American accent vs. British accent

[Conchita]

[Alan]

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?
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story A day in the life of a stately home owner

[Yankee]

.
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

[Jamie (K)]

[Alan]

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
_________________
English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story A day in the life of a policeman

[Prezbucky]

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
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Jamie (K)]

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".

[Prezbucky]

LOL, that is too funny!
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Motto]

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.

[Jamie (K)]

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.

[Suksayee]

Pronouncing "th" as "f" is typically a cockney thing from London, England. You can hear it in other parts of the UK too though.

You will hear some Australians who talk in an ocker accent use "f" instead of "th" also. Although Australians and cockneys are easily distinguishable from each other, some aspects of their accent are similar, particularly some vowel pronunciations.

You will occassionally hear african-americans use it. Actually I've noticed the English accent has started to creep in to the African-American accent recently, I don't know how though. They've even started to drop a lot of their T sounds.

example:
"Yo i'm just si'in (sitting) ere (here) doing nuffin (nothing) man"

[Jamie (K)]

That's not an example of the (British) English accent creeping into the African-American accent. What you're pointing out are features that have been part of that accent for centuries. You're probably just being exposed more to a lower-class African-American accent than you'd heard before.

In general, the more British-sounding the pronunciation, the lower-class the accent in the US. (This relates only to US dialects, and it's not BECAUSE the pronunciation features are British.)

There are very few pronunciation features of any American dialect that didn't come from somewhere in the present-day UK or Ireland, so most aspects of American speech that sound British, Scottish or Irish have been in the US for centuries.

[Suksayee]

[Jamie (K)]

There are class and educational differences in African-American accents. Bill Cosby is an example of an African-American accent of the educated classes, and most actors talk this way, unless they are playing a role that involves street language.

The accent you hear in rap songs is the accent of the very low classes of African-Americans, largely the criminal class. This is why it sounds different.

There are minor regional differences in African-American speech, but the main differences are between socio-economic and educational classes. Most educated African-Americans are horrified if they hear their children talking the way people do in rap songs.

[Ralf]