'Th' in English

One day a friend came to me (he knew of my radio background) and said. What a funny RJ she is (he was referring to an RJ on AIR Rainbow FM who had been a colleague)? She says 'those' in such a funny manner. It almost sounds like 'Hose' or 'woes'. I doubled up with laughter. The poor RJ. Being ridiculed for being right.

Now the correct pronunciation of 'th' in 'those' and in 'the' and in 'then' is closer to the 'z' sound in English than the 'द' sound that most Indian speakers approximate it to. If you have read the word 'Ramadan' in English text referring to the Islamic holy month and wondered why 'd' was used instead of 'z'; then the answer lies in the correct pronunciation of the phoneme 'th'. Of course the pronunciation in the original Arabic is closer to 'd'(they pronounce the zvaad as daad), but most of the other languages spoken by Muslims approximate the sound closer to the phoneme 'th'.

There is a similar problem in the pronunciation of the word 'hadees' written in English as 'Hadith' which stems from the correct pronunciation of the 'th' used in words like 'health' and 'thing'. But that I will feature some other day.