To think i don't have a speech impediment

[McColonel]

To me, F and TH are pronounced exactly the same. E.g. three and free - I say them in exactly the same way.

My wife says I can't pronounce th, and I always pronounce an F when it should be TH.

Does anyone agree with me, that they are pronounced the same? Or is she right, and I can't speak properly? My brother agrees with me.

Pythonesque - very interesting point. I do struggle to hear high-pitched sounds that my wife hears pefectly well.

No, I'm not dyslexic or stupid. I'm also very good at spelling and grammar, and always was as a child. This th/f th/v thing is an isolated "problem" and for me has no wider implications.

I have never come across anyone who couldn't understand me. To be honest i find it ridiculous that anyone might fail to understand someone because of this issue.

"What do you fink about that?"

"Fink? What does that mean? Sorry, i don't understand your question."

Can anyone give me an example of a real sentence someone might say that would mean different things depending on how the "th" was pronounced?

To be honest i couldn't care less about my "problem" but i do find it interesting to hear what people have to say about it.

Thinking about speech development, if you don't hear certain sounds in your first year you then can't pronounce them. Which is why cantonese speakers often find it hard/impossible to pronounce the 'r' sound in rabbit. Maybe your parents didn't use the 'th' sound. It's not a speech impediment, more an inability to pronounce a certain sound. Might not be 100% accurate on thid so you'll have to research it properly yourself - but this might explain it to you and also why no-one 'corrected' you early on.

Well really, your initial example would probably be the easiest to show confusion - someone asks you "how much is that? £4?" "No, it's free" - thanks very much then!

If you have a regional accent where it's common to pronounce "th" as "f" then it would sound fine, but if you have an accent where most people pronounce "th" you will be noticeable as having a slight speech impediment, just as people notice Jonathan Ross can't say his "r's". But most people aren't that bovvered!

I think the holding thing - if the baby was peacefully asleep I wouldn't feel comfortable having him/ her hoiked out for me to hold crying....... ?

Whoop wrong thread

It's been pretty exhaustively answered. There is a difference. If you can't hear it you may have a hearing problem. People probably do think you sound like you have a speech impediment.

It matters if your name is Duthie and you are a teacher

because if a parent might like to speak to you then they spend an inordinate amount of time arguing with the school office about getting hold of the Mr Duffy who left a message on the answer machine.

As an aside Monica from Masterchef has a really odd speech thing when she says "with" .....she overdoes the first bit, struggles for the last "th" and tries really hard not to end on the "f" sound .... sort of sounds like whhhifftshhvvss . I don't know if English is a second language for her?

It isn't correct pronunciation but it doesn't mean you have a speech impediment. If you're almost unable to make certain sounds that most people can, then it could probably be improved with practise but it may mean your speech is impaired in a sort of temporary way without some therapy or whatever.

But it sounds as though you are just speaking in the way that you have often heard others speak, because from what you describe, your pronunciation is just 'lazy' or vernacular English. Plenty of others talk like you.

So it's up to you - practise, or get some help maybe, or just carry on as you are.

The OP doesn't have a speech impediment, unless it's a terrifically widespread one shared by millions of working-class Londoners, West Country speakers, people from Newfoundland, some African-American English speakers etc etc - according to Wikipedia, it's now one of the distinguishing features between Cockney and Estuary English, but it's spreading in the UK.

What I think is odd in the OP's case is that, especially having lived longterm outside the heartland of 'th fronting', as it's called, and presumably regularly encountered people who don't 'th front' (including his own partner), he has literally never noticed that there is a difference until she repeatedly pointed it out to him. That does suggest to me that there is something else going on. And minimising the difficulties in comprehension if you are speaking to one of the vast majority of people who do distinguish between 'th' and 'f' suggests a pretty blinkered approach. What do you do for a living, OP?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th-fronting

