When did Think become Fink.

[WokenUpEarly]

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

A friend of mine does this. She called her son Arthur, he’s Arfur...

Probably the same time as Tuesday became Chewsday.

@imfatletsparty

"I didn’t know Scottish people said it. None of the ones I know do, they’re mainly Weegies or from Greenock, is it a regional thing?"

People in Greenock say gotten all the time :s

Source: I am one.

My dads family are from there. I’ll have to pay attention next time I see any of them.

I’m not being a cunt. I genuinely didn’t know it was a Scottish/Irish thing.

@babygroups

I didn’t know Scottish people said it. None of the ones I know do, they’re mainly Weegies or from Greenock, is it a regional thing?

Plenty of people in Glasgow and Greenock will say gotten. You either haven't noticed or the people you know are some of the few who don't for whatever reason.

Probably the second.

@HelpMeh

My accent changes depending on where I am.

I'm abroad at minute and when I'm at work here I speak "properly". Pop me back amongst my people in Norf Landan and I revert.

I also seem to absorb accents without meaning to and will often develop a Mancunian twang if I don't check myself. I like accents.

I do as well. If I’m in Liverpool I get a Scouse twang.

An Atlantic thing is to say buck instead of book, or look the oooooo seems to be not acceptable now. It's a south thing so rampant on Radio 4.
Really annoys me, copying an American style imv.

My name has a 'th' in the middle. I've met multiple adults who seem literally incapable of saying anything other than an 'ff' in my name, and it drives me mad! One former colleague joked with me about it as he just couldn't say it properly at all, he'd strain and really try, but the 'ff' came out of his mouth each time.

Sorry but you sound like the kind of pathetic and laughable petty snob who is very concerned about striving and looking up because you've never actually achieved anything.

Thing is it can be hard to decipher what people are saying, particularly if it's just a few sentences. You can tune into any accent but it takes a few phrases before you clock onto it (if you are my age).

I lived in the US and the randomest person in the street could be interviewed and they were articulate and understandable. Not so in the UK.

I hate how ‘speaking properly’ means ‘speaking RP’. I speak three languages, I have two degrees, and I also have a regional accent. I resent the implication that that makes me thick or lesser.

Some of the clearest English speakers are Europeans who have English as a second language.

@Straven123

An Atlantic thing is to say buck instead of book, or look the oooooo seems to be not acceptable now. It's a south thing so rampant on Radio 4. Really annoys me, copying an American style imv.

I don't say buck but a long 'ooo' sound just doesn't exist in my accent. I can't think of any word that I would say that has a long 'ooo' sound.

Not an American influence though, very much how people have spoken here for a long time.

[quote OwlBeThere]@RedDiamond it absolutely can be regional (cockney, Yorkshire English for example). Or cultural (African-American vernacular) or sometimes it’s a mouth positioning thing that can be rectified with SaLT.[/quote]
I’ve lived in various parts of Yorkshire all my life and never heard it!

@Straven123

Some of the clearest English speakers are Europeans who have English as a second language.

yep and also spelling and grammar.

I blame phonics

I can't pronounce my THs. It embarrasses me and I hate it.

No amount of practising has resolved it.

These threads always seem to bring out snobbery in people.

Pronunciation varies by region and is probably influenced by media to some extent. It does not demonstrate how intelligent a person is... Despite my mum's insistence that dropping my 't's would cause me to fail both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees

@Marmite27, sorry, that should have said Old Yorkshire English, it isn’t a feature now, but was noted back in the 1700s.

@caughtalightsneeze words like boo, cool, school are a long oo in my accent. Book, look, cook are a short sound:

and that’s not an Americanism I agree. that’s standard in huge swathes of uk English. The American pronunciation is different. It uses a different vowel sound.

@PhilSwagielka quite: in the linguistic community it is myth 101 that we dispel for new students: RP is an accent: no better or worse than any other, and it is not some default that we all deviate from.
I used to have a phonolgy lecturer who said the first person in a class who said they ‘didn’t have an accent’ got a pass and the truth explained: anyone who persisted was told to leave she wasn’t serious. Mostly.

@PhilSwagielka quite: in the linguistic community it is myth 101 that we dispel for new students: RP is an accent: no better or worse than any other, and it is not some default that we all deviate from.
I used to have a phonolgy lecturer who said the first person in a class who said they ‘didn’t have an accent’ got a pass and the truth explained: anyone who persisted was told to leave grin she wasn’t serious. Mostly.

I lived in the US and the randomest person in the street could be interviewed and they were articulate and understandable. Not so in the UK.

What a load of old shite. You genuinely think that a very strong New York or Louisiana accent are are same and both equally intelligible to Bostonian? America has a great deal of regional variation. The only reason we find them easier is years of American cultural imperialism (TV and films).

There are some countries with very little accent variation over large areas (e.g. Canada except French speaking and the far Eastern areas) but regional accents and dialects are common in many countries.

@WokenUpEarly

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

All my life (all 64 years of it) in some parts of the country. And I have no idea how many years before I was born, but I assume very many.

I also struggle with "f" vs "th", I've never been able to hear the difference. If I really think about it I can pronounce it properly (e.g. by focusing on flicking my tongue) but it really doesn't come naturally to me. Occasionally people comment on it and I get very self conscious, most people thankfully leave me to it. I've wondered in the past if it's a slight issue with how my hearing developed, like how most of us can't understand changes of intonation in Vietnamese or something.

I'm from Surrey and usually people comment on my "posh" accent-- so not sure it's a dialect thing really. I also have a previous undergraduate degree and now study graduate medicine. I'd like to think that I know a lot about language and grammar, and certainly wouldn't describe myself as ignorant.

@Marmitecrackers

Sorry but I agree it's lazy speech and sounds uneducated.

I've noticed general standards slipping. There is a BBC reported that has just started who has a terrible accent. What happened to striving and us looking up to people on TV.

I'd rather have a terrible accent than be a terrible snob.

I'm from Surrey and usually people comment on my "posh" accent-- so not sure it's a dialect thing really. In your case it's not. It's a phonological awareness thing. It's a neurological difference.