Th (digraph)

File:Latin digraph T H.svg

Latin Th digraph.

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. Template:Orthography notation

Aspirated stop /tʰ/

The digraph Template:Angbr was first introduced in Latin to transliterate the letter theta Template:Angbr in loans from Greek. Theta was pronounced as an aspirated stop in Classical and early Koine Greek.

Template:Angbr is used in academic transcription systems to represent letters in south and east Asian alphabets that have the value . According to the Royal Thai General System of Transcription, for example, Template:Angbr represents a series of Thai letters with the value .

Template:Angbr is also used to transcribe the phoneme in Southern Bantu languages, such as Zulu and Tswana.

Voiceless fricative /θ/

File:A.B.Frost 1879-12 Harper's 355 p160 English th.png

A. B. Frost's first comic: a German attempts to pronounce English-language "th" sounds (1879)

During late antiquity, the Greek phoneme represented by the letter Template:Angbr mutated from an aspirated stop to a dental fricative . This mutation affected the pronunciation of Template:Angbr, which began to be used to represent the phoneme in some of the languages that had it.

One of the earliest languages to use the digraph this way was Old High German, before the final phase of the High German consonant shift, in which and came to be pronounced .

In early Old English of the 7th and 8th centuries, the digraph Template:Angbr was used until the Old English Latin alphabet adapted the runic letter Template:Angbr (thorn), as well as Template:Angbr (eth; in Old English), a modified version of the Latin letter Template:Angbr, to represent this sound. Later, the digraph reappeared, gradually superseding these letters in Middle English.

In modern English, an example of the Template:Angbr digraph pronounced as is the one in tooth.

In Old and Middle Irish, Template:Angbr was used for as well, but the sound eventually changed into (see below).

Other languages that use Template:Angbr for include Albanian and Welsh, both of which treat it as a distinct letter and alphabetize it between [[T|Template:Angbr]] and [[U|Template:Angbr]].

Voiced fricative /ð/

English also uses Template:Angbr to represent the voiced dental fricative , as in father. This unusual extension of the digraph to represent a voiced sound is caused by the fact that, in Old English, the sounds and stood in allophonic relationship to each other and so did not need to be rigorously distinguished in spelling. The letters Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr were used indiscriminately for both sounds, and when these were replaced by Template:Angbr in the 15th century, it was likewise used for both sounds. (For the same reason, Template:Angbr is used in English for both and .)

In the Norman dialect Jèrriais, the French phoneme is realized as , and is spelled Template:Angbr under the influence of English.

Voiceless retroflex stop /ʈ/

In the Latin alphabet for the Javanese language, Template:Angbr is used to transcribe the phoneme voiceless retroflex stop , which is written as in the native Javanese script.

Alveolar stop /t/

Because neither nor were native phonemes in Latin, the Greek sound represented by Template:Angbr came to be pronounced . The spelling retained the digraph for etymological reasons. This practice was then borrowed into German, French, Dutch and other languages, where Template:Angbr still appears in originally Greek words, but is pronounced . See German orthography. Interlingua also employs this pronunciation.

In early modern times, French, German and English all expanded this by analogy to words for which there is no etymological reason, but for the most part the modern spelling systems have eliminated this. Examples of unetymological Template:Angbr in English are the name of the River Thames from Middle English and the name Anthony (though the Template:Angbr is often pronounced under the influence of the spelling) from Latin .

In English, Template:Angbr for can also occur in loan-words from French or German, such as Neanderthal. The English name Thomas has initial because it was loaned from Norman.

Dental stop /t̪/

In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages Template:Angbr represents a dental stop, .

/h/

In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Template:Angbr represents the lenition of Template:Angbr. In most cases word-initially, it is pronounced . For example: Irish and Scottish Gaelic 'will' → 'your will'.

This use of digraphs with Template:Angbr to indicate lenition is distinct from the other uses which derive from Latin. While it is true that the presence of digraphs with Template:Angbr in Latin inspired the Goidelic usage, their allocation to phonemes is based entirely on the internal logic of the Goidelic languages. Lenition in Gaelic lettering was traditionally denoted in handwriting using an overdot but typesetters lacked these pre-composed types and substituted a trailing Template:Angbr. It is also a consequence of their history: the digraph initially, in Old and Middle Irish, designated the phoneme , but later sound changes complicated and obscured the grapheme–sound correspondence, so that Template:Angbr is even found in some words like Scottish Gaelic 'sister' that never had a to begin with. This is an example of "inverted (historical) spelling": the model of words where the original interdental fricative had disappeared between vowels caused Template:Angbr to be reinterpreted as a marker of hiatus.

Ø

The Irish and Scottish Gaelic lenited is silent in final position, as in Scottish Gaelic 'tired'. And, rarely, it is silent in initial position, as in Scottish Gaelic 'you'.

In English, the Template:Angbr in asthma and clothes is often silent.

ᵺ

Template:Unichar is used for phonetic notation in some dictionaries.

See also

• Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