When did Think become Fink.

[WokenUpEarly]

Genuine question, taking out any speech issues, when did Think become Fink?
Throw become Frow?
Etc

South London. And they say ‘somefink’ and ‘nofink’.

Wikipedia has a 1787 reference, but not with absolute common occurance until the late 1800's.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th-fronting

At the same time brother became brover.

Oh and for the Scottish folk the last reference on that page:

Schleef, Erik; Ramsammy, Michael (2013). "Labiodental fronting of /θ/ in London and Edinburgh: a cross-dialectal study" (PDF). English Language & Linguistics. Cambridge. 17 (1): 25–54. doi:10.1017/S1360674312000317.

Discusses its rise in Scotland.

Same time as something became somethink...

This is what "Fink" makes me "Fink" of.

My grandfather often used to correct us children back in the '70s. "It's 'something', not 'somefink'." There's nothing new about it.

So, as a manager you're picking on the way your staff pronounce words and then humiliating them by forcing them to prove if they can say it 'properly'? They must all think you're such a twat.

Perfectly normal in my part of outskirts of London. I didn't grow up hear and hadn't considered it when chose a name with th in the middle for dd1.
Fortunately she has my pronunciation- dd2 is more f than th but is hearing impaired so don't know if that's an in influence.
I spend a lot of time saying tongue between teeth....

I grew up on the Thames estuary so my whole life I've heard it, although I rarely do it myself (legal free and lots of time in court where glottal stops and labiodental fronting aren't really the done thing). DH does all the time but snaps it off at work, which seems quite common here, people have s work voice and a pub voice, it's a regional accent loaded with stigma. Apparently Prince George was speaking with an estuary accent this week rather than the received pronunciation you'd expect, so maybe soon it will just be ok to speak with the accent we were born with.

I’m in Ireland and my Dutch boyfriend, who has never lived in England, says breave for breathe, fink for think, bruvver (but can say the th in father). It’s funny how it has travelled. I get that it’s a regional variation but I’m puzzled that some people ‘can’t’ pronounce the th. Surely speech/pronunciation is a learned behaviour, or if you don’t learn it by certain age, can it not be learned later? I mean, we learn pronunciations when we learn new languages.

At least 50 years ago in South London

Some people speak differently to others. Shocking I know, it’s almost like that’s always been the case!

Estuary English which is rife where l live

Don’t start me in on specifically / pacifically which is also an issue

@Sparklesocks

Some people speak differently to others. Shocking I know, it’s almost like that’s always been the case!

Yeah 🤣🤣🤣

@Sparklesocks

Some people speak differently to others. Shocking I know, it’s almost like that’s always been the case!

If you can't manage your letters though, yeah of course, you can blame someone else. How can't you manage your alphabet 🤣🤣?!?

I manage just fine

It's called a regional accent

The best thing about the English language is the funny fact that a lot of English people cannot actually use it correctly.

Typical London speak. Outside of London, I’d be considering correcting, although I think popular culture is largely to blame. Children pick up language from what they watch. A lot of them are great mimics and repeat what they hear.

I teach phonics as a language teacher. I’d say 99% of children can mimic how I pronounce a word. Unless they have a physical issue (a pp mentioned a gap between front teeth) I can’t see why someone couldn’t pronounce a word properly.

Is it related to fitting in, being accepted, not wanting to sound ‘correct/posh’?

Language evolves, but pronouncing words properly is reasonably straightforward, although culture morphs. Even 10 years ago, a regional accent on the national news may have caused eyebrows to rise!

My favourite kind of people are those who think they're speaking 'correct' English yet clearly have zero understanding of the way our language works, especially when it comes to regional dialects, which are, by the way, completely correct English and have developed indepently over hundreds of years.

There are two possibilities here:

1. You think yourself superior and are looking down on others for not speaking "correctly" (when it's perfectly acceptable within the rules of the language),
2. You're making fun of a person's speech impediment.

Either way, you're a tit.

When did questions start being ended with a full stop?

I am a TA in Kent. Oh how the dialect affects phonic teaching and speech therapy... to the extent the the th/f confusion is no longer addressed.
So many children are confused with th/f and it alters their spelling . Eg thief/theith, wiv/with, through/frough or frew. Give/gith... children are confused.

What was awkward was the spelling tests, which was reflected on our SATs
Eg path = parth
Castle= carsel