I like you Thomas I really do but your speech is fucking atrocious.What is more your continued lazy way of speaking is seriously hampering your chances with the fair sex as they don’t seem to want to associate with you because of this.
You are a decent sort, quite good looking and very generous, your speech is letting you down old pal.This could be the reason why you can’t find a job, why after each interview you have results in a “Thanks, we’ll let you know”…they always do even to say thanks (not FANKS) for attending but sorry we’ve found someone else more suited.
The following is a short list of words which you can’t seem to pronounce and it is really getting on my nerves.
THOUGHT not fawt
THING not fing
NOTHING not nuffink
BREATH not breff
One of my engineers at work is straight outta ‘souf’ London and was recently promoted to Project Manager earning an extra 10k. He uses all the lingo " innit?" “nuffink” etc but he is a hard worker (though he tries to pretend otherwise to protect his reputation!) and has proven all the misconceptions about his accent are incorrect.
Is it only the th / f thing that he get’s muddled up?
If so then thuck you for being so obnoxious, it is quite possible vat for Thomas the difference between the two sounds is inaudiable, and correcting the problem could be very difficult for him. Nofing lazy about it at all. I hope he gives you a good fumping if you ether take the piss out of his his speach impediment.
Hmmm… I thought there was a new Doper named Thomas who had poor typing skills. Maybe I’m thinking of several different people. We stilll welcome you, though! We just have rather high standards for communication.
If it is not done on purpose, what else could it be? Do you think someone would do this on purpose?
I suffer from the same problem, if someone’s lips aren’t visible to me I cannot tell if they pronounce a ‘th’ or ‘f’ sound. Similarly I have to remember to use my tongue to make th sounds, and I need to know how the word is spelled in order to know when to do this. A lot of these sound differentiations occur in very young children, and a failure to make a culturally important differentiation can lead to problems later in life that are pretty much impossible to fix.
Similar to how native Chinese speakers find ‘r’ and ‘l’ similar in pronunciation, whilst us westerners can’t differentiate several Chinese consonants that all seem like ‘ch’ to western natives.
I have the problem for both versions of ‘th’ so pronunciation of for = Thor, and that = vat from my point of view.
Yeah, really, it’s extremely common (in both senses of the word) over here; walk around London for a bit and you’ll hear it in seconds. I can call to mind exactly the kind of speech the OP’s talking about, and it isn’t an impediment (not involuntary, anyway).
I’m struggling to think of a suitable US analogy. Perhaps think going to a high-level programming interview and saying stuff like “Eeeehh, yer bustin’ my balls here! Fuhgeddabahdit!” and so forth. But even that doesn’t quite work. Darn you guys and your superficially classless society.
He should move to America, where we don’t know from British accents. We can’t tell the difference between the Queen Mum and a Cockney fishwife. It all sounds classy to us. When I applied for my current job, I was interviewed by a middle-aged Indian gentleman who sounded like he was auditioning for the role of the Artful Dodger. His accent didn’t seem to have been an impediment in his career on this side of the pond.
Can’t say how much success he’s had with the ladies, though.
A steroptypical Bronx accent or one from the deep south would mark a person as “not too bright” in many places in the US, regardless of how bright the person actually is. But maybe AAVE (Black English) would be closer, and it has some of the same sound changes as the OP describes.
There is the accent, havin’ a laf, you get nuffink for nuffink. But is that something lazy or something people just say.
I suppose it depends on whether the person can recognise ‘th’ / ‘f’ sounds when they wish too. Since I have a home counties accent it is incongrous for me, maybe I should have spent more time south of the river where I would have fit in better after a while of changing my accent. But the furthest south of the river I ever got was Waterloo Station and the new Tate Modern.
