Voiced dental fricative

A voiced dental fricative is a special consonant sound in some spoken languages. Many English speakers recognize this as the "th" sound in the word "father". You make it by putting your tongue between your teeth and making a soft, hissing noise.

The symbol for this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, shown as ⟨ð⟩. This symbol is from old alphabets and can represent a soft or hard sound made with the tongue between the teeth. These sounds are often called "interdental" because of how we make them.

This sound is not very common in most European and Asian languages. People whose languages don’t use this sound might replace it with sounds like "z", a soft "d", or "v". But some languages, such as Greek, Bashkir, Turkmen, Modern Standard Arabic, and some forms of Hebrew and Assyrian, do use this sound.

Features

The voiced dental fricative is a special sound. You make it by pushing air through a small space near the teeth. This creates a soft hissing noise.

To make this sound, you put your tongue close to your teeth and use your voice box to add sound.

The sound does not let air escape through the nose. You use muscles in your chest and belly to push the air out.

Occurrence

Voiced dental fricative

Dental approximant

The voiced dental fricative is a sound used in some languages. Many English speakers know it as the "th" sound in the word "father". There is a special symbol for this sound, ⟨ð⟩, which comes from old alphabets.