# ESL folks who can't pronounce "th" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 11, 2015, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745 "2015-03-11T08:32:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/21 "2015-03-11T19:41:50Z")
There are two sounds in English represented by ‘th’–one is called ethe and the other theta. Students will find it easier to make these sounds if they know this. Now, when you are working with them to pronounce a word with ethe (say, _that_), they may be pronouncing perfectly what they think ‘th’ spells when they’re actually producing the theta sound (as in think). If the teacher doesn’t know the distinction, this will surely mess it up for students. (The difference is in voicing: eth is voiced, theta is not. Sort that out and then work on articulator position of the phonemes.) Edit: I see that Wendell made the point but differently, above. This distinction goes WITH the point others are making about mapping sounds from one language to another. It’s never 1 to 1 ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/22 "2015-03-11T19:54:23Z")
> [@jezzaOZ](#): > > A very similar question is why most furriners and especially Anglo Americans are completely incapable of using standard Chinese tonal intonation. > > The answer is all in the progressive wiring of the brain during early learning of language. Man, you’ve got that right. I studied Chinese at Univ of Calif --known for its near-immersion programs. I have never completely mastered tones. The reason is that the very class of tones does not exist in English, except in sentential intonation. (raising the tone at the end of a question; dropping hi-lo in interjections and some short sentences) The tone system is like the clicks of some African languages. And what is in your own language is generally transparent to you. In a field linguistics class, we talked to an african man and told him we were interested in the “clicks” of his language. He had to ask us which ones were the clicks. It would be like telling an English speaker to produce the “fricatives.” Most wouldn’t know what they are. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/23 "2015-03-12T02:23:29Z")
I think the th sound – both th sounds, actually – don’t exist in most other languages. Thai has several sounds not present in English, not to mention the tones, which still give me a hard time even after all these years. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/24 "2015-03-12T03:58:31Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Because it doesn’t exist in their language? This, but also > [@tapu](#): > > There are two sounds in English represented by ‘th’–one is called ethe and the other theta. And often, the problem we have is directly knowing which of the two sounds are we supposed to make. If you haven’t encountered the two words before, you don’t know whether “both” and “the” have the same sound or not. I picked two common words on purpose, but IIRC, “both” didn’t crop up until the _fifth_ year I was taking ESL. Many of us can pronounce those sounds most of the time but not so well when tired, or when we’ve been speaking another language for a few hours… or even, when we have been spending several hours speaking English with a group of ESLs with different accents and levels of skill. Mind you: my American coworkers and their English also ended up pretty battered any time they had a training session involving people from Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Italy, Germany and France; it is hard. > [@iljitsch](#): > > Like the joke “he doesn’t have a lisp, he’s Spanish!”. In Spain the c is pronounced as a th while everywhere else it’s pronounced as an s. If you only know one Spanish person you might think they have a lisp rather than recognize that they purposefully use the th sound. I really should make a macro… that’s not “in Spain”, it’s in the group of Spanish dialects on which Spanish spelling is based, and those can be found both in the northern half of Spain and in some Latin American locations; for example, the Colombian highlands. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/25 "2015-03-12T11:10:39Z")
Like others have said, it’s mainly because the sound doesn’t exist in many languages which makes it harder for speakers of those languages to differentiate it from similar sounds and know when to use it. It’s also not a terribly important sound to learn. I will teach it to lowish level students if they ask me too, but I wouldn’t automatically include it until at least intermediate level, and then it would be a very brief lesson mostly focussed on hearing the differences in the sounds rather than reproducing them. Even over the phone they’re the kind of sound where most other speakers will be able to understand you; stress (in words and sentences) is far more important than saying th correctly. > [@tapu](#): > > There are two sounds in English represented by ‘th’–one is called ethe and the other theta. Students will find it easier to make these sounds if they know this. Now, when you are working with them to pronounce a word with ethe (say, _that_), they may be pronouncing perfectly what they think ‘th’ spells when they’re actually producing the theta sound (as in think). > > If the teacher doesn’t know the distinction, this will surely mess it up for students. > > (The difference is in voicing: eth is voiced, theta is not. Sort that out and then work on articulator position of the phonemes.) > Edit: I see that Wendell made the point but differently, above. This distinction goes WITH the point others are making about mapping sounds from one language to another. It’s never 1 to 1 It would be shockingly bad ESL or EFL teacher who didn’t know about voiced and unvoiced sounds. Naming them ethe and theta wouldn’t help though. ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/26 "2015-03-12T13:40:48Z")
No, you wouldn’t teach the words ethe and theta–you would give reference words just to clear up confusion around ‘th’ being pronounced two ways, like \*there \*and _think_. I wasn’t seeing where ESL/EFL teachers were indicating awareness so thought I’d throw that in.Voicing contributes to students’ difficulties with knowing their target sound to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/27 "2015-03-12T14:03:17Z")
For the same reason you couldn’t pronounce ‘achterlijke grafmongool’ if your life depended on it, even though for me as a native speaker those sounds are easy like taking candy from a baby. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/28 "2015-03-12T14:14:03Z")
Although if you don’t pronounce those words with a The Hague accent you’re really not doing it right. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/29 "2015-03-12T15:26:42Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > People who speak languages that have the bilabial fricative, which is what the “bh” in Siobhan is, probably wonder why the hell Americans can’t say it, an substitute the labio-dental fricative (V). I was curious about this, because I’d never heard \ as a bilabial fricative. \ and \, yes. It seems to be true for at least some of the dialects, though, spreading by analogy with the others, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745/30 "2015-03-12T21:02:17Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > For the same reason you couldn’t pronounce ‘achterlijke grafmongool’ if your life depended on it, even though for me as a native speaker those sounds are easy like taking candy from a baby. Hell as a native English speaker I’m sure I’d stuff up ‘snoep van een baby’. BTW “Retarded Moron grave” is awesome. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/esl-folks-who-cant-pronounce-th/714745.md?page=1)