Voiceless dental fricative

IPA mark	θ
IPA number	130
IPA character description	Greek minuscule theta
Unicode	U + 03B8
HTML (dec.)	& # 952;
X-SAMPA	T
Kirshenbaum	T
Audio sample ? / i [ θa ʔaθa ]

The voiceless dental fricative is a voiceless , to the teeth educated fricative .

Put simply, the pronunciation of the consonant resembles a “ lisped ” / s /. In IPA phonetic transcription it is represented by θ (the Greek minuscule theta ). The choice of the sign is derived from the pronunciation of this letter in modern Greek . In German the voiceless dental fricative is unknown, but it comes about in the English word thanks [ θæŋks before]. After its orthographic realization in English, it is commonly known as the (voiceless) " th sound " [ tiˈɛɪtʃˌlaʊt ]. Its voiced equivalent is the [ ð ], as in this [ ðɪs ].

The voiceless dental fricative has the following phonetic and orthographic realizations in different languages :

• Albanian : th otë [ θɔtə ] "say"
• Arabic :ثلاثة / ṯalāṯa [ θaˈlaːθa ] "three" (represented by the letter ث (Ṯāʾ) , in DMG romanization ṯ or Ṯ)
• Bashkir : у ҫ ал [ uθɑɫ ] "angry"
• English : th anks [ θæŋks ] "thank you", pa th [ pʰɑːθ ] "path"
• Icelandic : þ ú [ θuː ] "you"
• Kiswahili : th amini [ θɑmini ] "value"
• Cornish : e th [ ɛθ ] "eight"
• Modern Greek : θ άλασσα [ ˈθalasa ] "sea"
• Spanish : c iudad [ θjuˈðað ] "city", ca z a [ ˈkaθa ] "hunting". Many variants of Spanish replace the [θ] with an [ s ].
• Welsh : be th [ beːθ ] "was"

Pulmonary consonants according to IPA (2005)	bilabial		labio- dental		dental		alveolar		post- alveolar		retroflex		palatal		velar		uvular		phase- ryngal		glottal
	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.
Plosives	​p​	​b​					​t​	​d​			​ʈ​	​ɖ​	​c​	​ɟ​	​k​	​ɡ​	​q​	​ɢ​			​ʔ​
Nasals		​m​		​ɱ​				​n​				​ɳ​		​ɲ​		​ŋ​		​ɴ​
Vibrants		​ʙ​						​r​										​ʀ​
Taps / flaps				​ⱱ​				​ɾ​				​ɽ​
Fricatives	​ɸ​	​β​	​f​	​v​	​θ​	​ð​	​s​	​z​	​ʃ​	​ʒ​	​ʂ​	​ʐ​	​ç​	​ʝ​	​x​	​ɣ​	​χ​	​ʁ​	​H​	​ʕ​	​H​	​ɦ​
lateral fricatives							​ɬ​	​ɮ​
Approximants				​ʋ​				​ɹ​				​ɻ​		​j​		​w​ ¹
lateral approximants								​l​				​ɭ​		​ʎ​		​ʟ​
¹ The labialised variant [ w ] was inserted here as a voiced velar approximant ( half vowel ) instead of the non-labialised variant [ ɰ ].