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 Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:54 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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Hi,
The truth of the matter is that 'f' in place of 'th' is an example of sheer laziness. Gracing it with the title of 'geographical phenomenon is unnecessarily enhancing its credibility. After all it does take some effort to articulate the 'th'. We are entering the world of Estuary English when we hear the 'f' substitute. It reminds me of the title of that glorious musical written by Lionel Bart: Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T'Be.
A
PS I've just switched on the TV and heard an estate agent talk about a' free bedroom house'. Does that mean you buy two and get one free?
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Alan
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| Tue Nov 21, 2006 15:24 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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.
Various mispronunciations of 'th' can also be heard in a few areas of the US and are also sometimes used by AAVE speakers. I used to have an Afro-American boss who consistently pronounced 'th' as 'f' or 'v' in words such as 'three' or 'with'. And people in certain sections of New York City are notorious for (stereotyped as) saying "tree and a turd" instead of "three and a third", for example.
Such mispronunciations of 'th' sound terrible to me and they can indeed lead to misunderstanding. (Alan, did you catch the phone number of that real estate agent by any chance? I'd like to find out what else is 'free'.) 
Amy
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Yankee
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| Tue Nov 21, 2006 16:37 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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| prezbucky wrote: | | I've heard interviews of English soccer (football) players and some of them pronounce the soft "th" as "f". Is this a geographical phenomenon... are there certain areas in England in which everyone pronounces "th" as "f", or is it simply that some people, all over the country, do so? |
This is, in fact, a matter of geographic dialect and not of "laziness" as someone said it was. This kind of replacement is not unusual in variants of different languages around the world, since both "th" and "f" are anterior dental fricatives, and the only difference between them is whether the tongue or the lower lip is used to articulate them. Since it's not easier to use the lip than the tongue, there's no laziness involved, any more than Egyptians would be lazier than the Iraqis because their dialect of Arabic replaces the voiced "th" with "z".
Evidently people speaking a dialect with this replacement settled in North America, and their pronunciation was picked up by slaves in various regions, which is why some African-Americans make the same replacement as people in parts of London, and consequently have the same spelling difficulties in school. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Tue Nov 21, 2006 17:45 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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Hi Jamie,
Naturally I'll bow to you on the matter of linguistic interpretations but to me there is more effort involved in articulating intial 'th' than there is in 'f'.
A
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Alan
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| Tue Nov 21, 2006 20:21 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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Amy & Alan
It does bother me a little bit... not so much that I'm unable to understand what they're saying (I am able to make the leap that they mean to say "th" instead of "f" or instead of "v", as in "brother/brover"), but that someone who is not a native English speaker might not understand.
In such a case, said person might think that the real estate agent is offering a free home.
"I'm here for the free house. Where do I sign?"
"I didn't say that we were offering free houses!"
Lawyers ("solicitors" in the UK, right?) everywhere are licking their chops.
hehe
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prezbucky
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| Tue Nov 21, 2006 23:03 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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| Well, a lot of foreigners don't bother learning to say "th" and replace it with "f". They have exactly the problems you mention. A Ukrainian woman who was finishing her master's degree once told me that she had to go before her committee of professors and defend her "feces". |
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Jamie (K)
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| Tue Nov 21, 2006 23:41 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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LOL, that is too funny!
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prezbucky
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| Sun Jun 15, 2008 6:29 am American accent vs. British accent |
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The TH sound within a word such as brother does take more effort than a F sound however i doubt it is ever a conscious decision and so can't be considered lazy.
in fact it is common for native speakers to subsititute T,F,V or even D for the the th and some suggest within 20 years it will be even more so.
Think i mean tink about Ireland, or soud africans
i also catch myself with the estuary f sound and im from Yorkshire. |
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Motto
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| Sun Jun 15, 2008 12:39 pm American accent vs. British accent |
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| Substituting F and V for the two TH sounds gets you in more trouble than any other replacement. Often it makes it impossible to tell whether the speaker is trying to say "30" or "40", "three" or "free", "thought" or "fought", "thesis" or "feces". I have seen entire groups of people be completely misled about a person's meaning just because he or she put F where there should have been TH. |
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Jamie (K)
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