To ask my husband to pronounce his th

The website says "the map shows no obvious dialectal patterning of this variable" so its not due to accent

I have an accent. DH an DS(21yo) take the pee but would never ever try to change me. I think that it is sad that you feel this way about the man who you supposedly love.

Nothing worse than a voice implying that actually, somebody who isn't born into the middle classes with a standard home counties/private school generic accent might actually have as much, if not greater, innate intelligence than the listener, is there? Suggests that one isn't better than them after all.

<rolls eyes>

It's way too late for him to change, and you shouldn't ask him to. You just need to model your pronunciation to your child and gently correct then if they use the 'f'.

I cringe a bit when my DGD uses a glottal stop. It's a feature where we live though, so what can you do? Her mum pronounces her t's but her dad doesn't. It's not my place to interfere and correct, but I do model the 'correct' pronunciation when I respond to something she's told me. "You're going to a parTy? How lovely!"

I was raised in a SE London council flat, went to state schools, had free dinners. My mum always fussed about how I spoke (and my brothers too): glottal stops, dropping aitches, f for th. Broad sarf London. Total waste of her time: getting us to speak like the queen would have been social suicide, but also unrealistic. We spoke like our peers.

As adults, though, we have all got more middle class and Im the only one left in S London. Our accents have changed, because our peers have changed.

OP, your dc will hear and learn both your and your husband's accents but my guess is that by the time they are 8 it will be their peers who have the most influence.

I would feel the same OP. Also the way so many now say ‘anythink’ instead of ‘anything’ or words such as those ending in ‘ing’. I understand regional dialects. I am from an area where people drop the ‘h’. They know the spelling it just seems inbuilt in them. I love our language and I hope it lasts now there’s so much text speak and changing endings of words 🤣 I know I’ve probably typed all this wrong grammar wise 🤣

Hey well keep your kids away from quarry water places

What a lucky guy he is.

Excellent screen name, @TheSpiritofDarkandLonelyWater!

It certainly is a regional thing my family are Oxford, Bucks, Berks and definitely in the rural areas there's not much of a sound difference between F, Th and Ph.

I really struggle to pronounce them differently particularly in certain words and it hasn't made a bit of difference to my life.

In fact I have been told a few times I have a posh accent.

Very few people judge someone's accent except my in laws who made digs about me being too posh which says more about them than me.

I have a degree in English & Linguistics.

I’m happy to inform you that it’s no more ‘incorrect’ to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘f’ or ‘v’ than it is to pronounce ‘bath’ and ‘grass’ with a short A. Consonants have regional variants just like vowels do and there is no such thing as a ‘wrong’ accent.

There’s a tendency - at least among people who think they understand this stuff but don’t - to believe that Received Pronunciation is the ‘right’ way to speak English and that everything else is ‘an accent’. That isn’t isn’t the case. RP is just as much an accent as any regional or cultural accent. Everybody speaks with an accent - not necessarily a regional one, but an accent nonetheless. All accents include variants in pronunciation of certain sounds and none of them are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

Amen!

Regardless of whether you like your husband’s speech or not, it is patronising, controlling and offensive to tell a grown adult how you want them to speak.

If you don’t consider his speaking voice to be good enough, you shouldn’t have married him. He isn’t a project for you to improve.

Dont apologise! Just be you :)

I do this from time to time. It's common where I grew up. I try not to but when I get animated and enthusiastic or I'm thinking really hard it just happens. Good to know how horrible I sound 😀

F instead of th most definitely is a regional thing. It would not be uncommon where I live to hear Maffew went to Baff for the day and had a gurt lush time.

I don’t think you can change your husband’s pronunciation but you definitely can your DC. My DS used to mispronounce his R sounds, I taught him how to get the right sound and corrected him when needed. Learning by correction is fine as long as it’s kindly done.

My husband and his family do this and it drives me up the wall but I know I can't change them so... its life. I think the part that annoys me most is that my husband CAN pronounce th sounds, because he does it for some select words, but uses f instead on other occasions. Like he will say month or there with a th, but will say free instead of three 🤨 it would annoy me less if it was a thing he did across the board or was a regional accent thing (it isn’t in his case.)

I don't know why everyone's rounding on you op. I don't judge people on accents but plenty of people do and we have to accept we live in the real world.

Does it really matter? Who hurt you cos they pronounced something wrong?

No one does it on purpose. Get a grip.

then that region can’t speak properly.

’Th’ doesn’t sound like ‘f’. Or at least it shouldn’t. It’s not an accent. It’s an incorrect pronunciation.

He pronounces a number of words phonetically, wrong or in American English, he cannot hear the difference. He also does word replacement where he says entirely different but sometimes relevant words. Some words he just uses incorrectly but consistently enough that I also start to forget their real meaning 😅

I try to only ever correct when it is important but he often sees me looking baffled as I try to work out his meaning and occasionally I have to ask

He is a doctor and every medical word has been painstakingly learned. He’s amazing, intelligent and so bloody hard working

My dad does this too. But I have an upperclass. None of my siblings do this. And…. None of us think less of our dad.

Wow you must have really hurt his feelings

My DP does this and I swear I didn't notice until we had a child. We were together 6 years before I got pregnant too so it's not like it was just a flash in the pan! Now it's all I can hear and it honestly sets my teeth on edge