TH Joining Session

IN BRIEF:

To ensure dental fricative pronunciation of /θ,ð/ preceding sounds also need to be dental. We will cover:

• Dental /t,d,l,n/
• Dental phonetic diacritic [ ̪]

IN DETAIL:

TH sounds /θ/ and /ð/ are made with the tongue touching the teeth (dental). 

Many learners can produce these sounds in isolation, but errors occur in connected speech. Why?

Often this is caused by the preceding sounds – where an alveolar consonant sound /t,d,l,n/ is made directly before the TH sound, it needs to change position to be made dentally. 

If this assimilation does not occur, the TH sound is likely to turn into an alveolar plosive similar to /t/ or /d/. 

In this session we’ll learn how and where to do dental joining in connected speech. We’ll also learn the phonetic diacritic for dental sounds.