TH sound practice with real sentences

Practise one TH line now

Open the TH exercise

The exercise opens on one line from Brené Brown’s talk at 9:43: “The other thing that they had in common was this:” It has six TH words: five voiced, and one voiceless (“thing”). Listen to it, record your version, then open Compare and play your take beside the original.

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What Sada can and cannot tell you

Sada checks which of your words came across and how your timing compares with the speaker. It does not grade individual sounds. When a mistake makes another word (three → tree), that word may show as missed. But the recogniser often guesses the right word from context, and hears “the” and “this” even when they are said with a D or a Z, so a matched word does not prove your TH was right.

Judge the sound by ear: play your take next to the speaker. To hear one word on its own, use a dictionary with audio such as Cambridge’s pronunciation dictionary; for sound-by-sound grading you need a teacher or a tool that scores individual sounds.

The two TH sounds

Rest the tip of your tongue lightly against the edge of your upper front teeth, or just between your teeth, and blow air over it: that is the TH of “think”. Add your voice without moving your tongue and it becomes the TH of “this”. Some speakers keep the tongue just behind the teeth; the sound is heard as the same.

If you speak Arabic, you already make both sounds: they are ث and ذ as said in Standard Arabic. The work is knowing which one each word uses, and not letting everyday habits turn them into T, S, D or Z.

Which words use which sound?

There is no fixed rule, but a tendency holds for most common words:

• Voiced (ذ): the small, frequent grammar words, such as the, this, that, these, those, they, them, there, then and than, and most words with TH between two vowel sounds, such as other, mother, father and together.
• Voiceless (ث): most nouns, verbs and numbers, such as think, thing, three, thank and thousand, and words that end in TH, such as both, strength, warmth and month.
• Exceptions: “with” is said both ways, and “Thomas” and “Thames” have a plain T. When in doubt, listen to the word in a dictionary.

Minimal pairs: when TH turns into another sound

Say each pair aloud. The third column is the sound that replaces TH by mistake:

TH sound practice sentences from real speakers

Each line opens in Sada at its place in the talk. Before you record, mark each TH word: voiced or voiceless?

“The other thing that they had in common was this:”

Brené Brown · 9:43 · five voiced TH words (“the, other, that, they, this”) and one voiceless (“thing”) · Practise this line →

“We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically.”

Sir Ken Robinson · 13:16 · the voiceless TH of “think” three times, from a British speaker · Practise this line →

“I'll show you one other thing that has nothing to do with anything.”

J.J. Abrams · 13:39 · voiced in “other, that”; voiceless in “thing, nothing, anything” · Practise this line →

“is the strength and the warmth of their connections to others.”

Robert Waldinger · 6:23 · voiceless TH at the end of a word, after a consonant: “strength, warmth” · Practise this line →

“And this entire situation, with the three characters -- this is the procrastinator's system.”

Tim Urban · 9:56 · “three”, not “tree”, inside a longer line · Practise this line →

Line 2 is British English; for more British speakers, see British accent practice.

Common mistakes of Arabic speakers

• T, S, D or Z instead of TH: in everyday speech in many Arab countries, ث is often said as ت or س and ذ as د or ز, and the habit carries over into English. Bring the tip of your tongue to your teeth, as when reading Standard Arabic aloud.
• “Tree” for “three”: one of the mistakes Sada may catch, because “tree” is a different word. Line 5 has “three”.
• Stressing “the”: in natural speech “the” is very short and weak, usually “thuh” before a consonant sound and often “thee” before a vowel sound. Saying it in full every time puts you behind the speaker, and Sada’s timing shows it. More on weak forms: connected speech practice.
• TH after a consonant: in “strength” and “warmth”, the TH comes after another consonant at the end of the word, the hardest position. Slow line 4 down until the TH is there, then say it at the speaker’s pace.

How to practise

1. Open an exercise from this guide. Rest the tip of your tongue against your upper front teeth and blow: that is the TH of “think”. Add your voice without moving your tongue and it becomes the TH of “this”.
2. Say the pairs aloud: think, sink; three, tree; then, den; they, day. Keep your tongue at your teeth for every TH.
3. Play line 1 and say it after the speaker in Repeat mode, sorting each TH word: “thing” is voiceless, the other five are voiced.
4. Record a take, then open Compare and play your recording and the original. Review words and timing; Sada does not grade individual sounds.
5. Then say the line with the speaker in Shadow mode; if a stressed “the” holds you back, the timing shows it. Move from short lines to long ones.

Keep going

The other guides in this series, all written for Arabic speakers: P and B pronunciation, -ed endings pronunciation: t, d or id, V and F pronunciation, Word stress practice, Question intonation: rising and falling and Sentence stress: content and function words. All of these problems in order of how much each affects being understood, with one line for each and a short self-check: English pronunciation for Arabic speakers. For more lines to practise, from famous talks: Brené Brown: The Power of Vulnerability; Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?; Terri Trespicio: Stop Searching for Your Passion. To see what Sada checks in every take, read the pronunciation checker. For a wider plan, with word stress and -ed endings: how to improve your English pronunciation.

Sources: word pronunciations, including the two forms of “the”, from the Cambridge Dictionary; the two sounds from Voiceless dental fricative and Voiced dental fricative.