Hacker News Reader

Comment by shemtay | Hacker News Reader

I can't think of any pair of English words that are distinguished by a voiced vs unvoiced dental fricative at the same location, c.f. 'sue' and 'zoo'.

Does any such pair exist?

View on HN

Took me a while (I taught EFL for years and it never came up), but I can come up with two:

- "thy" and "thigh"

- "either" and "ether"

It’s tellig that the first involves an archaic word no longer in use. And in my pronunciation (coastal California) the second pair differ in the vowel not the consonant. I pronounce them both as in “thy”.

"either" can be pronounced two ways in the first vowel, "ee" (like "eek!") or "eye" (like "eyeball"). Same as "neither". To compare with "ether" I'm assuming the first.

But "ether" can only be pronounced with unvoiced "th". If you pronounce it voiced, that would be very unusual. Are you sure? Check out:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ether

The question is about the "th". Neither one I pronounce voiced.

> Neither one I pronounce voiced.

Before you said you use "thy" for both, which is voiced. So you say "aythur" like "Arthur" for the word either?

Maybe bath and bathe? Breath and breathe?

Also found this, which agrees with yours and adds teethe::teeth, and wreathe::wreath.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-minimal-pairs-between-vo...

Bath/bathe and breath/breathe also change their vowels, so they wouldn't count.

But teeth/teethe is another good one! As for wreathe, that too... I didn't even know that was a word. :)

Ah, right. Wreathe: me neither.

Off the top of my head, I think it's a verb form: to surround something. Smoke wreathed around the altar as the chime rang through the hall.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com