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?

I find this thread fascinating. My two year old can say 'th' just fine but cannot manage 'f' at all. She replaces it with 'sh'. There are other consonants she replaces/muddles too but 'th' is usually there.

So it seems weird to me that 'f' is generally considered easier than 'th'.

Thanks for your reply. I’m interested in what one of the PPs said about accent being used to oppress those from lower socio-economic classes. Presumably a child from a home where RP is spoken is going to be at an advantage when learning phonics when compared with a child from a home where one of the strong regional variations is spoken. So right from the start a child whose parents “have an accent” has an inherent hurdle to overcome. Maybe it’s a drawback of the particular system of phonics that’s taught, and I suppose it’s probably an advantage that doesn’t last for long as of course spelling is visual as well as aural but presumably there’s still some correlation between the children who catch on faster and those who speak RP at home?

People say that they can’t hear the difference, but they know how a word is spelled which is so helpful in English, isn’t it?

@lissie123 the aitch and haitch example trotted out by people who think they know what's proper, is a perfect example of a shibboleth.

As everyone who's read their Bible knows, it derives from two ancient Hebrew tribes, one who could pronounce the "ssh" sound, and one who couldn't and said "sss".

It was used as a password and if you got it wrong, they didn't just correct your pronunciation. Given all that's happened over the years you can see how Irish people who say haitch are a bit sensitive about English people telling them it's pronounced aitch.

These days the meaning has expanded but it's essentially an example of people who want to sort sheep from goats, which is something else I read in the Bible. Anyway, it's not a very nice or even clever thing to do.

I agree it’s more to do with slang not regional accents.It’s everywhere now and I can’t stand it.Also a lot of TV presenters are starting to sound like Jamaicans even though they are white British as in “arrr pleyer”instead of Iplayer.Its getting ridiculous…

My DS3 can't pronounce the TH sound, It's either F or V depending on whether the TH is voiced or unvoiced. He can't hear the difference either. DS1 and DS2 have no such problem. I don't like how it sounds, but he can't help it. Lovely to hear that you'd judge him. 🤔

We live in Essex. The way my son speaks is not a modern trend, it's the dialect he speaks with.

You can agree, but you’d be wrong.

As I’ve posted, it’s usage has been documented in London since the 1700/1800s.
If only they had the foresight to change it so in a few hundred years LadyMary50 off mumsnet wouldn’t be annoyed.

These kids and their ‘modern’ ways, eh?

This "modern trend" was in existence 70 years ago or longer, as this song from the 1950's 'Forty Fahsend Fevvers on a Frush' demonstrates:

The OP isn’t talking about young children or accents or impediments,it’s about grown adults trying to talk like ‘gangsta’.It’s irritating to say the least…

@Bluegrass for A level Chaucer our teacher would read aloud in a Middle English accent and laugh at the dirty bits. Her name was Miss Inglis. Most people would pronounce it Ingliss but because of her and her excellent lessons, I know it is Ingalls and we used to say kerniggut.

My DS3 is 21 actually.

It’s the same with Shakespeare, isn’t it?

A lot of the puns in his work are lost due to change in accent.

It's just an accent. Get over it.

In my 40s. I can not pronounce the th sound nor hear the difference. Neither can my siblings. I do not believe we have a speech impediment, it is simply accent. It has never impacted me academically or professionally.

Can't be bothered to aim for perfection though.

I have noticed lately that 'g's have now become 'k's.

I don’t mind sounding like a snob in relation to what I would call ‘sloppy’ speech. A colleague who trained in a profession at a large business at the same time as me was taken aside and taught how to Speak ‘properly’.

I'm going to be as blunt as you are - I think this makes you sound stupid and small-minded and I wouldn't want to employ you if I heard you say it. Nit-picking at the accents of others is embarrassing; it's the kind of thing that unaccomplished people do to try and desperately find themselves something to feel superior about.

Yes my DH is Italian and they don't use a "th" sound so then to use an f instead when speaking English. He does say it now but still gets mixed up with words that have both sounds, eg. "thief" becomes "fieth".

Tend not then!

This

That's what happens when you invade countries and force your language on people.

The Irish language didn't have the TH sound, so it was difficult for people to adjust you know 😂

Also most non-Irish that I've met said they love the way we say Dat, Doze, Ting etc.

I said it upthread somewhere, but the theory I read was that it originally came from the French, fleeing the revolution. They also don’t have the ‘th’ sound.

Sounds plausible, and ties in with the late 1700/ early 1800 timeline, where it was first noted.

I can't believe someone actually said something like this. Pure and utter ignorance, if not worse.

For my sins, prior to retraining as a SLT I was a primary teacher. I have a regional accent, different to the area I now live in (and I've totally fucking outed the shit outta myself over the course of this thread!). If you think about the average primary school phonics lesson - none of them in there will be speaking like the Queen... what matters is being consistent and I had to make sure that I taught the sound the way it sounded within the local area, so there were a few phonemes that I knew I had to be extra careful and mentally tune myself out of my native accent before covering in class - if you think about it - if you pronounce bath as b-arh-th or b-ah-th... it's still an expensive town in the South West or something you sit in and come out clean and bubbly - it becomes an issue (or utterly fucking hilarious for the Y5/6s) if you say it the opposite way to the local norms!

The accent thing in terms of social class is the idea that in every period of history there has become some form of "prestige" variant of accent and dialect which has then been used to shit on others - part of the eternal joy of humanity in terms of wanting to "sort" and categorise people and be judgey fuckers basically.

And yes, it's much harder to learn to pronounce a sound if it's not in your native language - ask any non-Spanish speakers learning to roll their rs, or ask any class of student SALTs confronted with an IPA chart and all the delightful random retroflex and uvular sounds that we don't tend to have in English! And incidentally I think the IPA chart is one of the coolest fucking things ever in how simple and beautifully logical it is and all that it embodies (but that is really really sad and geeky - but it's coming from a person who managed to write an entire essay on the features of the language of political bullshit and twatwafflery).

Different accents (and RP is just an accent... everyone has an accent!) have different impacts on spelling -RP isn't the most accurate phonetically, that's just a cultural assumption/prejudice that it must be the 'best' misleading you. E.g. you could write 'barth' for 'bath' in an RP accent, really posh accents tend to clip sounds which doesn't always make them easy to distinguish, and RP is a non-rhotic accent so 'r' sounds can be harder to identify (an RP speaker could write 'cah' for 'car' but a Scot couldn't). So no, children whose parents 'have an accent' are not terribly disadvantaged by this 🙄