To ask my husband to pronounce his th

Why do you think that because someone is unable to pronounce a sound, they will be unable to spell it?

No point focusing on your Husband - it is very very hard to change pronunciation in your native language at an older age.

But should be easy enough to help your child pronounce it "th".

Bilingual families (such as mine) have to deal with two languages, and two sets of pronunciation all through our child's life, and it is generally not a problem when one party can't pronounce something, as long as they are not insisting it upon their child.

If your child hears daddy say "f" and mummy say "th" but it is mummy who is making a point that "th" is right and helping encourage that - then your child will copy and learn it, not the "f"

These threads are among my least favourite (most hated!) on MN & yet I click on them regardless, hoping people Might Be Better this time.

More than schooling, jobs, size of house, these topics truly truly expose raw & ugly snobbery - about which most of you are proud?! It's nothing to be proud of!

It's classist bullshit, it's just not nice to think of it like that.

I’d not want my children unable to pronounce a th sound either. When they learn to write will they spell thank you with an f !?

I’d be getting a speech therapist and getting them to pronounce all their letters. And I’d be correcting them all the time (but not correcting dh as hes an adult and can make his own decisions).

If they wish to subsequently speak with a local accent then they can. Later. But at least they will be able to spell out words correctly to help them write them.

I know a guy with nasal polyps who speaks like his nose is permanently bunged up. His kids now speak like that too but they don’t have them. It’s just copying daddy. I mentioned it to the mum but she denied it. I can hear it a mile away but if she’s too stupid to not realise her kids aren't learning to speak properly and sound like they have a clothes peg on their nose what can I do….

But so what if he did?? That’s the point. Why is the way King Charles speaks “better” than any other way to speak? What you’ve written to me just looks like a transliteration of a type of English accent.

What about when someone says “I axed her” instead of “I asked her”?

That strikes me as just an error, like when someone says “I bought my friend with me” meaning “brought”.

Voted YABU. This is because you married someone who doesn’t pronounce th. It would drive me insane.

Also, children whose parents have a foreign accent (like mine) typically grow up with the accent of their peers, rather than their parents (London, in my case)

So true. I don't have a German accent, but a South London accent, and Yorkshire born and bred DD has a Yorkshire accent, but not as strong as her friends whose parents are also locally born and bred.

OP it is not unreasonable to want your children to speak properly.
The lack of th's would grate.
Maybe online elocution lessons would help.
This is not an attack on your husband wanting your children to speak well.

To the people complaining about people “not pronouncing their ts” if they use a glottal stop, do you also complain about non-rhotic English accents “not pronouncing their rs” when they say “farther” or “car” as “fahthuh” and “cahhh” ???

I don’t blame you for how you feel. I would feel the same.

Never go out with anyone whose behaviour or speech you would correct if they were a child. You would have saved yourself a lot of angst! And since you didn't follow this very sensible rule you are stuffed, really. It is entirely unreasonable to expect him to change the entire way he speaks at his time of life. You have my sympathy.

Funny thing accents. To my ear nobody in this country pronounces their 'R' sounds properly. I just accept that cos there is stuff I don't pronounce properly. Anyway who decides what the proper pronunciation is?

However, children are typically much better than adults at learning foreign languages (including unfamiliar phonemes), so that doesn't really hold water. Also, children whose parents have a foreign accent (like mine) typically grow up with the accent of their peers, rather than their parents (London, in my case)

I fink you are right. It annoys me too!

My SIL pronounced “the” as “ve”. It isn’t part of her accent, it’s a speech defect. I’ve noticed her adult children doing the same thing despite having a different accent because of where they grew up. Nobody corrected them as children as presumably it didn’t matter to their parents or they didn’t notice it.

To the poster who had unsuccessful
speech therapy, it really needs picking up constantly in the home, occasional therapy wouldn’t be as effective although it’s good for identifying issues and offering remedies.

Nonsense! 🤦‍♀️

My husband pronounces 'th' as 'f' and it makes me laugh especially when I ask him to say 'thirty thousand feathers on a thrushes throat'.

😂

I dont think it's snobby or unreasonable to expect an adult to pronounce words correctly and for an adult to teach children to pronounce words correctly.

Your husband is upset because HE pronounces words incorrectly and you've asked him not to? What a shame he's unable to be thankful that he'll be able to teach his children correct pronunciations

It’s unlikely they’ll pick it up. Most children get their accents from school. My kids don’t say « brought « instead of « bought » like their Brummie Dad. I’ve heard the f sound instead of th in Gloucestershire though. It’s rarely heard in South Wales.

My kids copied my ex husband, saying words like baf, instead of bath. Teef instead of teeth. I corrected them repeatedly and they stopped it, as did he. It was a weird infantile thing he had suddenly started to do.
In my work I come across some people who say fankyou instead of thank you. Again, on correcting them I’ve rarely had anyone who can’t pronounce or hear the th. It’s habit, but answering a call in a professional environment with “fank you for calling xyz” isn’t great. Fair enough if there is a speech issue but not just because they “fink” it’s ok. It’s not.

Haven't read the thread, but you are so so so unreasonable. If your DH was Irish, he might not pronounce th as you do either. Who cares? Part of the wonder of the world is all the many different accents and dialects we have. I love them.

Your children will do phonics in school and they will get taught how to make the sound correctly. We didn’t do phonics when I was at school but I also said ‘fff’ instead of ‘th’ so my mum got me a speach therapist who corrected it in about 2 sessions.

you don’t need to accept your children sounding ‘th’ incorrectly just because their father does but I suspect for most kids it’s easily corrected so I wouldn’t worry.

my little boy has trouble with various sounds and 2 weeks of phonics at school has already improved things a lot.

You dont need to 'correct' your children
At least not this young.
If you are the parent they are around most and you live in an area where 'th' is the norm then they should follow suit.
At this age /f/ is quite normal because they are so young.
School will make a difference. Suddenly when the teacher is highlighting the 'th' in phonics lessons and they learn that there is a visual representation to reflect the differences that they hear (even if they can't yet pronounce) - things will start to change.
Sometimes you might get hypercorrection - 2 of mine did!
Started saying 'thinger' for 'finger' etc. But it settled down!
Don't worry about their accents yet and just enjoy young pronunciation 😊