[θ]→[t]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 5/5
Voiceless dental fricative to Voiceless alveolar plosive
The shift from the voiceless dental fricative [θ] to the voiceless stop [t] is known as stopping. It is a very common dialectal variation, particularly in languages that lack dental fricatives in their core phonology.
Phonetic Effects
Stopping
Language Examples
Proto-Semitic *θalāθ- (three)→Aramaic tlāθ— In contrast to Hebrew (which shifted *θ to [ʃ]) and Arabic (which kept [θ]), Aramaic shifted the interdental fricative to the dental stop [t].
Biblical Hebrew [θ] (tav rafe)→Modern Hebrew [t]— Standard Modern Hebrew has lost the distinction between the stop and fricative variants of the letter Tāw, realizing both as [t] (partly due to the influence of Yiddish and other languages without dental fricatives).
Standard Greek [θ]→Griko [t]— In the Greek dialects of Southern Italy, the dental fricatives [θ] and [ð] often shift to stops [t] and [d] under the influence of the local Romance dialects.
thin [θ]→tin [t]— Dental stopping is a defining feature of Hiberno-English.
three [θ]→tree [t]— Stopping in initial position.
Related Transformations
More Semitic Shifts
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