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.

This irrationally does my head in about my MIL. She says “f” instead of “th” for everything, but when something is free of charge she says “three of charge”. So she’s capable of making the sound, she just does it the wrong way round.

it’s not something she can help and she’s a very kind person. But it does grate!

(my STBExH says “f” for everything too but is also capable of making a “th” sound. Very annoying.)

For "th" your tongue goes up and touches your 2 front teeth, for "ff" your lower lower lip slightly moves in to meet your top teeth. Thinking about the actual movement to produce the sounds might help.

So no one after 11 months old has ever learned a new language?

I'm Irish so it's teet for me, I couldn't change it even if I wanted to and I don't want to anyway.

Why don't you work on teaching your twins to say it your way rather than asking your husband to change how he speaks?

You dont need to 'correct' your children
At least not this young.
If you are the parent they are around most and you live in an area where 'th' is the norm then they should follow suit.
At this age /f/ is quite normal because they are so young.
School will make a difference. Suddenly when the teacher is highlighting the 'th' in phonics lessons and they learn that there is a visual representation to reflect the differences that they hear (even if they can't yet pronounce) - things will start to change.
Sometimes you might get hypercorrection - 2 of mine did!
Started saying 'thinger' for 'finger' etc. But it settled down!
Don't worry about their accents yet and just enjoy young pronunciation 😊

Your children will do phonics in school and they will get taught how to make the sound correctly. We didn’t do phonics when I was at school but I also said ‘fff’ instead of ‘th’ so my mum got me a speach therapist who corrected it in about 2 sessions.

you don’t need to accept your children sounding ‘th’ incorrectly just because their father does but I suspect for most kids it’s easily corrected so I wouldn’t worry.

my little boy has trouble with various sounds and 2 weeks of phonics at school has already improved things a lot.

Haven't read the thread, but you are so so so unreasonable. If your DH was Irish, he might not pronounce th as you do either. Who cares? Part of the wonder of the world is all the many different accents and dialects we have. I love them.

My kids copied my ex husband, saying words like baf, instead of bath. Teef instead of teeth. I corrected them repeatedly and they stopped it, as did he. It was a weird infantile thing he had suddenly started to do.
In my work I come across some people who say fankyou instead of thank you. Again, on correcting them I’ve rarely had anyone who can’t pronounce or hear the th. It’s habit, but answering a call in a professional environment with “fank you for calling xyz” isn’t great. Fair enough if there is a speech issue but not just because they “fink” it’s ok. It’s not.

It’s unlikely they’ll pick it up. Most children get their accents from school. My kids don’t say « brought « instead of « bought » like their Brummie Dad. I’ve heard the f sound instead of th in Gloucestershire though. It’s rarely heard in South Wales.

I dont think it's snobby or unreasonable to expect an adult to pronounce words correctly and for an adult to teach children to pronounce words correctly.

Your husband is upset because HE pronounces words incorrectly and you've asked him not to? What a shame he's unable to be thankful that he'll be able to teach his children correct pronunciations

My husband pronounces 'th' as 'f' and it makes me laugh especially when I ask him to say 'thirty thousand feathers on a thrushes throat'.

😂

Nonsense! 🤦‍♀️

My SIL pronounced “the” as “ve”. It isn’t part of her accent, it’s a speech defect. I’ve noticed her adult children doing the same thing despite having a different accent because of where they grew up. Nobody corrected them as children as presumably it didn’t matter to their parents or they didn’t notice it.

To the poster who had unsuccessful
speech therapy, it really needs picking up constantly in the home, occasional therapy wouldn’t be as effective although it’s good for identifying issues and offering remedies.

I fink you are right. It annoys me too!

However, children are typically much better than adults at learning foreign languages (including unfamiliar phonemes), so that doesn't really hold water. Also, children whose parents have a foreign accent (like mine) typically grow up with the accent of their peers, rather than their parents (London, in my case)

Funny thing accents. To my ear nobody in this country pronounces their 'R' sounds properly. I just accept that cos there is stuff I don't pronounce properly. Anyway who decides what the proper pronunciation is?

Never go out with anyone whose behaviour or speech you would correct if they were a child. You would have saved yourself a lot of angst! And since you didn't follow this very sensible rule you are stuffed, really. It is entirely unreasonable to expect him to change the entire way he speaks at his time of life. You have my sympathy.

I don’t blame you for how you feel. I would feel the same.

To the people complaining about people “not pronouncing their ts” if they use a glottal stop, do you also complain about non-rhotic English accents “not pronouncing their rs” when they say “farther” or “car” as “fahthuh” and “cahhh” ???

OP it is not unreasonable to want your children to speak properly.
The lack of th's would grate.
Maybe online elocution lessons would help.
This is not an attack on your husband wanting your children to speak well.

Also, children whose parents have a foreign accent (like mine) typically grow up with the accent of their peers, rather than their parents (London, in my case)

So true. I don't have a German accent, but a South London accent, and Yorkshire born and bred DD has a Yorkshire accent, but not as strong as her friends whose parents are also locally born and bred.

Voted YABU. This is because you married someone who doesn’t pronounce th. It would drive me insane.

What about when someone says “I axed her” instead of “I asked her”?

That strikes me as just an error, like when someone says “I bought my friend with me” meaning “brought”.

Imagine if King Charles came out and said " I must 'of' fought I was going to baff next mumf"

I take on board that I was wrong to have raised it it with him.

But so what if he did?? That’s the point. Why is the way King Charles speaks “better” than any other way to speak? What you’ve written to me just looks like a transliteration of a type of English accent.