Voiced dental fricative

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The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is ð, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is D. The symbol ð was taken from the Old English letter eth, which could stand for either a voiced or unvoiced interdental fricative. This symbol is also sometimes used to represent the dental approximant, though that is more clearly written with the lowering diacritic, ð̞. The dental 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 teeth, as they are with other dental consonants. It is familiar to English speakers as the th sound in then.

This sound, and its unvoiced counterpart, are actually rare phonemes. Almost all European and Asian languages, such as German, French, Persian, Japanese, and Chinese, 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 fricative or a voiced dental plosive. 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, the "periphery" languages of Welsh, English, Spanish, Arabic, some Italian dialects, Greek and Albanian have this phoneme in their consonant inventories.

Features

Features of the voiced dental 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.
Its place of articulation is dental, which means it is articulated with the tongue on either the lower or the upper teeth, or both.
Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

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

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Albanian		i verdhë		'gold'
Aleut	Atkan dialect	dax̂		'eye'
Arabic	Standard	ذهب	[ðaˈhab]	'gold'	See Arabic phonology
Berta		[fɛ̀ːðɑ̀nɑ́]		'to sweep'
Catalan		cadàver	[kəˈðaβə]	'cadaver'	See Catalan phonology
Danish		vide	[ˈʋiːðə]	'to know'	See Danish phonology
Elfdalian		baiða	[ˈbaɪða]	'wait'
English		this	[ðɪs]	'this'	See English phonology
Fijian		ciwa	[ðiwa]	'nine'
Greek		δάφνη	[ˈðafni]	'laurel'	See Modern Greek phonology
Gwich’in		niidhàn	[niːðân]	'you want'
Harsusi		[ðebeːr]		'bee'
Hän		ë̀dhä̀	[ə̂ðɑ̂]	'hide'
Kabyle		ḏuḇ	[ðuβ]	'to be exhausted'
Occitan	Gascon	que divi		'what I should'
Portuguese	European	nada	[ˡnaðɐ]	'nothing'	Northern and central dialects. See Portuguese phonology
Sioux	Nakota	?	[ˈðaptã]	'five'
Sardinian		nidu	[ˡniðu]	'nest'
Spanish		dedo	[ˈd̪e̞ð̞o̞]	'finger'	See Spanish phonology
Swahili		dhambi	[ðɑmbi]	'sin'
Tamil		ஒன்பது	[onbʌðɯ]	'nine'	See Tamil phonology
Tanacross		dhet	[ðet]	'liver'
Tutchone	Northern	edhó	[eðǒ]	'hide'
Tutchone	Southern	adhǜ	[aðɨ̂]	'hide'
Welsh		bardd	[bɑrð]	'bard'
Western Neo-Aramaic		?	[aħːað]	'one'

Voiced dental fricative

Features

Occurrence

References

Bibliography

See also