# "Th" - What were those old Germans thinking? Paleography **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 18, 2025, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079 "2025-10-18T15:30:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**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:** [October 18, 2025, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/1 "2025-10-18T15:30:53Z")
You’ve probably heard how _Neanderthal_ is pronounced and even spelled “Neandertal” in modern German. The word for valley, _Tal_, was spelled _Tal_ in Old High German (and is now again), but in between it was “Thal” for centuries. Plenty of knowledge sources are happy to tell you this fact. (It also makes a surefire way to announce yourself as an insufferable bore at a party.) > **[Is It Neander-TAL or Neander-THAL?](https://www.discovermagazine.com/is-it-neander-tal-or-neander-thal-37587)** > > Have you been saying it wrong all along? > At the time, _thal_ was the region’s word for valley: _Neander Thal_, Neander Valley. In the early twentieth century _thal_ changed to _tal_ when the government standardized spelling across Germany. > **[Neanderthal | Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Etymology)** > > Neanderthals are named after the Neander Valley in which the first identified specimen was found. The valley was spelled Neanderthal and the species was spelled Neanderthaler in German until the spelling reform of 1901.\[b\] The spelling Neandertal for the species is occasionally seen in English, even in scientific publications, but the scientific name, H. neanderthalensis, is always spelled with th according to the principle of priority. The vernacular name of the species in German is always Neand... > The German /t/ phoneme was frequently spelled th from the 15th to 19th centuries until the German Orthographic Conference of 1901. The German spelling Thal (“valley”, a cognate of English dale) changed to Tal, and the h was also dropped from Neandertal for the valley and Neandertaler for the species. > **[Neanderthal-Stad Mettmann - Neanderthal oder Neanderal - Was ist denn nun...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200809042411/https://www.mettmann.de/neandertal/schreibweise.php)** > > Das offizielle Stadtinformationsnetz der Neanderthal-Stadt Mettmann mit Infos zu folgenden Themen: Stadt, Verwaltung, Behörden, Neandertal, Kultur, Bildung, Tourismus, Sehenswürdigkeiten, Wirtschaft, Verkehr, Naturfreibad usw. > Quite simply – when the location where the skeletal remains were discovered became famous, around 1860, years after the discovery, the word “Thal” was spelled with an “h.” Hold on, it isn’t quite so simple. Nobody ever explains how that _h_ ever got in there in the first place. Whose bright idea was it? What was its purpose? Did it _have_ any purpose? In the olden days, parchment being expensive, scribes shortened words as much as possible. To lengthen a word, you’d expect them to have a serious reason. It wouldn’t make the word any easier to read, even in blackletter. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/2 "2025-10-18T15:37:37Z")
I could read the wiki article below, but it’s probably easier if I just ask Thomas when I meet him for Thai food. > **[Th (digraph)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th_(digraph)?wprov=sfti1#Voiceless_fricative_/%CE%B8/)** > > Th is a digraph in the Latin script. It was originally introduced into Latin to transliterate Greek loan words. In modern languages that use the Latin alphabet, it represents a number of different sounds. It is the most common digraph in order of frequency in the English language. > The digraph ⟨th⟩ was first introduced in Latin to transliterate the letter theta ⟨Θ, θ⟩ in loans from Greek. Theta was pronounced as an aspirated stop /tʰ/ in Classical and early Koine Greek. > ⟨th⟩ is used in academic ... ---
**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:** [October 18, 2025, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/3 "2025-10-18T15:48:59Z")
The _h_ in _Thai_ is there for a reason: it means there’s an aspirated stop /tʰ/. The name Thomas, from ancient Greek Θωμᾶς with theta, is in fact pronounced with /tʰ/ in English, the same as ancient Greek (but not the same as modern Greek). In both examples, _h_ was put there for an intelligible reason. Which only goes to demonstrate my point. The Latin name _Antonius_ became “Anthony” in English because some clever chap long ago tried to connect it with the Greek word for flower, _anthos_. He was too clever for his own good, because there’s no connection, it was all in his imagination. But it stuck. It was a crap reason for introducing the _h_, but it was still _a_ reason. Nobody’s ever come up with _any_ reason why German stuck in a perfectly useless letter. So if Peter Thiel didn’t want his name pronounced /θiːl/, he shouldn’t have used an _h_ in it. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/4 "2025-10-18T16:25:41Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Nobody’s ever come up with _any_ reason why German stuck in a perfectly useless letter. I have always assumed it’s because it’s aspirated. Is it aspirated in German, or used to be? Does aspiration ever make a phonemic difference in German? ---