On advice of speechie, I had to teach my dd to say 'tirteen' instead of 'firteen' for 13, because she was counting twelve firteen fifteen, and couldn't get past it. Within a week she was counting to 20, then we did the same for 'turty'/'forty' and she zoomed up to 100.
Sounds proper Irish now, No ulterior motive here at all. At all.
I'll sort the pronunciation out when her teeth grow in. and she's old enough that I can tell her her English Dad says it wrong he just cannot hear it or say th. Or the letter r. Or t's. Bloody Zumma'ze' accent. (Disclaimer - I love it really)
What I can't get my head round is the English accents that go
Towid affaaai. But then the same people chuck random 'r's in where no r belongs.
Like 'I travelled through IndiaR alone'

Pure laziness. I teach primary school in an area where this is not the local dialect and it makes me wince. Everyone in school now is taught phonics and how to pronounce th and f. I think it is learnt (listening to parents at home) and the connection can't be made until reading is a skill and the words being mispronounced are there on the page. THEN I pull them up on it. Just sounds uneducated and babyish to me.

The kids all sound so much more grown up speaking properly. I wouldn't challenge a child WITH speech difficulties, only those with inconsistencies. I also correct th being replaced by v in wiv (with)and vuh (the)

I am very interested to hear McColonel's take on it.

Interestingly, McColonel, your writing isn't affected.

Your wife is right and dear lord this would annoy the shit out of me. It's basically just pure lazyness and sounds utterly cringe worthy.

there are two pronunciations of th One is voiced i.e. the vocal cords are vibrating in the production of th as in ' the'. The other is voiceless as in the production of th in 'thing'. If you can't hear the difference between th and f then you have a phonological acquisition delay.

Something tells me the OP is neither a teacher (I'm sure one of the children would have had the lack of tact to ask why he says f instead of th and he would be awful at teaching phonics), nor a Shakespearean actor! Speech therapy would also be seriously out as a career choice.

OP I had the exact same problem as you as a kid, and to be honest I still struggle. Especially with phrases like three thousand and forty ( I either say them all with an f or a th if I don't concentrate!) You just have to practice and it gets better. However if you don't care I wouldn't worry. If I mess up I just laugh at myself and make a point of exaggerating it next time, I don't think it has caused me any problems in my life. You do have to make a real effort with people's names though. It's just polite

I'm from Manchester and a lot of people speak like this. I can switch between my lazy northern accent and my proper speaking voice so I know it's just laziness.

I pulled the CEO up at work for this the other day, he asked me to welcome a very important visitor to the business 'Mr Furley'. His name was actually 'Mr Thurley' so I almost wrote Furley on his visitor pass. Luckily I checked the spelling!

I was told the cost was going to be £4.50 but in fact it was actually free?

Yes, that's the interesting thing to me, that the OP has clearly been taught that 'th' and 'f' are different consonants in writing - he (she?) knows that 'three' and 'free' and two different words, clearly, but, despite that, thinks they are pronounced the same.

I do notice that small children learning to speak in this country (I am not from here originally) do often pass through a stage of saying 'f' for 'th', before growing out of it and going on to distinguish. I suppose I can understand that if a child grows up in an environment where adults say 'fink' and 'smoof' and 'baf', it's a distinction they won't learn...? But surely the way that phonics/reading are taught in schools here mitigates against that?

Here are links to the pronounciation of both free and three. Sounds very different to me, but maybe not to you, OP?

dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/free

dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/three

I know someone who can't/won't pronounce "th". His daughter is called Roof Ruth

The inability to distinguish between f and th sounds (hearing and/or pronunciation) is one of the more subtle issues when people have problems with fractions when learning Maths - and fractions underpin so much of the subject.

I should have said f, th and v.

Also interesting is the effort being made by those who have realised the learned pronunciation is incorrect and the struggle to remember it and use it. I'm not making light of the re-learning of how the tongue moves no only to make the new sound and the different way it connects with other parts of each word it occurs in. Fascinating.

I get if you don't say it yourself like that, then it's different to train yourself.

What I don't understand is how you can't hear it in others? On the radio, on the TV - unless it's Eastenders or an east end gangster movie, where you you hear it?