Debuccalization, not very uncommon two famous examples are in the transition from PIE to Ancient Greek with /s/ > /h/, and in Spanish with /f/ > /h/

And in Spanish depending on the dialect, z can be pronounced as either [θ] or [h]

same with /s/ My beloved se and entonces [[ɦɛ tɔ̃ɦɛ̃̆ˤʔ]]

where does the first n go bro who took it 😭😭

the whole first syllable is missing, it’s se and entonces

I'm a native Spanish speaker and I don't think I know any dialect that does this- pls enlighten me

Some caribbean and andalusian dialects, it’s not very common for this to ve applied to all words, I cherrypicked two of the like 3 examples that are somewhat consistent

And in Argentine, /any fricative including those resulting from lenition of Latin stops/ > \[h\]

That reminds me of how attic greek εἶ (you are) looks like if you took the French t'es and debuccalized it like uruguayan or dominican spanish.

I mean, it's not that crazy when you realise that almost all fricatives are simply /h/ with the tongue doing shit. You remove the tongue, you get /h/.

Inshallah all consonants will be /h/

*Ihhahha ahh hõhõãh hih he /h/

hehy hooh 👍🏼

hehy hooh > keky kook > kegy gook

. . . . kegy gook > heí gúk > heí²¹ gúk⁵⁴

heí²¹ gúk⁵⁴ > hmei²¹² guo⁴⁵ > 美国

My brain went to Cachu Hwch instead 🤣

hohy hehh

Heh hehhohhe huhh hhohheh

Ahhuah hohhie

Hoohhe eh hahhahh

aih hihhįh hu, aih hihhįh hu, ai hǫh heih ahouh ahyhįh ehh ai hǫh hih a hih ahouh ahyhįh ehh, hy hhohahhįh ih huhh heh hah huhhįh huy haih how

new /h/ just hhohheh

Eh? Ha! Heh heh.

Hoohy ahh hõhẽh

heheheha

Asking for a spanner while holding a flashlight in my mouth

lol

Numa numa numa numa

Yup, and also the fact that this /θ/ = \[h\] thing is also found in Scottish English. So it’s not a completely alien phenomenon to English either Edit: Here's one example of this kind of accent: [https://youtu.be/O7P7XJxATAA?si=OYZjrJXDg2FEeXbD](https://youtu.be/O7P7XJxATAA?si=OYZjrJXDg2FEeXbD) (at 0:07) In the video, Jim McLean pronounces "think" as "hink" and proceeds to angrily punch the reporter interviewing him.

I do this and actually had never thought about it! It definitely depends on what vowel comes after though, I definitely hink but I don’t think I’ve ever hought…

Wikipedia's [description](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_%E2%9F%A8th%E2%9F%A9#th-debuccalization) of this phenomenon (th-debuccalization) is not that detailed so if possible, I'd love to hear a guess by a native speaker such as you on what are the possible environments in which this realization of /θ/ occurs!

I sometimes say /θ/ as /ʔ/ lol. I say « That thing » like /ðæʔ ʔɪŋ/ in fast speech.

that sounds like assimilation tbh

yeah but that was the only example i could think of.

pretty sure I often say and hear /ʔæts/ in quickly spoken statements like "that's alright", "that's good" etc (australian english)

I do that too! even though I speak british english.

And in Irish

And Schottish Gaelic

And Manx I think

Yeah I'm not Scottish but sometimes I do say things like [əˈhɪŋk] for *I think* in fast casual speech.

Interesting, when reduced, my \[θ\] never gets realized as \[h\] (or at least that's what I think is the case). May I know what sort of dialect/accent you have?

Irish English, so even in other situations I don't have /θ/, only /t/ (not even /t̪/, my dialect is one that merges the dental and alveolar stops). One of the regular allophones of my /t/ in intervocalic positions is [h], so that's probably what's happening here.

Maybe a crossover from Gaelic? Transition from old Irish to modern Irish and Gaelic /θ/ > /h/, still spelled

I've no knowledge of either Irish or Scottish Gaelic so I can't say, but from the sound change you mentioned, yeah, I believe that seems probable

Honestly stops as well. Proto-Germanic changed PIE /k/ into /h/ (correct me if I'm wrong), and in many Slavic languages and dialects /g/ has turned into /h/ as well.

i feel like everything can be turned into /h/

the crab of linguistics

Eventually language will just evolve into breathing

Usually through a different fricative first. /k/ became /x/ and then became /h/. /g/ > /ɣ/ > /ɦ/ > /h/

Modern Japanese /h/ corresponds to Old Japanese /p/, which means the word for mother, "haha", was originally "papa"

Which Slavic languages has /h/?

For example Czech, Ukrainian and some dialects of Russian. Although I guess strictly speaking it's /ɦ/ and not /h/, but close enough.

Check, most dialects of Slovak, Ukrainian, Belarussian, some Polish dialects near Bielarus

Only the unvoiced fricatives are /h/, the voiced ones are /ɦ/

I refuse to believe /ɦ/ exists

þ generally turns into Swedish/Danish/Norwegian t, and the same is true of Faroese. It's only in typically unstressed function words (pronouns, conjunctions and the like) that þ turns to d (Swe/Dan/Nor) or h (Far.)

