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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. [1]
The most logical use of ⟨th⟩ is to represent a consonant cluster of the phonemes /t/ and /h/, as in English knighthood. This is not a digraph, since a digraph is a pair of letters representing a single phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the separate characters.
The digraph ⟨th⟩ was first introduced in Latin to transliterate the letter theta ⟨Θ, θ⟩ in loans from Greek. Theta was pronounced as an aspirated stop /tʰ/ in Classical and early Koine Greek. [2]
⟨th⟩ is used in academic transcription systems to represent letters in south and east Asian alphabets that have the value /tʰ/. According to the Royal Thai General System of Transcription, for example, ⟨th⟩ represents a series of Thai letters with the value /tʰ/. [3]
⟨th⟩ is also used to transcribe the phoneme /tʰ/ in Southern Bantu languages, such as Zulu and Tswana.
During late antiquity, the Greek phoneme represented by the letter ⟨θ⟩ mutated from an aspirated stop /tʰ/ to a dental fricative /θ/. This mutation affected the pronunciation of ⟨th⟩, which began to be used to represent the phoneme /θ/ 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 /θ/ and /ð/ came to be pronounced /d/.
In early Old English of the 7th and 8th centuries, the digraph ⟨th⟩ was used until the Old English Latin alphabet adapted the runic letter ⟨þ⟩ (thorn), as well as ⟨ð⟩ (eth; ðæt in Old English), a modified version of the Latin letter ⟨d⟩, to represent this sound. Later, the digraph reappeared, gradually superseding these letters in Middle English.
In modern English, an example of the ⟨th⟩ digraph pronounced as /θ/ is the one in tooth.
In Old and Middle Irish, ⟨th⟩ was used for /θ/ as well, but the sound eventually changed into [h] (see below).
Other languages that use ⟨th⟩ for /θ/ include Albanian and Welsh, both of which treat it as a distinct letter and alphabetize it between ⟨t⟩ and ⟨u⟩.
English also uses ⟨th⟩ to represent the voiced dental fricative /ð/, 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 [θ] and [ð] stood in allophonic relationship to each other and so did not need to be rigorously distinguished in spelling. The letters ⟨þ⟩ and ⟨ð⟩ were used indiscriminately for both sounds, and when these were replaced by ⟨th⟩ in the 15th century, it was likewise used for both sounds. (For the same reason, ⟨s⟩ is used in English for both /s/ and /z/.)
In the Norman dialect Jèrriais, the French phoneme /ʁ/ is realized as /ð/, and is spelled ⟨th⟩ under the influence of English.
In the Latin alphabet for the Javanese language, ⟨th⟩ is used to transcribe the phoneme voiceless retroflex stop ʈ, which is written as ꦛ in the native Javanese script.
Because neither /tʰ/ nor /θ/ were native phonemes in Latin, the Greek sound represented by ⟨th⟩ came to be pronounced /t/. The spelling retained the digraph for etymological reasons. This practice was then borrowed into German, French, Dutch and other languages, where ⟨th⟩ still appears in originally Greek words, but is pronounced /t/. 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 ⟨th⟩ in English are the name of the River Thames from Middle English Temese and the name Anthony (though the ⟨th⟩ is often pronounced /θ/ under the influence of the spelling [4] ) from Latin Antonius.
In English, ⟨th⟩ for /t/ can also occur in loan-words from French or German, such as Neanderthal. The English name Thomas has initial /t/ because it was loaned from Norman.
In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages ⟨th⟩ represents a dental stop, /t̪/. [5]
In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, ⟨th⟩ represents the lenition of ⟨t⟩. In most cases word-initially, it is pronounced /h/. For example: Irish and Scottish Gaelic toil[tɛlʲ] 'will' → do thoil[dəhɛlʲ] 'your will'.
This use of digraphs with ⟨h⟩ to indicate lenition is distinct from the other uses which derive from Latin. While it is true that the presence of digraphs with ⟨h⟩ 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 ⟨h⟩. It is also a consequence of their history: the digraph initially, in Old and Middle Irish, designated the phoneme /θ/, but later sound changes complicated and obscured the grapheme–sound correspondence, so that ⟨th⟩ is even found in some words like Scottish Gaelic piuthar 'sister' that never had a /θ/ 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 ⟨th⟩ to be reinterpreted as a marker of hiatus.
