we say “tree” instead. The problem was that he was from London and couldn’t say th sounds either so he challenged me to say “free”, to which I said “free” and he said “no, free” and it all ended in tears. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/37 "2026-03-01T07:10:02Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > East Asians for example have difficulty learning the difference between L and R sounds once they get past that age That’s true for Japanese natives, but not as true for native Mandarin speakers. I don’t know about Koreans or other varieties of Chinese. > [@Johanna](#): > > Japanese has p \> f \> h and stopped at h, which is reflected in kana spelling. Can you explain what you mean by this? Japanese has b, p, f, and h sounds so I’m not sure what you mean. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/38 "2026-03-01T09:56:54Z")
Proto-Japonic \*p can turn variously into p, b, f, h depending on position in a word. The process of p turning into b, f, or h is called lenition. In Japanese can still be seen the various stages of the lenition process. By contrast with Mongolian, in which the proto-p has lenited itself out of existence. For another example, proto-Dravidian \*p has become h in Kannada. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/39 "2026-03-01T16:09:22Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > The problem was that he was from London and couldn’t say th sounds either Hence [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/y_JAnYyLesQ/maxresdefault.jpg "Forty Fahsend Fevvers on a Frush") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_JAnYyLesQ) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957/40 "2026-03-02T22:25:35Z")
Then there’s the reverse question: [Why](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079) did they use to spell “Esthonia” and “Thibet” with the digraph ⟨th⟩ when they were _never_ pronounced with [θ] or anything but plain [t]? It torments my mind not knowing whether there had once been a rational explanation now forgotten, or there never was a rational explanation in the first place and shit just happens randomly. There was a rebel sect of Islam in the 9th century CE, the Qarmati rebellion. The Arabic plural name of the group is al-Qarāmitah. However, French Orientalists spelled the name “Carmathian” and that was formerly copied by English writers. This _does_ have an intelligible reason for the h. In French, the word ending spelled -_tian_ is always pronounced “-sian.” Inserting the h preserved the plosive [t] sound for French speakers. I cite this as an example of a deeply buried rational reason for the spelling even if it looks weird to us. Another example is the Mohawk saint, Kateri Tekakwitha. In Mohawk, stop phonemes like /k/ and /t/ are voiced to [g] and [d], unless otherwise indicated. That’s what the h is for: to preserve the unvoiced sound of /t/. So her name is pronounced Gaderi Degagwi **t** a. It took some deep diving into Mohawk phonology to elucidate this h. I can’t find any rational reason for “Esthonia” or “Thibet” no matter how you slice it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-sounds-in-other-languages/1027957.md?page=3)