**Author:** ![kk\_fusion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kk_fusion/32/15276_2.png) [@kk\_fusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kk_fusion)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/5 "2025-10-18T16:35:04Z")
You’ve already explained it – it was the classical period when everything Old Greek was hip, including the distinction between aspirated theta and non-aspirated tau. So Prussian authorities changed the spelling of words beginning with an aspirated T. That only occurs before vowels, so _Thal_ but _Treiben_. You are also correct that they later had a “what were we thinking” moment and took the unification of orthography in the newly-founded Reich as an opportunity to change it back such that the Th remains only in foreign words that actually trace back to Greek theta. > [@Pleonast](#): > > Does aspiration ever make a phonemic difference in German? None that I can think of, no. ---
**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:** [October 18, 2025, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/6 "2025-10-18T16:39:35Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I have always assumed it’s because it’s aspirated. Is it aspirated in German, or used to be? Does aspiration ever make a phonemic difference in German? Hmm, good question. I hadn’t noticed until you mentioned it that German [does](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German_phonology#Consonants) aspirate /p, t, k/ in the absence of /s/, especially in northern dialects and especially in stressed syllables. That could well be the answer! Even though it was allophonic as in English and not phonemic. When phonemes are traditionally the basis for an alphabet. The northern German pattern of aspirating unvoiced initial stops is pretty much the same as that in English. (Today I learned) ---
**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:** [October 18, 2025, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/7 "2025-10-18T16:54:52Z")
I could ask the same of the old country-name spellings _Thibet_ and _Esthonia_. I asked a Lebanese friend why the French spell _Beyrouth_ with an _h_ added at the end, and he said it was to make sure the /t/ is pronounced, as it often isn’t when final in French. OK, that one is intelligible. That would also explain the old spelling “Carmathian” for Qarmatian, referring to al-Qarāmiṭah. To ensure that the string -”tia” would be pronounced with a stop /t/, instead of /si/ as would be usual in French or /ʃ/ as in English. ---
**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 18, 2025, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/8 "2025-10-18T18:10:14Z")
I’ve wondered about the “h” in French _thé_ ( tea) for a long time. The super-helpful **[Wiktionary entry](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/th%C3%A9)** reveals that French speakers adopted the spelling of Dutch _thee_, and - like _Thal_ in the OP - the Dutch used the “th” as kind of a faux Greek thing. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/9 "2025-10-18T19:19:37Z")
I attended college with someone whose last name was Thalhammer. Now that I think about it, he pronounced his name with the aspirated t as described above. However, he didn’t make a fuss when people pronounced it with a th, probably because he figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/10 "2025-10-18T23:04:47Z")
Here’s a discussion > ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/11 "2025-10-20T13:14:57Z")
“Ve haff vays of making you thalk…” ---
**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:** [October 20, 2025, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/th-what-were-those-old-germans-thinking-paleography/1024079/12 "2025-10-20T20:20:38Z")
Looks like the best consensus we can get is half a fuzzy notion that it’s _ersatz_ Greek plus half a fuzzy notion that it encoded aspiration. To be clear: Aspiration is not spirantization. They share the same spir- etymon, but they’re quite different. Aspiration means adding a puff of breath to the release of a stop consonant: The initial /t/ in _top_ has that puff of air, while the /t/ in _stop_ doesn’t. Spirantization means changing a stop into a fricative: what English speakers have done to the /t/ in German _Neandertal._ You can’t blame us; if they didn’t want us saying it with /θ/, then they shouldn’t have spelled it with ⟨th⟩.