To hate the modern trend of replacing ‘th’ with ‘v’ or ‘f’?

[Guiltridden12345]

It’s everywhere. All age groups from middle age downwards (not heard in older people yet). My child’s teachers (primary and secondary), presenters on tv and radio, my kids trying to adopt it from their mates. Not cockney or accent related (ie like a Nottingham accent that does replace th with f a lot), just pan regional sloppy speech that seems to have caught on. I fink, I fort, bruvver, uvver. Why?

Modern trend? 🤔 People have been doing this for years!

Well some of us have a speech impediment which causes this, which has the wonderful side effect of people like you assuming it's an affectation and/or we're a bit dumb. I definitely can't hear or enunciate the difference between f and th and have been bullied both at school and in the workplace for the way that I speak

I agree but it’s now acceptable. I was on an interview panel for a professional role (teacher) and no one else thought that an inability to say th, for a primary school teacher teaching phonics, was a bit odd.

I've voted YABU as I've never heard the th being replaced with f in Nottingham and I'm from the area. Dropping our t's, g's and h's now, as in, we're goin' t' 'is 'ouse, that's Nottingham!
Cheers 🦆

Sorry to hear that. I’m very interested that there might be a medical reason - are you happy to explain it? Is it physical or auditory?Genuinely interested. I don’t think it accounts for the majority but I’ll definitely bear this in mind in future, thanks for highlighting this.

There is an announcer on TV that makes my brain itch. It drives us MAD and is making my ears bleed! Promoting programmes on BBC free.

Also midlands, definitely a thing in notts!

Exactly this. Surely correct enunciation is Important for a tv/radio announcer?

In adverts - "Only nahn na'he'nahn"
Does my head in.

I'm in north Notts and can't say I've ever noticed anyone dropping the "th" sound. My DH has quite a strong Notts accent and the only thing he does is replace the ie, ey, ny etc sounds with eh, for example Tony would sound like Toneh

I've never been able to pronounce the th as anything other than f. It was even noted on my reports at primary school but they didn't actually bother to provide any help. My siblings have no problem with it so it's not with how we've been raised. As with another poster, I have had people take the piss about it. Bet they, and the OP, wouldn't if it were a stutter or other form of speech impediment.

Another one here who could never pronounce th and was bullied for it throughout school with no assistance. It wasn’t until I did a phonics day at DD’s school when the teacher actually showed me how to physically pronounce it. I can pronounce it now if I think about it, but not in general conversation.

I’ve always said th as f, really struggle to hear the difference and can’t form the th if I try. My best friend is an SLT and has told me it’s not the done things anymore to correct it, it’s the verbal equivalent of a slight cosmetic fault, it doesn’t impede understanding and is quite difficult to ‘fix’. It also can really harm a child’s self esteem.
As you can imagine it does wonders for my mood to see you describe my (very common!) way of speaking as ‘making my ears bleed’ or implied to be unacceptable as it was in your second post.

My son has been for speech therapy for years to master all his sounds. This is the last sound he has yet to achieve- he can’t hear the difference and finds it difficult to make the required shape with his mouth due to low muscle tone. I still have him practice regularly as I think it’s important to pronounce words correctly as far as possible, but you do need to understand that it can actually be very difficult for some people to manage.

I'm a cockney but grew up further south in London. We all dropped our aitches and replaced 'th' with 'f'. Sometimes I'd hear 'nuffink' for 'nothing'.
But that was largely amongst ourselves. I'd rarely speak that way outside my social circles, we could all speak 'correctly' when appropriate.

It's a local dialect for many. For others its because they have heard it as a 'v' or 'f' sound so that is what they have replicated in their 'phoneme' file in the brain. Once a sound because established it's notoriously difficult to change. Because it's not stopping the speaker or listener interaction, it's not deemed necessary to work on it, so I can categorically say you won't get NHS speech therapy for it.
My ds does this, but then he also speaks with a broad local accent!

Should add, I love the way he speaks, it part of who he is, and I wouldn't change it for the world, I love his accent.

Where I live, it's very very common. When we were choosing names for our children more than 30 years ago, we deliberately didn't choose anything with a th in it, because most people here would pronounce it with a f.

Whole swathes of the South/southeast pronounce it that way. It bugs me a lot and my own kids don't do it, thank goodness (it's bad enough in this northerner's eyes, that they say bahth and grahss!) but it's nothing that a teacher can put right. It's like the glottal stop. If parents use it, their kids will.

Thanks op, and also for being kind in your reply rather than reacting to my rude tone! It's an auditory processing issue, I had fantastic extensive speech therapy as a kid but this is one of the few things that they couldn't 'cure'! Funnily enough the worst workplace bully was based in an office that I worked in whilst briefly living in Nottingham! He couldn't get his head around the fact that no matter how many times he sighed and explained how I should pronounce certain words, I wasn't going to suddenly be miraculously cured!!

I had to switch over a TV program I started the other night as the presenter's diction was just awful. I'm happy to hear regional accents but hearing someone dropping the "t", in particular feels so uncomfortable for me.

It could have been SO much worse:

My dc grew up abroad and mostly spoke the local language which doesn't have a th sound. They really struggle to hear it and have to think to pronounce it. They only learnt to do it because I made them practice the tongue movement.

I really struggled with 'th', still have mental scars over years of torture at home and school about it. I can say 'th' but have no issue if over time we accept 'f' as a valid pronunciation given it seems a common issue.

It's a dialect/accent that's growing in popularity in certain areas of England. Every accent has its quirks and features. It's like asking with English people drop their Rs while Irish and Scottish people pronounce them. Often there isn't any particular reason behind it, just at some point in time that mode of speech became fashionable.

I heard it came to east London from French and polish immigrants, years and years ago, because they don’t have the ‘th’ sound in their language.

Bot sure how true that is, but it makes sense.

Im sure OP would love it if everyone sat taking the piss out of their accent 🙄

Are people not bored of this yet? Regional accents date back from before the language/accent was ‘standardised’, I’d get to see our rich and wide variety of accents/dialects disappear