This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

Lazy pronunciation of "th".

I was talking to an English guy today, I'm pretty sure he was southern but I'm unsure where exactly. He didn't have any kind of speech impediment but he kept pronouncing the þ and ð sounds as f and v respectively. He pronounced thinking as finking, either as eiver, thought as fought, through as frough. It was really annoying me, to the degree that I had to finish the conversation prematurely. I've always associated this kind of lazy pronunciation with chavs, the uneducated, and, frankly, the stupid but he was a typically middle class, university educated, and otherwise well-spoken person.

I've noticed this increasingly over the years with people of my generation. Why is this? A lack of care for the spoken language? Bad teachers or role-models? Parents not taking the time to teach their children how to speak properly (my parents would have punished me as a child for speaking in this manner)? I find þ and ð to to be unique (with the exception of Icelandic, no other Germanic language has retained these sounds) and pleasant sounds in English, and think this is a heritage from Old English phonology that we shouldn't be throwing away due to willful negligence. I hope that it will not be extinct within a couple of generations, but sadly it seems to be quite probable.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1

Joluk

15

Its called an 'accent'.

Reply 2

member592149

11

When I speak I don't really think about it to be honest. I'm sure most people are the same and they will sometimes pronounce it 'th' and other times 'v'.

Reply 3

BefuddledPenguin

15

Language is fluid and ever evolving, besides it takes ever so slightly more effort to pronounce such words, I don't know a single person who doesn't pronounce 'th' as 'f' frequently.

Reply 4

najinaji

18

Love the way you slipped in those Icelandic 'Olde English' letters. :tongue:

But yes, lazy enunciation bothers me too. The tendency for teenagers having 'woolly mouths' is on the rise as well.

Reply 5

Einheri

OP

18

Original post by Joluk

Its called an 'accent'.

That's the thing though - it isn't. The accent of his area (I'd say around Oxford) has always had these sounds. If he was speaking Hiberno-English and prouncing þ and ð sounds as t then fine; that's just a facet of their speech, but he wasn't - this was otherwise a standard Oxford-area accent.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 6

SpicyStrawberry

18

Pronouncing things slightly wrong doesn't make you uneducated like you used to assume, it's just makes you harder to understand. He's probably picked it up from his family or something.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 7

Einheri

OP

18

Original post by najinaji

Love the way you slipped in those Icelandic 'Olde English' letters. :tongue:

But yes, lazy enunciation bothers me too. The tendency for teenagers having 'woolly mouths' is on the rise as well.

Thorn (þ)and eth (ð) are generally used to indicate the two th-sounds as the standard modern English orthography fails to distinguish between voiced and unvoiced. It's pretty standard usage when discussing phonology, though they are and were used in Icelandic and Old English respectively.

I blame rap music. :biggrin:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 8

cup

1

Let's face it, an individual on the student room couldn't pinpoint one factor which has solely caused him to pronounce words the way he does.

It's most likely an accumulation of environmental factors and social learning of speech in my opinion, although i'm sure there will be hundreds of different explanations and theories on language acquisition that explain this in numerous different ways.

Reply 9

Einheri

OP

18

Original post by SpicyStrawberry

Pronouncing things slightly wrong doesn't make you uneducated like you used to assume, it's just makes you harder to understand. He's probably picked it up from his family or something.

It certainly makes you sound poorly educated.

Reply 10

angrydanmarin

14

As befuddledpenguin said before, language is an ever evolving complex thing. Everyone has an accent and there is no such thing as 'propper english'. It's not a case of being uneducated, its a case of how you are taught to speak. The 'th' into 'F' sound is a common cockney trait, just as much as 'K' into 'Ch' (in a flemmy way) is a common scouse trait

Reply 11

whyumadtho

14

Language mutates—deal with it.

Reply 12

PianoKeys4

8

As much as I love the dental fricatives, I don't think substituting other sounds for them is lazy. They're not in every dialect of English and they're among the last sounds that children learn, often being quite difficult for foreign speakers distinguish or pronounce. Any associations we make with different pronunciations are simply that: associations.

The only static language is a dead language, and as English is still living, it is susceptible to the sound changes that all living languages experience. It's not a lack of care, bad teachers or not learning to speak 'properly'. It's the natural change that will occur regardless of how you percieve it. In fact, it's these sound changes that introduced them into Proto-Germanic and kept them in Old English.

Enjoy this wikipedia article on our beloved dental fricatives. :wink:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 13

Lewis :D

3

My step-father does it, my mother constantly mocks him. He just can't pronounce 'th' properly for some reason.

Reply 14

flandalf

5

I've been told recently that I do that and I have never realised it before -- it actually really upset me because my brother and my dad now mimic everything I say and act as if I'm really stupid. It isn't about education as I hardly do badly in school and no matter how hard I try I can't pronounce it in the 'proper' way. I can't learn to speak all over again, it's like a speech impediment and it really bothers me now :/

p.s. I also don't have an accent... I live in Lincolnshire but have lived in numerous other places and most people around me can pronounce it so it isn't that.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 15

TheDannyManCan

6

Original post by Einheri

I was talking to an English guy today, I'm pretty sure he was southern but I'm unsure where exactly. He didn't have any kind of speech impediment but he kept pronouncing the þ and ð sounds as f and v respectively. He pronounced thinking as finking, either as eiver, thought as fought, through as frough. It was really annoying me, to the degree that I had to finish the conversation prematurely. I've always associated this kind of lazy pronunciation with chavs, the uneducated, and, frankly, the stupid but he was a typically middle class, university educated, and otherwise well-spoken person.

I've noticed this increasingly over the years with people of my generation. Why is this? A lack of care for the spoken language? Bad teachers or role-models? Parents not taking the time to teach their children how to speak properly (my parents would have punished me as a child for speaking in this manner)? I find þ and ð to to be unique (with the exception of Icelandic, no other Germanic language has retained these sounds) and pleasant sounds in English, and think this is a heritage from Old English phonology that we shouldn't be throwing away due to willful negligence. I hope that it will not be extinct within a couple of generations, but sadly it seems to be quite probable.

I think it could be habit and who you hang around with. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with education; I know a guy who goes to Cambridge and when I see him he still says "Frough" instead of "Through". Given that, though, maybe it's ignorance. He would always say, "It's real good" When I told him one day it was "Really good", he disagreed and in the end I had to ask our teacher to convince him it was "really" and not "real". So maybe it's a mix of upbringing and ignorance?

Reply 16

Lewis :D

3

Original post by flandalf

I've been told recently that I do that and I have never realised it before -- it actually really upset me because my brother and my dad now mimic everything I say and act as if I'm really stupid. It isn't about education as I hardly do badly in school and no matter how hard I try I can't pronounce it in the 'proper' way. I can't learn to speak all over again, it's like a speech impediment and it really bothers me now :/

Practise pronouncing words properly - I couldn't pronounce 'r' before. I used to pronounce it like a 'v' until my grampa mocked me, ever since then I've consciously pronounced it properly :tongue:

Reply 17

IB_19

It's probably because they haven't been corrected.

Reply 18

Watch Key Phone

15

Original post by Joluk

Its called an 'accent'.

This.

Original post by Einheri

That's the thing though - it isn't. The accent of his area (I'd say around Oxford) has always had these sounds. If he was speaking Hiberno-English then fine; that's just a facet of their speech, but he wasn't - this was otherwise a standard Oxford-area accent.

Is he necessarily born and bred in that area? My whole family are from the east end of London, it is just part of the accent there to change those sounds. It's not 'lazy', just like a northener saying 'bath' with a shortened 'a' sound isn't lazy, it's just their accent.