A H’arty Welcome to Kraut’s stylish new Blog! Of course he’s completely right that my minimal comment on its value was quite incomplete — and his amplifications are to be welcomed. I was genuinely surprised to hear that his students give him the impression that this “a severe problem” for them. My advice to them wd be to expect the following: (1) Ordinary nouns, verbs and adjectives (and adverbs derived from adjectives) begin with /θ/. (2) Loanwords from Greek and non-European languages almost always have /θ/ not only for initial but also medial th. (3) Almost all demonstrative etc words like the, that, this, these, those, there, then, than, thence, thither, thus (and in the archaic pronouns etc thou, thee, thine and thy) begin with /ð/. (4) Medial (ie word-internal) th in common native (“Germanic-type”) words can be expected to have /ð/usually. (5) Word-final th is usually /θ/. Of course there are exceptions but not too many.
A H’arty Welcome to Kraut’s stylish new Blog!
ReplyDeleteOf course he’s completely right that my minimal comment on its value was quite incomplete — and his amplifications are to be welcomed. I was genuinely surprised to hear that his students give him the impression that this “a severe problem” for them.
My advice to them wd be to expect the following:
(1) Ordinary nouns, verbs and adjectives (and adverbs derived from adjectives) begin with /θ/.
(2) Loanwords from Greek and non-European languages almost always have /θ/ not only for initial but also medial th.
(3) Almost all demonstrative etc words like the, that, this, these, those, there, then, than, thence, thither, thus (and in the archaic pronouns etc thou, thee, thine and thy) begin with /ð/.
(4) Medial (ie word-internal) th in common native (“Germanic-type”) words can be expected to have /ð/usually.
(5) Word-final th is usually /θ/.
Of course there are exceptions but not too many.