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IPA – number	131
IPA – text	ð
IPA – image
Entity	ð
X-SAMPA	D
Kirshenbaum	D
Sound sample (help·info)

The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is ð, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is D. The dental fricatives are often called "interdental" because they are often produced with the tongue between the upper and lower teeth, and not just against the back of the teeth, as they are with other dental consonants. It is familiar to English speakers as the th sound in then. The standard IPA symbol for this sound was taken from the Old English letter eth, which could stand for either voiced or unvoiced interdental fricatives.

This sound, and its unvoiced counterpart, are actually rare phonemes. Almost all European and Asian languages, such as German, French, Persian, Japanese, and Chinese, lack this sound. Native speakers of those languages in which the sound is not present often have difficulty enunciating or distinguishing it, and replace it with a voiced alveolar fricative or a voiced dental plosive. As for Europe, there seems to be a great arc where this sound (and/or the unvoiced variant) is present. Most of mainland Europe lacks the sound; however, the "periphery" languages of Icelandic, Welsh, English, Spanish, Arabic (north Africa), Maltese, some Italian dialects, Greek and Albanian have this phoneme in their consonant inventories.

Features of the voiced dental fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is dental which means it is articulated with the tongue on either the lower or the upper teeth, or both.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

• Indo-European
  • Albanian: i verdhë [i vɛːɾð], "gold"
  • English: this [ðɪs]
  • Gascon: que divi [ke ˈðiwi], "what I should"
  • Icelandic: iða [ɪːða], "vortex"
  • Elfdalian: baiða [ˈbaɪða], "wait"
  • Greek: δάφνη [ˈðafni], "laurel"
  • Welsh : bardd [bɑrð], "bard"
  • Spanish : dedo ['deðo], "finger"
• Afroasiatic
  • Arabic: ذهب [ðæhæb], "gold"
  • Kabyle: ḏuḇ [ðuβ], "to be exhausted"
  • Harsusi: ḏebēr [ðebeːr], "bee"
  • Western Neo-Aramaic: aḥḥaḏ [aħːað], "one"
• Nilo-Saharan
  • Berta: [fɛ̀ːðɑ̀nɑ́], "to sweep"
• Niger-Congo
  • Swahili: dhambi [ðɑmbi], "sin"
• Dravidian
  • Tamil: onpatu [onbʌðɯ], "nine"
• Austronesian
  • Fijian: ciwa [ðiwa], "nine"
• Eskimo-Aleut
  • Atkan Aleut: dax̂ [ðɑχ], "eye"
• Na-Dene
  • Gwich'in: niidhàn [niːðân], "you want"
  • Hän: ë̀dhä̀ [ə̂ðɑ̂], "hide"
  • Tanacross: dhet [ðet], "liver"
  • Northern Tutchone edhó [eðǒ], "hide"
  • Southern Tutchone adhǜ [aðɨ̂], "hide"
• Siouan
  • Stoney: [ˈðaptã], "five"

• List of phonetics topics