The /ð/ sound (th)

The /ð/ is a sound from the ‘Consonants Pairs’ group and it is called the ‘Voiced dental fricative’. This means that you create friction between the tongue and top teeth.

The /ð/ sound is made through the mouth and it is Voiced which means that you vibrate your vocal chords to make the sound.
It is defined by position of your tongue and teeth and it is a fricative, which is a sound that is produced by high pressure air flow between a narrow space in the mouth. In this case it is between the tip of the tongue and the top teeth.
To produce the sound you have to stick out your tongue a little. This can feel very unnatural for some people who are not used to it. But i is essential to produce the sound correctly. Rest your top teeth on your tongue and force air out between your teeth whilst voicing out.

This video is part of our series on phonetics and pronunciation for learners of English as a foreign language.

Phonetics is the science of pronunciation. It can be helpful for people learning English because one of the most difficult things about the language is the spelling and pronunciation. English is not very phonetic and as a result the same letters are often pronounced in many different ways in different words.
The IPA helps by providing a way to write words as they are pronounced. The normal alphabet only has 26 characters but there are 44 different sounds that are used to pronounce words. As well as that, most word in English originate from other languages like Greek, Latin and French to name just a few and in many cases the the language of origin influences how the word is pronounced.
The IPA provides a symbol (phoneme) for each sound so the correct pronunciation can be written or printed in dictionaries.

Finally a pronunciation guide on YouTube that isn't just a text-to-speech generator. Much appreciated!

[charl]

i’ve just been calling this ‘spicy o’ for the longest time

[abraganz]

Thanks so much for creating this set of videos, it's really helped me get to grip with the difference between sounds - especially the ð/θ distinction!

[einootspork]

Booth ending with the ð sound is something I rarely hear. It's pronounced that way in Standard British English but even then some speakers will pronounce it with a voiceless dental fricative instead. In American English it's pretty much only θ, which makes sense as we don't elongate the "oo" sound, and a short "oo" with a voiced dental fricative would just be weird sounding.

[Mia-dexf]

As a native Spanish speaker I've been replacing this sound for a "d" for years until now
Everyday you learn someding new :D

[incognito]

Muchas gracias por sus videos buen hombre, la mayoria tiene todo un recopilatorio en un solo video, usted letra por letra, se agradece mucho.

[singwisevocals]

NOTE: In North American English, the TH at the end of "with" and "booth" is unvoiced. (We use the unvoiced cognate of [ð], which is [θ].)

[Promethean_Knight]

ðis is amazing! Þank you so much for ðat!

[oraziodrago]

I'll never forget 'voiced dental fricative' and 'voiceless dental fricative'. Thanks a lot.

[JRCR]

thank you its a pleasure learning from you!

[GentleSalmon]

It's very helpful to me, thank you so much.

[prod.bydarby]

thank you! this is so helpful! THH to you too!

[menteprofonda-canaledipsic]

You helped me a lot! Thank you very much!

[Mrgrubbas]

amazing help. Keep it up man! It's difficult when English is not your mother tongue. Lots of practice needed :D

[MoonyFBM]

You could've thrown in where this letter comes from too. It has old-Norse origins, and has been "borrowed" by many languages before those languages evolved into what they are now. Back then borrowing Words and sounds from all over the world was very common so.. :)

[evanwhite]

1:11 in those subtitles, the words "tongue", "and" and "your" were missing from between the words "your" and "teeth"

[AaAa-dehv]

Muy bueno, creo pronto podré decirlo bien. Gracias por explicar la posición de la lengua

[rebeliouscatlover]

Thank you so much. Your videos are the best. I subscribed. You earned it

[Ich_liebe_brezeln]

Fun fact: In Spanish, the sound /ð/ is commonly used as in words like felicidad /felisiðað or feliθiðað/ or dedo /deðo/. But, compared with English where the /ð/ sound is an independent consonant (where is found in the "th" digraph), in Spanish is just an allophone of the letter "d". That's why Spanish speakers usually don't recognize the difference between /d/ and /ð/.

[skadihuntress]

about my name ^^

Skaði,
some sources say its skadi, some say its pronounced skathi. im so confused which it is