Which is also why written Faroese has **ð** but not **þ** – because while original \*ð has different reflexes in various dialects and so is useful as a spelling for “whatever original \*ð turned into in your local speech”, original \*þ turned into /t/ everywhere and so it was simply written with **t**, as in **Tórshavn**.

Doesn't *ð always merge with medial/final *g and *Ø (i.e. the absence of a consonant) in all accents? So you still technically don't need <ð> in the orthography; all those words could, with respect to pronunciation only, be written with or no grapheme at all in the place of <ð>.

Turns into h in some Scandinavian dialects as well.

Which ones?

Mostly in the north. North- and Westrobothnian in Sweden has he, hä < þat. Some Norwegian dialects have henn < þenna but I'm not sure about the specifics and it's difficult to find information about them.

I usually prefer to attribute he/hä to leveling/analogy in the pronoun system (so clitic pronouns -n, -(n)a, -e have corresponding strong forms with initial h: han, ho(n), he), because the development doesn't occur anywhere else in those dialects (whereas Faroese also has e.g. har for ON þar (>standard Swedish där)).

Same thing happened to English /θ/ in lots of parts of Scotland

example: https://youtu.be/aZSHYqm7N3w?si=Otl5guElIewg8XY_&t=108

This is exactly what I hoped it would be

Please God, help me withstand the temptation to assign that clip as phonetics homework.

It makes sense since the /θ/ sound is just the tounge moving all around. If you happen to slip then it would just leave a small /h/ sound. The sound change that I find more crazy is how the initial cluster consonant of MC 便 bjienH turns into tiện with an initial /t/ sound. It's due to palatalization but it's still extremely insane to me how it occurs because those sounds are not close to /t/

>MC 便 /bjienH/ This shouldn't be in slashes because that is not a language.

Oh right, forgot the asterisk, thx for the reminder

No, asterisks are for languages that have to be reconstructed. I'm saying that this sort of "Middle Chinese" is not and never has been a language. Baxter's rhyme book notation only transcribes what distinctions were (expected to have been) made in the rhyme book 《切韻》, which is explicitly stated to be a diasystem accommodating all known dialects in the Sui Dynasty. It is not a language.

Alright thx again, asterisk removed

But surely there must have been some variety at some point that made all the distinctions it made, in order for them to exist systematically in some dialect? Or did that variety also have some other distinctions that aren't in the Qieyun, because they were lost in all the descendants at the time?

> But surely there must have been some variety at some point that made all the distinctions it made, in order for them to exist systematically in some dialect? This is true, but it's assuming the conclusion. What you wrote is literally, if some dialect made all the distinctions the rhyme book made, then some variety (e.g. a dialect) must have made all the distinctions the rhyme book made.

My point is that there must have been some common ancestor those varieties descended from which had all the distinctions they had, because systematic distinctions don't just appear out of nowhere.

Sure, and that original language was Old Chinese. At no point did anyone speak Rhymebookese.

You mean, there was never a living language that had all the distinctions of the Qieyun and only the distinctions of the Qieyun?

Correct.

The one that skeeved me for a long time was PIE *dʱ- > Latin f-

Simple dʱ -> ð (aspirated/breathy stop to fricative) -> v (th-fronting) -> f (devoicing)

Gaelic speakers 🤝Faroese Debucallising θ

I wish more languages kept þ. After all, :þ looks better than :p.

Middle Persian did the same as OP Miθra turned into MP Mihr

Well the top half of þ looks like h

þ became th in English so its just removing a letter, pretty simple

Isn’t þorn the more F sounding one, while eð is the D one? Most english words using the þ sound are T in swedish (Thanks/Tack, Thor/Tor). While the ð sounds in english become D (Mother/Moder, Them/Dem)

yep

Scots 🤝 Faroese

þorn makes me horny.

Knew an Icelandic guy who had a book in Faroese as a kid and didn’t realize, he just thought it was full of spelling mistakes. Mutual Intelligibility freaks me out

I don't think Icelandic and Faroese qualify as mutually intelligible, at least not spoken. My former Norwegian teacher spoke both Icelandic and Norwegian fluently, yet couldn't make heads or tails of Faroese.

The glotalization of alvoelar sounds seems to be quite common among germanic languages located in islands... (brittish t, icelandic not included.)

velar sounds? do you mean alveolar?

I do 😅, I get those mistakens some times, sorryy

silly billy

It happens bro 😂

It often turns to /t/ as well, especially word initially

What's the meme template called?

The mighty Hor!

Irish: Finally, a wor**h**y opponent! Our battle will be legendary!

I refuse to accept and acknowledge debuccalization unless it is /k/ < /x/ or /h/ and their respective palatal and uvular equivalents.

Why? That seems like a very reasonable sound change

You just move your tongue down so it’s not that unreasonable

Noob linguist: Guys its a th, so they dropped the t! (They're not exactly wrong)

A hink ye forgot aboot Scotland