To ask my husband to pronounce his th

[Pumpkinallspice]

My husband has always hade an "f" sound for his th's. Mumf for month, teef for teeth etc.

He is highly educated but it sounds terrible. His Dad who brought him up as a single parent uses the sound set so it's a learnt speech pattern.

We have twin 4 year olds who are now making the same speech sounds. Yes I'm a snob. I don't want them growing up with incorrect speech. Honestly I think how you speak affects how people perceive you.

I mentioned it to him and he was upset obviously. It goes without saying I don't want to upset him, but I really don't want the children growing up with the same speech style.

However I’m also not someone to get annoyed if a person says supposably instead of supposedly etc
it is what it is

I disagree. We managed to get our child to deal with a contestant swap at 2.5 /3. Correct the child not the husband - children understand parents sound different to each other. Look at multilingual
families with different accents
good luck

Off topic but what are other dyslexia-isms? My son can’t pronounce the th sound and is dyslexic and generally has a different way of speaking compared to his siblings.

To the OP, I can totally understand why you would prefer your kids pronounce sounds correctly but are you sure he can help it

Just focus on teaching your children how to pronounce th. I cannot pronounce th and its nothing to do with education or my parents pronunciation, its a speech issue. I had to go to speech therapy as a small child and while they were able to correct my other mistakes they never could correct my inability to pronounce th. Some people cannot help the way they speak.

My DP does this and I swear I didn't notice until we had a child. We were together 6 years before I got pregnant too so it's not like it was just a flash in the pan! Now it's all I can hear and it honestly sets my teeth on edge

Wow you must have really hurt his feelings

My dad does this too. But I have an upperclass. None of my siblings do this. And…. None of us think less of our dad.

He pronounces a number of words phonetically, wrong or in American English, he cannot hear the difference. He also does word replacement where he says entirely different but sometimes relevant words. Some words he just uses incorrectly but consistently enough that I also start to forget their real meaning 😅

I try to only ever correct when it is important but he often sees me looking baffled as I try to work out his meaning and occasionally I have to ask

He is a doctor and every medical word has been painstakingly learned. He’s amazing, intelligent and so bloody hard working

then that region can’t speak properly.

’Th’ doesn’t sound like ‘f’. Or at least it shouldn’t. It’s not an accent. It’s an incorrect pronunciation.

Does it really matter? Who hurt you cos they pronounced something wrong?

No one does it on purpose. Get a grip.

I don't know why everyone's rounding on you op. I don't judge people on accents but plenty of people do and we have to accept we live in the real world.

My husband and his family do this and it drives me up the wall but I know I can't change them so... its life. I think the part that annoys me most is that my husband CAN pronounce th sounds, because he does it for some select words, but uses f instead on other occasions. Like he will say month or there with a th, but will say free instead of three 🤨 it would annoy me less if it was a thing he did across the board or was a regional accent thing (it isn’t in his case.)

I don’t think you can change your husband’s pronunciation but you definitely can your DC. My DS used to mispronounce his R sounds, I taught him how to get the right sound and corrected him when needed. Learning by correction is fine as long as it’s kindly done.

F instead of th most definitely is a regional thing. It would not be uncommon where I live to hear Maffew went to Baff for the day and had a gurt lush time.

I do this from time to time. It's common where I grew up. I try not to but when I get animated and enthusiastic or I'm thinking really hard it just happens. Good to know how horrible I sound 😀

Dont apologise! Just be you :)

Regardless of whether you like your husband’s speech or not, it is patronising, controlling and offensive to tell a grown adult how you want them to speak.

If you don’t consider his speaking voice to be good enough, you shouldn’t have married him. He isn’t a project for you to improve.

Amen!

I have a degree in English & Linguistics.

I’m happy to inform you that it’s no more ‘incorrect’ to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘f’ or ‘v’ than it is to pronounce ‘bath’ and ‘grass’ with a short A. Consonants have regional variants just like vowels do and there is no such thing as a ‘wrong’ accent.

There’s a tendency - at least among people who think they understand this stuff but don’t - to believe that Received Pronunciation is the ‘right’ way to speak English and that everything else is ‘an accent’. That isn’t isn’t the case. RP is just as much an accent as any regional or cultural accent. Everybody speaks with an accent - not necessarily a regional one, but an accent nonetheless. All accents include variants in pronunciation of certain sounds and none of them are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

It certainly is a regional thing my family are Oxford, Bucks, Berks and definitely in the rural areas there's not much of a sound difference between F, Th and Ph.

I really struggle to pronounce them differently particularly in certain words and it hasn't made a bit of difference to my life.

In fact I have been told a few times I have a posh accent.

Very few people judge someone's accent except my in laws who made digs about me being too posh which says more about them than me.

Excellent screen name, @TheSpiritofDarkandLonelyWater!

What a lucky guy he is.

Hey well keep your kids away from quarry water places

I would feel the same OP. Also the way so many now say ‘anythink’ instead of ‘anything’ or words such as those ending in ‘ing’. I understand regional dialects. I am from an area where people drop the ‘h’. They know the spelling it just seems inbuilt in them. I love our language and I hope it lasts now there’s so much text speak and changing endings of words 🤣 I know I’ve probably typed all this wrong grammar wise 🤣

I was raised in a SE London council flat, went to state schools, had free dinners. My mum always fussed about how I spoke (and my brothers too): glottal stops, dropping aitches, f for th. Broad sarf London. Total waste of her time: getting us to speak like the queen would have been social suicide, but also unrealistic. We spoke like our peers.

As adults, though, we have all got more middle class and Im the only one left in S London. Our accents have changed, because our peers have changed.

OP, your dc will hear and learn both your and your husband's accents but my guess is that by the time they are 8 it will be their peers who have the most influence.