> Well... consider the words "thee" and "three".  Say them a couple of
> times repeated: thee-thee-thee, three-three-three.  Now, start to say one
> of them, and stop before you get to the second phoneme, drawing out
> the first phoneme.  You should (or perhaps better, "it may be that you
> would") feel the difference between starting to say "the" and holding the
> initial sound, and starting to say "three" and holding the initial sound.
> That difference (if you note it) is "voicing".  It's the same as the
> difference between "p" and "b".  You can also say "p-p-p" and "b-b-b".
> Basically, you're relaxing some muscles in your neck that pull the vocal
> chords out of the way of the airflow to "voice" (or, cause your larnyx
> to buzz) the th-in-thee and the b, but not the th-in-three, or the p.

> You can also note that the tongue and lip positions of th-in-the
> and th-in-three are the same, and likewise the tongue and lip positions
> in p and b are the same.  The only difference is the mysterious "voicing".

> At this point, I am inspired to call "yasid" on the story about the
> martian bartender who couldn't tell how he mixed a drink, and whenever
> he slowed down to try to watch himself to see how much of each ingredient
> he added, it came out horrid.  Finally had to resort to high-speed cameras.
> This was in aid of creating a robot to do the mixing.

> : The Adam's apple trick has shown me that they _feel_ different, but
> : that doesn't translate to sounding different.

> Oh, well, how they *sound*.  Hm.  Well, go to wictionary, and click on
> the audio demos for the words "thee" and "three".  Listen to one a few
> repeats, then switch to the other.  You should note that one of the words
> "buzzes" at the very start, and one does not; it sort of hisses instead.

> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/En-us-thee.ogg
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/En-us-three.ogg

> : (And is probably being made more difficult because the ng in thing
> : makes the same sort of buzzy feel as the th in they, so the words as a
> : whole have the same sort of feel to them.)

> Try "thee" and "three", then.  But note that in *all* the examples,
> thing, their, they and even the and theme, the vowels are voiced, so
> they will all have a buzz to them somewhere in the pronunciation.

> However... what do you think, is the th-in-theme voiced, or unvoiced?

> Or... try "thy" and "thigh", as somebody pointed out elsethread.