The Irish and Scottish Gaelic lenited /t/ is silent in final position, as in Scottish Gaelic sgith/skiː/ 'tired'. And, rarely, it is silent in initial position, as in Scottish Gaelic thu/uː/ 'you'.
In English, the ⟨th⟩ in asthma and clothes [6] is often silent.
U+1D7AᵺLATIN SMALL LETTER TH WITH STRIKETHROUGH is used for phonetic notation in some dictionaries. [7]
Eth, known as ðæt in Old English, is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian.
H, or h, is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, including the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is aitch, or regionally haitch, plural haitches.
S, or for lowercase, s, is the nineteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and other latin alphabets worldwide. Its name in English is ess, plural esses.
Z, or z, is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the Latin alphabet. It is used in the modern English alphabet, in the alphabets of other Western European languages, and in others worldwide. Its usual names in English are zed, which is most commonly used in British English and zee, most commonly used in North American English, with an occasional archaic variant izzard.
Thorn or þorn is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic alphabet, Middle Scots, and some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia but was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the rune ᚦ in the Elder Futhark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic.
Ll/ll is a digraph that occurs in several languages.
A phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond consistently to the language's phonemes, or more generally to the language's diaphonemes. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographies; a high degree of grapheme–phoneme correspondence can be expected in orthographies based on alphabetic writing systems, but they differ in how complete this correspondence is. English orthography, for example, is alphabetic but highly nonphonemic.
Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word alphabet is a compound of alpha and beta, the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet. Old English was first written down using the Latin alphabet during the 7th century. During the centuries that followed, various letters entered or fell out of use. By the 16th century, the present set of 26 letters had largely stabilised:
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic, is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from c. 600 to c. 900. The main contemporary texts are dated c. 700–850; by 900 the language had already transitioned into early Middle Irish. Some Old Irish texts date from the 10th century, although these are presumably copies of texts written at an earlier time. Old Irish is thus forebear to Modern Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic.
Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician tāw 𐤕, Hebrew tavת, Aramaic taw 𐡕, Syriac taw ܬ, and Arabic tāʾت. In Arabic, it also gives rise to the derived letter ث ṯāʾ. Its original sound value is.
In English, the digraph ⟨th⟩ usually represents either the voiced dental fricative phoneme or the voiceless dental fricative phoneme. Occasionally, it stands for. In the word eighth, it is often pronounced. In compound words, ⟨th⟩ may be a consonant sequence rather than a digraph.
Ch is a digraph in the Latin script. It is treated as a letter of its own in the Chamorro, Old Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Igbo, Uzbek, Quechua, Ladino, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Ukrainian, Japanese, Latynka, and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. Formerly ch was also considered a separate letter for collation purposes in Modern Spanish, Vietnamese, and sometimes in Polish; now the digraph ch in these languages continues to be used, but it is considered as a sequence of letters and sorted as such.
Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet was Benjamin Franklin's proposal for a spelling reform of the English language. The alphabet was based on the Latin alphabet used in English.
Ṯāʾ (ث) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two from the Phoenician alphabet. It is also one of the ten letters the Persian alphabet added from the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet. In Modern Standard Arabic it represents the voiceless dental fricative, also found in English as the "th" in words such as "thank" and "thin". In Persian, Urdu, and Kurdish it is pronounced as s as in "sister" in English. Ṯāʾ, along those with the letter shīn, are the only two surviving Arabic letters with three dots above. In most European languages, it is mostly romanized as the digraph th. In other languages, such as Indonesian, this Arabic letter is often romanized as ts and Ṡ.
In articulatory phonetics, fortition, also known as strengthening, is a consonantal change that increases the degree of stricture. It is the opposite of the more common lenition. For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a stop. Although not as typical of sound change as lenition, fortition may occur in prominent positions, such as at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable; as an effect of reducing markedness; or due to morphological leveling.
C, or c, is the third letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is cee, plural cees.
In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft ⟨c⟩ occurs in which ⟨c⟩ represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard ⟨c⟩ often precedes the non-front vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩, and is that of the voiceless velar stop,. The sound of a soft ⟨c⟩, typically before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩, may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft ⟨c⟩ is.
Gh is a digraph found in many languages.