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?

One of my DC had quite a lot of speech therapy to correct this (they had multiple articulation issues, and both versions of th are considered difficult and the last issue to be addressed). Interesting to hear that UK SLTs don't do that anymore. Here (USA) they do and it would really stand out, in an American accent, to say 'fick' for 'thick'. I have a London accent (now a bit faded I'm afraid!) but I don't do the Estuary style th-fronting; I'm too old for that.

Be he related to Smafa from Brizzle? Top notch she be.

On of my DC really struggles to hear the difference. So does DH. He has dyslexia and she has suspected dyslexia too. Yes, of course I correct her and show her the "th" tongue and all that, but when she can't hear it and her dad does it too what can I do? It's not like my young DD and mid forties DH are doing it to be down with the kids.

Stop being so judgy.

Yes, they have. It's often regional.

Did your child have a dummy (pacifier) by any chance guiltridden?
Knitnerd90 you'll find a lot of things aren't funded by the nhs which are funded in the US. Unless speech is significantly delayed or disordered, you won't get help, you'd have to get private therapy. It's currently really hard to get therapy for significant speech and language difficulties, if it's something minor forget it
But this isn't lazy speech, it shows a complete lack of understanding about speech development...and there is really no excuse for that now, as up thread I've given a very brief explanation as to why it happens...you're welcome😂!

Just as an aside, spelling is different from speech. Yes children learn to spell words by sounding them out, but actually the auditory route isn't terribly helpful as English is not a fully phonetic language due to its development it's a hotchpotch of different languages (and will continue to change because speech and language constantly morph...this is an age old argument, Shakespearian English is totes different from current English which will be totes different in another 2/300 years!)
Finally you know the 't' at the end of words? well expect it to be obsolete in most words in another 100 years or so.

@Guiltridden12345 I struggle with saying: "thief". It invariably comes out as "feeth", unless I concentrate, which I'm doing now. It's coming out perfectly, but sadly, you can't hear me.

Don't run away with the idea that you have identified a modern phenomenon. I'm nearly 60 and have been mixing up my th and f sounds since I could speak - albeit imperfectly by your standards. The word thief is not the only one, but is the best example. Yet, somehow I've managed to hold down a professional role which frequently involves public speaking.

It was jolly lucky you've never been any interview panels I've attended. Or maybe you have been and that was the reason I didn't get the job. Oh well, I'll just have to continue muddling through. I don't come from Nottingham or sound like someone in EastEnders btw.

Jeez, "lazy", "sloppy", you fixed your child's speech over two days. Well done you 🙄

I reckon I would rather my kids have a minor pronunciation issue than have this kind of attitude

It's been around for a long time, but I hate hearing broadcasters say it as it sounds like they're trying to be trendy but it just sounds lazy.

It seems to be a very common thing in England, especially in the south. It's not something that I'm aware of hearing much of in Scotland. If I do hear it, it's generally from young children and they are corrected.

There are lots of ways people speak that irritate me, but I have to be tolerant as, being from Belfast, I'm very used to 'sloppy' speech and use it myself without even realising. We tend to just make a feature of it. It depends who I'm talking to whether I say 'tomorrow', for example, or 'the morra'. 'Tomorrow' requires more thought and effort!

People were doing this 30-40 years ago. It's not a modern trend.

Froth is another word similar to thief that I sometimes struggle with. As I explained in a recent post, it's the combination of the f and th sounds.

It's an more fitting example of my fascinating speech impediment because it can also be used to describe the act of getting one's knickers in a twist about things that don't really matter.

This ^^. And, no doubt, before that.

I can’t stand it either. People say that they can’t hear the difference, but they know how a word is spelled. Years ago a friend was working in the city and she overheard a boss say that he wouldn’t employ someone who couldn’t pronounce their ‘th’. She then went home and told her child who couldn’t. The child was ambitious and it just took a couple of months to get it right after they worked on it.
One of my pet hates is people who don’t pronounce the final ‘g’ on the end of words ending ‘ing’. I mean people like Priti Patel and Beth Rigby.
Why would anybody employ people to read the news who can’t pronounce their words properly. It is like employing someone who is bad at maths in the accounts department! There are lots of jobs that I would be unsuitable to do.

Interesting. I was born in early 60s. Neither my sibling nor I could say the letter r properly, though we mispronounced it differently, and we were both sent to speech therapist and given “round the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran” types of exercises.

I’d be very interested to hear you describe the difference between acceptable variations in regional accents, and sloppy speech.

Please let us know which variations are acceptable, and which are not.

Its been documented that cockneys have replaced ‘th’ for ‘f’ since at least the 1780s.

Certainly by 1850 it was considered common place. As it was in Bristol in 1880.

You are also aware ‘standard’ is not synonymous with ‘correct’.

Just because someone at some point decided that RP was the ‘standard’ doesn’t mean that the other 97% of us are wrong.

As I said, eagerly awaiting the reason some differences are acceptable but this ‘modern’ (since the 1890s) one isn’t.

Lots of words are spelt differently to what they sound like. It's not that they don't know it's not "th" and think it's "f" instead. It's that they cannot hear the difference in the sound they are making or they do know but really struggle to pronounce the th sound. I am not sure why people are so insistent on this thread that it's laziness or sloppiness when lots of people are saying that it's really not.

😁

It's interesting how people think it's ok to come on here and complain about a 'London' accent, but wouldn't dare do the same about a Yorkshire, Scouse or Scottish accent.

if some people can't do the "th" sound they can't; just like most people from England do not get the Scottish "ch" on Loch but say Lock it is very very difficult to learn new sounds after childhood

@Dontcallmescarface

I fink e's er bruvver

I struggle with this pronunciation and genuinely cannot hear the difference between brother and bruvver or thief and feeth. I also can't pronounce "ph" or "ng".

Having been teased for this in the past it makes me quite happy to see it's actually a fairly common inability!

I don't consider it a speech impediment for me, as I think the inability to hear the difference is what causes the inability to speak it, so I think it's more of an auditory issue, and incidentally I do also struggle with auditory processing (ADHD related).

Quite. Most people have some kind of imperfection in their speech. And if not in their own language then they would have troubles in other languages or dialects. That doesn't make them lazy or sloppy.

I can't for the life of me say ferry. It comes out like Fairy. Now my kids call ferries faries too 🙄 Bunch of lazy sloppy chavs we are, aren't we OP?

Agree it's mainly a SE thing. No problem with it in everyday speech, but hate hearing it in more formal, official contexts like TV continuity announcements. It seems to me it's not an accent, exactly (no issue with accents, before anyone jumps on me) but more like a sort of impediment - just not getting your 'mouth parts' in the right place for the sound.

When I was on a training course for teaching phonics years ago we were shown an official video where a teacher said nothink and somethink throughout. I think she should have been more self-aware and made the effort to make the 'ng' sound if she was trying to teach children phonics. It struck me as a very strange choice for this particular video!

You wouldn't put a person with rhotacism (inability to say 'r' sounds) like Lucy Worsley, for example, in a video about 'r' words.

Substituing 'th' with labidental fricatives is called 'th-fronting' and is a well-established characteristic of a number of English dialectical realizations e.g. Cockney, Essex, Estuary, West Country, Yorkshire, and across the pond, AAVE.

It is not indicative of a lack of education, nor of lazines or stupidity. It's just a difference.