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 don't believe everyone doing it has a speech impediment

Agreed. Not a Nottingham thing (fing?) in my long experience.

English is not my first language. I do my best, but some of the sounds in English are sometimes hard for me to pronounce.

That's not true. @Qazwsxefv
As lots of European immigrants whose languages don't have the th sound manage to learn it upon emigrating to the British isles in adulthood.
Even those who emigrated to Ireland, where some people (Bertie 😆) use D instead.

I also have this speech impediment and have never been able to pronounce my ‘th’ and use ‘f’ instead. Years of speech therapy as a child made no difference. My speech therapist told my parents it was a ‘Coventry inflection’ - however this was 50 years ago. I’m not from Coventry but my father’s family come from around there.
It’s extremely rude for people just to assume it’s done for effect or by choice.
I hate people commenting on it and immediately reminds me of cruel uninformed comments from school, university and work.

My "th"s used to be "f"s when I was a kid but it was corrected by speech therapy, though I think I was mainly referred for it because my "s"s were "sssth"s, I guess they just decided to fix that too. It was definitely an easier fix than my listhp, which never completely went and gets worse if I'm stressed or have had a couple!

I don't think it's a big deal, fs instead of ths, even if I do say it correctly myself. It's still perfectly understandable. My husband says f instead of th, he's not thick, he just doesn't have an ear for the difference in sounds - I didn't either until the speech therapist drilled it into me when I was still young enough for it to become instinctive!

Yep. In-laws suggested Theo as a baby name and we pointed out people would say Feo which put them off it. It killed it for us as well

In the 70s it was under 5s, cockneys and simpletons.

At least the plosive consonants are now permitted again.

I personally know people who do it by choice.

Th is one of the last sounds children pick up. Lack of referrals to speech therapists mean a lot of children don’t get the help they need to pronounce it correctly. Parents may just assume they’ll grow out of it and/or not realise they could be referred to a speech therapist. It’s a bigger issue than people just being lazy with their speech.

I think it's become more common for sure.

Of course there were always people for whom it was their local dialect, or who had English as a second language, or had speech issues. But I'm not thinking of non-native speakers, and I imagine the numbers as far as the others would remain fairly constant.

My thinking is it may stem from that form of dialect becoming more common in media, and also being seen as "cool".

I don't really have an opinion on it one way or another, except that I do think it's ok to have more and less formal modes of speech that we ask from people depending on the setting, and clarity is a relevant factor in some settings; and also I rather like unique dialects, so I hate to see them be too influenced by fads. But you can't stop things like that changing totally.