Barthelona Madrith Andaluthia Tharagotha

My understanding is that the interdental sounds are also present in Welsh and Icelandic, and some argue Albanian (although I don't know)... and that's all. I also remember reading that it may have been used in some celtic dialects.

Steve,
The interdental was usual in classic Arabic although it has disappeared from most contemporary Arabic dialects where they now say "t" instead of "th". I think that also happens in some American dialects where I've heard "tink" for "think". Am I wrong? I've looked up this passage for you in Spanish, which I know you master. It actually explains how Arabs cannot pronounce Castilian Spanish "th", when they learn the language.

Por último, se constata una cierta dificultad en la producción del fonema fricativo sordo interdental //; aunque existe en árabe clásico, su uso, en la actualidad, es muy restringido al haberse convertido en /t/ en la mayoría de los dialectos. Este no significa, en sí, un problema de comunicación –la mayoría de los hispanohablantes no lo pronuncian–, aunque los castellanos hagamos cierto hincapié en ello; el problema es mayor cuando la confusion afecta a la producción de los fonemas /s/ y //, y a los vocablos que contienen doble ce. En todos los casos, el ejercicio que ofrece mejores resultados es el dictado, donde el alumno fija estos sonidos a través de la escritura.

Jordi, when we say "lisp" in English - it directly refers to a speech impediment - but of course not to the particular "th" sound because it is correct in english. A few people here cannot pronounce "r" and it comes out sounding like "w". To hear an example of this, listen to anything with Barbara Walters speaking. I'm sure there are other types of lisps too, but this is the most common (or at least common in the public eye because Barbara Walters is quite famous)

Thanks Tiffany:
I knew that "lisp" was a speech impediment in English (I grew up in Sydney, Australia of Catalan parents) but it has been used by someone else on this thread to refer to the Castilian Spanish interdental "c" (same sound as "thing"). I continued using it ironically. I should have said so
;-) with such a picture.
The thing is Spanish has a softer "r" and a "rr" heavily rolled. A sppech impediment, in Iberian languages other than Portuguese, would be no to pronounce the heavily rolled "r" which gives to some embarassing confusions: pero (meaning "but") and perro (meaning "dog") although it can usually be worked out by context.
I find your comments on the "r" lisp in English absolutely fascinating because it means "r" simply disappears.

It is interesting. Barbara Walters loses her 'L's sometimes too. They aren't replaced with another sound, they just disappear. But then other times she can say them.

I think her lisp is one of the things that makes her so disarming as an interviewer.

I think I have even heard some Northern Italians use an interdental "th" sound for the "z" in words like "intenzione" " attenzione ' etc. Any comments?

Where in Northern Italy were you Steve? I went to Tuscany recently, to a town close to Pisa (about an hour from southern france) and no one pronounced their z's as such.

About the lisp:

I had a next door neighbor named Rebecca who had the r-w speech impediment. An unfortunate name for the little girl who went around saying "Webecca". Her brother had even given her the nickname "Webby". She liked it then, but she was young still (7). I wonder how she feels about it now.

I have heard the Italian "intenthione" in movies and on television progams. Any comments from Italians here?

Brennus wrote:

<<Mexicans and other Latin Americans hate this sound (th) and consider it snobby-sounding >>

Not really. It just sounds odd and peculiar.

Other European languages that have interdentals are Icelandic (both voiced and voiceless), Danish (only voiced) and Welsh (voiced and voiceless).

The Danish voiced interdental is not a phoneme, but rather an allophone of the phoneme /t/.

Ancient Greek did not have interdentals. Both theta and delta were aspirated plosives in this language.

Most Germanic languages have lost these sounds, but they all used to have them in earlier stages of their development.

It is interesting to note that Spanish (in all its varieties) has a voiced interdental, but it is not phonemic in character. It is found in words such as pedido or podido as an allophone of the phoneme /d/.

I've been speaking Bengali, and I can tell you that it does have the interdental th sound. In case some of you don't know, Bengali is the language of the Country of Bangladesh and eastern India(namely Calcutta). I'm assuming other Indian Languages have it too........but I'm not sure.

About the th in Latin American:

It's totally hated. Sometimes I speak with a strong Spanish just to bother (I learnt it on Televisión Española Internacional). My mother starts yelling "Ya, ya, ya basta".

Most Latin Americans (at least here) think that the Standard Spanish accent only has the sound of the "th", and not the sound of the "s".

Xatufan,

Concerning your statement "About the th in Latin American:
It's totally hated."

It seems to be true. I was warned by several people when I was taking Spanish in high school to never speak Spanish to someone from Latin America with a Castillian accent.

Years later, I wound up working with several people from Mexico in the telephone company and when I even jokingly spoke to them with Castillian accented Spanish there were scowels on their faces. One of them said to me "Where did you learn such atrocious Spanish?"

scowels > scowls is better.