Bloody embarrassed... how do you all pronounce 'thus' ?

[JellyTots2009]

I'm totally embarrassed just because this happened in front of my partners dad.

I am currently writing up a college assignment and used the word 'thus' in a sentence. Now, not using this word a lot I asked my partner who was standing with his dad if this sentence made sense.
When I pronounced thus all I got was 'it's thus! Thus!' from both of them. Obviously writing it down you don't know how it's said.

I pronounce it 'th-us' like 'fuss' but using 'th' they said it is 'the-us' obviously said as one word and not with a hyphen in.

I know I'm 100% wrong but has anyone else pronounced it my way making my embarrassment less?

They were right. The “TH” in “THUS” is pronounced same as in “THE” or “THEY”. Not as in “Thank” or “Think”.

Ha ha, I know what you mean about the accents.

I do work with children - mostly with dyslexia - but for many, that involves difficulties hearing or making the sounds as well (plus a variety of other language problems), so I spend time getting them to look at how they make the sound, trying to feel it, etc.

the f/th thing is compounded by the fact that there are many regional accents where they pronounce them all as F, so it's not necessarily 'incorrect' - but it's not standard English, and can make spelling more difficult if they can't hear the difference, so I do still try to get them to say the words correctly for that purpose. They can of course decide whether they want to say them in a standard way or not depending on their environment.

It is very difficult to change once the words are learned, however. Someone who really wants to can, but it takes effort, like breaking a habit. For someone who knows how the words are spelled, then they can use that as a way of knowing how they should be saying the word, and train themselves to do so. For a dyslexic child who doesn't know how the word is spelled, that isn't very much help! I have some who try so hard to get them right, and then over correct, so count, for example, one two free thor thive.

It's a difficult sound in many languages, and there are interesting differences in what sounds people use to replace 'th'. Sometimes it's 't', sometimes 'z' (for the voiced one), sometimes 'd'. The point I was making about how people replace th sounds with either f or v, even when they say that they can't hear the difference between the two 'th' sounds, is that their brain clearly is distinguishing between them and replacing them with another sound with the correct voicing. They just aren't consciously able to identify that.

A lot of accent is the vowel sounds, sometimes the stress position, sometimes consonants, and there are sometimes changes in syntax and vocabulary as well that characterise a particular dialect/region. And all of those transfer to a second language as well - sometimes in distinctive ways. People vary in their ability to hear the differences between sounds and to copy accents, and it does get harder as you get older.

To the previous poster who said why didn't you just use 'therefore' instead.
My DP said that too
After I was saying thus repeatedly until I got it right haha.
Oh also I live in the Midlands

Blueberries you seem to be saying that people who might have grown up saying 'free' instead of three and 'muvver' instead of mother might also not pronounce th in two very slightly different ways and this is somehow wrong?
It strikes me that this would include a very large number of people, if not the majority.

the Japanese L/R thing is another good example.

Most languages have similar sorts of pairs that sound utterly different to people who speak that language natively, and totally identical to those who don't (particularly adults).

Our ability to discriminate between various characteristics of sounds is lost as we get older (and varies from person to person in the first place).

We might think to ourselves, how can they not hear the difference between 'pin' and 'bin' or whatever, but then you hear two versions of words in another language that both sound identical to you, and the other person can't believe you can't hear the massive difference. I remember saying someone's name over and over, trying to get it right in Danish, and them just shaking their head and repeating it back to me properly, and I could not for the life of me hear what the problem was. And it was again just a single letter that varied in either voicing or placement - the same degree of difference as 'p' and 'b' to an English speaker, or 's' and 'sh'. It can be really hard for people to believe that, but if you look at the actual recording of the words, and see how the degree of difference is the same, it is really striking. You can hear the differences that are in your native language, and not the others (as well, or at all, etc, depending on individual variation). Or sometimes you can hear them, but not make them. There are various good reasons for this, for the brain categorising slight differences acoustically and recognising that they are all meant to be the same sound - because we don't say a particular sound exactly the same each time, depending on context, person, speed of speech and thousands of other factors. So it's a very sensible thing for the brain to learn to do. But by learning which are the important distinctions in a particular language, and giving them different labels, we then lose the ability to distinguish other differences, because the brain learns that those ones are not important to the language. This is one reason that the earlier children are exposed to different languages, the better their accents will be.

I don't think there's really a wrong and a right.

