Learning English Sounds

I recently came across this chart from bab.La and immediately noticed a very telling theme. I am not surprised by the theme, just fascinated to see it illustrated. (click on image to enlarge)

By my count, 19 of the 100 most listened to English words and expressions contain a th-sound, either word-initially as with "thanks", word-internally as with "mother" or word-finally as with "earth".

The reason I am not surprised by the number of words and expressions that contain the th-sound is that th-sound is notoriously challenging for ESL students to learn. Indeed, even native English speakers struggle to acquire the sound as children.

Phonetically, the th-sound is articulated either as a voiced dental fricative called "eth" and transcribed as /ð/, or a voiceless dental fricative called "theta" and transcribed as /θ/. The eth is heard in the word "though" and the theta is heard in the word "through".

Not only are both phonemes hard to learn, they are also hard to differentiate. Check out this previous post for more about theta and eth.

The bab.La site also has an R-rated version of the the 100 most listened to English words and expressions that includes many thetas and eths.

Pronouncing the Th-Sound

Whether it is the theta or the eth, here is a bit of humor for those students in an introductory phonetics class.


from: http://www.lgpcards.com/cards/card20.html

Differentiating Between Phonemes - Theta and Eth

While teaching my class last week I was looking for a better way to illustrate the difference between the "theta" and "eth" phonemes because they are particularly hard for some people to differentiate.

I came across a wonderful post on Notes from a Linguistic Mystic that I have excerpted below:

A Tale of Two TH’s

Say “This thistle” a few times. Now, pay very close attention to the TH sounds at the beginning of each word. Put your hand on your Adam’s Apple (or equivalent area on your neck) while you say them. After a few tries, you’ll notice that, in the words of a friend of mine, the “TH” in “This” is “more buzzy”, or, put more scientifically, voiced. This sound, the TH in “This, That, The, There, Then, Those…”, is called an Eth (pronounced with a voiced, Eth sound). In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), it has this symbol:

The TH in “thistle”, or “theater, theory, think, thought, throw, through…” is called a Theta, and is Eth’s voiceless counterpart (Theta is to Eth as T is to D). Theta’s IPA symbol is, shockingly, a theta, as shown here: Aside from voicing, there is no difference between them. The sounds are produced with the tongue in the same position, the tongue is doing the same thing for both, and all the other various phonetic phactors (I couldn’t resist) are the same. The only difference between the the Theta and the Eth is vocal fold vibration, but what a difference it makes.

-Thank you Linguistic Mystic, this is one of the pest (Oops, I meant to say 'best' but I temporarily lost my voice) examples I have seen.