Voiced dental fricative

Voiced dental fricative
ð
IPA Number	131
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ð
Unicode (hex)	U+00F0
X-SAMPA	D
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Voiced dental approximant
ð
ð̞
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The voiced dental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the th sound in father. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is eth, or [ð]. This was taken from the Old English letter eth, which could stand for either a voiced or unvoiced interdental non-sibilant fricative. This symbol is also sometimes used to represent the dental approximant, a similar sound not known to contrast with a dental non-sibilant fricative in any language, though that is more clearly written with the lowering diacritic, ⟨ð̞⟩. The dental non-sibilant fricatives are often called "interdental" because they are often produced with the tongue between the upper and lower teeth, and not just against the back of the upper teeth, as they are with other dental consonants.

This sound, and its unvoiced counterpart, are rare phonemes. The great majority of languages of Europe and Asia, such as German, French, Persian, Japanese, and Mandarin, lack this sound. Native speakers of those languages in which the sound is not present often have difficulty enunciating or distinguishing it, and replace it with a voiced alveolar sibilant [z], a voiced dental stop or voiced alveolar stop [d], or a voiced labiodental fricative [v]; known respectively as th-alveolarization, th-stopping, and th-fronting. As for Europe, there seems to be a great arc where this sound (and or the unvoiced variant) is present. Most of mainland Europe lacks the sound. However, some "periphery" languages as Gascon, Welsh, English, Elfdalian, Northern Sami, Mari, Greek, Albanian, Sardinian, some dialects of Basque and most speakers of Spanish have this sound in their consonant inventories, as phonemes or allophones.

Within Turkic languages, Bashkir and Turkmen have both voiced and voiceless dental non-sibilant fricatives among their consonants. Among Semitic languages, they are used in Modern Standard Arabic, albeit only by some speakers, Also, in some dialects of Hebrew and Neo-Aramaic.

Features

Features of the voiced dental non-sibilant fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence. It does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.
• Its place of articulation is dental, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the upper teeth, termed respectively apical and laminal. Note that most stops and liquids described as dental are actually denti-alveolar.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, the undertack diacritic may be used to indicate an approximant [ð̞].

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Albanian		idhull	[iðuɫ]	'idol'
Aleut	Atkan dialect	dax̂	[ðɑχ]	'eye'
Arabic	Standard	ذهب	[ˈðahab]	'gold'	See Arabic phonology
Aromanian		zală	[ðalə]	'butter whey'	Corresponds to [z] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic		wada	[waːð̞a]	'doing'	Common in the Tyari, Barwari and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic dialects. Corresponds to [d] in other varieties.
Bashkir		ҡаҙ	<phonos file="Ba-ҡаҙ.ogg">[qɑð]</phonos>	'goose'
Basque		adar	[að̞ar]	'horn'	Allophone of /d/
Berber	Kabyle	ḏuḇ	[ðuβ]	'to be exhausted'
Berta		[fɛ̀ːðɑ̀nɑ́]		'to sweep'
Catalan		fada	[ˈfað̞ə]	'fairy'	Fricative or approximant. Allophone of /d/. See Catalan phonology
Elfdalian		baiða	[ˈbaɪða]	'wait'
English		this	[ðɪs]	'this'	See English phonology
Fijian		ciwa	[ðiwa]	'nine'
German	Austrian	leider	[ˈlaɛ̯ða]	'unfortunately'	Intervocalic allophone of /d/ in casual speech. See German phonology
Greek		δάφνη/dáfni	[ˈðafni]	'laurel'	See Modern Greek phonology
Gwich’in		niidhàn	[niːðân]	'you want'
Hän		ë̀dhä̀	[ə̂ðɑ̂]	'hide'
Harsusi		[ðebeːr]		'bee'
Hebrew	Iraqi	אדוני	<phonos file="Athonai.ogg">[ʔaðoˈnaj]</phonos>	'my lord'	Commonly pronounced [d]. See Modern Hebrew phonology
Kagayanen		?	[kað̞aɡ]	'spirit'
Mari	Eastern dialect	шодо	[ʃoðo]	'lung'
Norman	Jèrriais	méthe	[með]	'mother'
Northern Sami		dieđa	[d̥ieðɑ]	'science'
Norwegian	Meldal dialect	i	[ð̩ʲ˕ː]	'in'	Syllabic palatalized frictionless approximant corresponding to /iː/ in Standard Eastern Norwegian. See Norwegian phonology
Occitan	Gascon	que divi	[ke ˈð̞iwi]	'what I should'	Allophone of /d/. See Occitan phonology
Portuguese	European	nada	[ˈn̪äðɐ]	'nothing'	Northern and central dialects. Allophone of /d/, mainly after an oral vowel. See Portuguese phonology
Sardinian		nidu	<phonos file="Src-Nidu.wav">[ˈnið̞u]</phonos>	'nest'	Allophone of /d/
Sioux	Lakota	?	[ˈðaptã]	'five'
Spanish	Most dialects	dedo	[ˈd̪e̞ð̞o̞]	'finger'	Ranges from close fricative to approximant. Allophone of /d/. See Spanish phonology
	Peninsular	jazmín	[xäðˈmĩn]	'Jasmine'	Fricative. Allophone of /θ/ before voiced consonants, often in free variation with [θ]
Swahili		dhambi	[ðɑmbi]	'sin'
Swedish	Central Standard	bada	[ˈbɑːð̞ä]	'to take a bath'	An approximant; allophone of /d/ in casual speech. See Swedish phonology
	Some dialects	i	[ð̩ʲ˕ː]	'in'	A syllabic palatalized frictionless approximant corresponding to /iː/ in Central Standard Swedish. See Swedish phonology
Syriac	Western Neo-Aramaic	ܐܚܕ	[aħːeð]	'to take'
Tamil		ஒன்பது	[onbʌðɯ]	'nine'	See Tamil phonology
Tanacross		dhet	[ðet]	'liver'
Turkmen		gaz	[ɡäːð]	'goose'
Tutchone	Northern	edhó	[eðǒ]	'hide'
	Southern	adhǜ	[aðɨ̂]
Venetian		mezorno	[meˈðorno]	'midday'
Welsh		bardd	[barð]	'bard'	See Welsh phonology
Zapotec	Tilquiapan				Allophone of /d/

Danish [ð] is actually a weak, velarized alveolar approximant.

See also

• Voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative
• Sibilant consonant#Possible combinations
• Index of phonetics articles