There's the Oxford English dictionary which describes how each word should be pronounced and there's what is called the Queen's English.

I"m not quite sure what you are asking, hugo.

I don't think any of it is 'wrong'. Many people who say 'free' instead of 'three', or 'muvver' instead of 'mother', might not say 'th' at all, or at least not in those words. It does suggest that they perceive the difference, though, because they use the substitution appropriate to the voicing. If they do use 'th' in different words, then yes, I would expect that they would have both variants. The voiced/voiceless distinction appears to be easier to hear than the difference in position between the f/v and th/TH.

I don't think it's a majority of people who use 'f/v' instead of 'th/TH'; it's a particular regional accent, and many people in a particular environment might do it, but not a majority of English speakers. And there will always be examples on television and film of people who don't do it. However, someone who doesn't distinguish between f/th might not actually hear that the rest of the world is making a difference. Some people can hear it but not pronounce it, but others don't even realise there is a difference - they think it really is just two spellings for the same sound.

It's Thus to rhyme with Fuss with a th sound

Blueberries - another language that is somewhat difficult to pronounce for me is Spanish.

E.g. Cerveza
Spanish pronounce it like Therbeta though the th sound for the c is not exactly a th sound. The b sound for the v is also not exactly a b sound either and the t sound for the z is a very soft t.

I love language!

OP, correct or not, hold onto your lovely accent whatever it is. Most people love hearing my accent on the phone, even though I'm not speaking the Queen's English!

the f/th confusion also seems to be much more prominent in England than in other English speaking regions, especially in adulthood. In other countries, you might find children who find it hard to hear the difference at first (or to make the sounds), but the prevailing accent everywhere makes a clear distinction, and they are more likely to learn to hear it. On the other hand, if you have an environment where adults use 'f' for both sounds, then it will be more difficult for a child to tell the difference.

I recall at work a few months ago asking 'Where's Cheltenham?' (a new enquiry had come in and we only deal with London). It took me 5 attempts to pronounce it to no avail (two English people and one Polish person listening). They just couldn't understand what I was saying. They finally got it when I said 'It's where horse races are on'.
Also got the piss taken out of me for pronouncing Chelmsford as Chellumsford. Apparently the l is silent.

'Th' - as in 'that', not as in 'thin'

'us' as in 'bus'

people who say 'free' instead of 'three', or 'muvver' instead of 'mother', might not say 'th' at all, or at least not in those words.

Is the v/f sound particular to London? Or is it all across England?

I can't yet distinguish English accents but I do know a lot of people who have muvvahs

The "th" at the start of "thistle" is soft for me, and I struggle to say the word "thus" with a "th" like the start of thistle. I definitely use a hard "th" like at the start of "they" or "the".

It is more common in certain areas of London and Essex, but also certain other regions, and I'm sure can be found to some extent in many places because of people moving around much more.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th-fronting

Irish here and I pronounce TH sounds in words, both soft and hard. As do most of my friends from home. Plenty of Irish accents include use of TH.

I don't know why I read these kind of threads, I always end up a bit wound up. I made the mistake of studying linguistics briefly at university and I still feel my hackles rising just thinking off the stuff I was told.

@Flyinga I really want to know how you were saying Cheltenham to cause such bewilderment

Like another poster I'm lying saying all these words aloud over and over, and now they all are meaningless to my ears. Language is so weird.

I was pronouncing it as it's spelt ie. Chel-ten-Ham.

Eventually, they got it and were like - 'Oh, you mean Chowtnam?'

Any my colleagues pronounced Chelmsford as Chemsfad/Chemsfud

It's not Chowtnam, surely? Just Cheltnum, and Chelmsfud too. No big emphasis on the "L" in either one, but it's not really silent, just kind of swallowed

Southwark was a mystery when I came over to London too. Naturally I was pronouncing it as it's spelt. Could anyone on the underground understand what I was saying? Could they fuck! I'm sorry, but we don't have a tube station called that. Eventually, 'Oh - you mean Suddock?'

English seem to pronounce L like an ow sometimes. To my ear anyway.

@hugoagogo
Why do these threads wind you up? I find them fascinating.

If I put on my best Big Mo accent I can hear Chowtnam. Che-out-num.
I think the L/W is a London specific sound. (I'm running through GBS's phonetics in the first few pages of Pygmalion til he gives up!)