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.

I don't think you have a problem. I've moved around a lot and have heard lots of weird and wonderful ways of pronouncing things.

I went to school with a Nigerian boy who couldn't pronounce 'three' and always said 'tree' he couldn't say 'free' it always come out as 'shree'. It took him years to get his tongue around the new sounds.

A teacher of mine was from Sunderland and struggled to say some words without the vowels sounding harsh.

I live in the south west and the number of people who ask 'where you too?' rather than 'where are you?' is ridiculously funny even now but something I'm used to.

I struggle saying 'ask' without it sounding like 'arse-k' I put that down to moving as a child and the inevitable transformation that happened with my very brummy accent to something much more neutral when mushed with a south Devon accent.

The one word that bothers me is 'water' pronounced as 'wartah'. I blame my granddad for that.

Its a local thing how we pronounce our words and I suspect your Manchester tones will be much more obvious in Oxfordshire and vice versa. We naturally pick up some of the local sounds even if we cannot grasp them completely.

I sound incredibly posh when I return to Birmingham but ridiculously common here in Devon. I love it! Its the little thread that keeps me tied to 'home'

Subtle hearing problems also cause difficulties for children learning to distinguish the difference between, eg, forty and fourteen. Let alone firty and firteen.

Surely it's an impediment if people can't say the th sound, and an accent/dialect if they just choose/naturally default to f sound?

Lots of Northerners wouldn't say barth instead of bath, but they can make the ar sound at will to use in other words.

Agree with PP who say it's only a problem if you're self conscious about it, OP, or it affects your/your DC spelling. Or you're planning a career on the radio.

Obviously you do not have a speech impediment, just a lazy way of speaking that you aren't prepared to work on changing. An adult talking this way would annoy me. It's quite babyish. 'Vere' instead of 'there'? Really?

My head exploded with viss vat vey ven vair, but complete inconsistency with fink and fought - in the same child! The parent and sibling speaks properly and didn't correct this.

Please don't get me started on sixTH AND SICKth.

"Th" is quite a hard sound to make for non English speakers and one of the later sounds children learn - my 7 year old can do it but he has to make an effort. Its like the Spanish "j" or the French "r", unless you learn it very young it's quite hard. DH is German but has been here since he was 10, he has no accent at all and can do the "th" but again he has to think about it, I've known quite a few non English people with excellent English who can't do it.
I think that unless you learn it early it's hard to do but not impossible.

Getting someone's name wrong would be annoying, but the rest of the time, it's not a problem if it doesn't bother the speaker and they are easily and accurately understood. Strong accents and lazy speech presumably make life much harder for non-native speakers who have been taught how to understand Received Pronunciation, though, so you wouldn't make yourself very popular in international business unless you were fluent in lots of other languages, so didn't have to inflict your weird English on them!

How does one edit on here? I meant speak not speaks.

Depends where you're from. If you're from East London and have a really strong accent then its pretty normal not to discriminate between the two sounds: both would be 'f'. guess that's why we sometimes refer to 'threads' as 'Freds' on Mn - the cockney accent is quite well known as a reference point.

Arfarf, yes, you get lots of inconsistencies! Feith is one I come across often, but interestingly, only in children struggling with f and th generally.

I live in Oxfordshire and I have never heard such a variation in local accents anywhere else.

BIL has a cockney accent. He also has an overbite and physically cannot say "th". Unfortunately his children think that "f" is correct and don't say "th" even though they could if they wanted to. My sister should have corrected them when they were little.

I'd love to know how the th sound is taught in the East End. And thanks, I'll proof-read from now on!

Think some people here have been quite harsh - seems from what OP said that he has some minor hearing loss, he's not mispronouncing words because he's "lazy"

OP my sister used to do this when we were kids and it took what felt like forever to train her out of it. She still does it sometimes when she's tired (or had a few ) but she has made a big effort to correct it because unfortunately it does tap into people's prejudices that you're either uneducated and a bit ignorant, or from a very rough area. Hence some of the more shitty reactions here.

You could probably train yourself out of it if you were prepared to put in the necessary effort and think it would be worth the (possible professional) gains. Your wife could help by pointing out every time you do it wrong

In most accents they are different sounds, but in some they are the same. Presumably that applies to you. You know the difference for the purposes of writing, which is important. I'm a speech therapist. I don't agree with posters who say this is "lazy speech". I wouldn't see someone for this unless it was not normal in their accent, and bothered them.

So tell your wife she is wrong

Gosh, yes, roundaboutthetown - imagine teaching a whole class of foreign students the 'incorrect' pronunciation!

English is a horrible language to try to teach anyone who does not have the capacity to follow the inconsistencies. I despair sometimes.

Taken to the extreme, some children then struggle to spell some words correctly because they don't use the different sounds for the different letter sounds.

One of my DC struggles to hear the difference - had hearing checked - borderline sometimes just passes sometimes just fails - I had concerns about his speech at 3 and at nursery but speech therapists who did screen and school who did their own said he was within age range.

He struggled with phonics and now spelling though does accept there is a difference.

Dependent on OP age he may have missed phonics in school - I know DH and I did in our 30 and 40s - he may just have learnt the spellings correctly and decided it was one of those odd things about English spelling.

All of my Dutch relatives really really struggle with the TH sound. They just can't do it - especially when the TH is in the middle of the word. My exDP's landlady was called Heather. Nightmare. Although I did point out that calling a lady Heffer was never going to be a good idea

This speech quirk is very very common here in Essex

Just as an aside, if you're from the east end of London and can't roll your 'r' sounds - is that a speech impediment or is that just normal for the region? I'd love to be able to roll an 'r' but it comes out as 'lllll'. I can pronounce a normal 'r' though.

For the record, my firstborn (FB?) did not hear much at all until fitted with hearing aids aged 2 1/2 due to a severe conductive hearing loss. He also has quite a marked facial asymmetry and palsy and he speaks both clearly and absolutely correctly. My DD had a temporary lisp aged about two but this cleared up spontaneously. Middle child had some weird pronunciations as a toddler (for which I took him to a speech therapist, who didn't seem unduly concerned) which also resolved.

I am afraid that saying "fink" instead of "think" etc will make you sound uneducated in a professional context. Many people have it as dialect but the ability to switch to correct pronounciation is what marks out those with good education. Sorry, may be harsh but it's true. Depends what you do for a loving really in terms of whether it's important.

Isn't it down to muscle memory? If your native language does not use the tongue movement pattern required for certain letter sounds in another, that has to be totally acceptable as an 'aberration', surely?

I'm certainly not intending to be unpleasant to the OP. My husband has a working-class accent from our part of Ireland, and doesn't distinguish 'naturally' between 'ay' sounds and 'ee' sounds - so he pronounces 'bare' and 'beer' and 'hair' and 'hear' the same way, unless he makes a conscious effort. Which he does. He works in a demanding professional job which involves a lot of travel and dealing with foreigners at a high level. He can't sound 'uneducated' or have people who don't speak English as a native language misunderstanding him.