Don’t want to hijack a semi-related thread.
I readily concede that some sounds — especially vowels, but some consonants too — are very difficult for people to learn to pronounce. Or even hear. But I don’t understand why “th” seems so universally to be one.
It’s simple, isn’t it? Put your tongue between your teeth and blow. The sound is automatic. So, why so hard?
If I put my tongue between my teeth and blow, I get a raspberry. I think there is more to it than that. And don’t forget that there are two th sounds.
Every morpheme that does not occur in the language you grew up knowing is somewhat-to-very difficult to pronounce. Depending on its difficulty, and your skill, you can manage to pronounce that morpheme (whatever it is) with practice. There’s nothing unusual about 'th" in that respect. It’s just that it happens to be a set of sounds not commonly used in other languages.
Ed
As I understand it, it’s difficult to learn to make new noises past young ages. I’m currently studying Farsi and there’re a couple sounds I’m having a terrible time learning to reproduce. I’m sure any Iranian kid would laugh at my attempts. (FTR, I’m usually good at languages and have a good ear for sounds.)
When I was an English teacher, I must have said “ezik mezhdu zybi!” (tongue between teeth!) a thousand times. My kids could do it on command okay, but getting them to make the correct sound (like Manduck says, there are two different “th” sounds) when they were talking or reading was something else. It was just an unaccustomed movement, and only my brighter and more motivated students could do it reliably.
I don’t put my tongue anywhere near my teeth when I make the th sound.
Related question, why is it so hard to learn to roll Rs? It’s given me fits in my Spanish studies. Yet my native speaker friend rolls em like it’s nothing.
Ok, really stupid question time - what is the other “th” sound?
Amusingly, there was a Simpsons episode in which Ranier Wolfcastle tries to play the role of superhero Radioactive Man, including a scene where a voice coach tries to teach Wolfcastle to say RM’s catchphrase “Up and atom!” Wolfcastle cluelessly keeps saying “Up and at them!” - not something I’d expect from a native German speaker.
There’s the sound in Thelma, and the sound in…well, ‘the’.
It’s not a stupid question; the difference is very subtle. To explain, I must ask you to read something aloud, and very slowly:
Thou shalt kill a thousand men a day. Then the population will thin. **The[B/] only difference between thee and you is that one is archaic and always singular.
Hear the difference between thou and thousand, and then and thin, even though the vowel sounsd in each syllable is the same?
Now try this:
The truth is that there are many truths. In sooth, only wine ever sooths my sorrow.
Like I said, very subtle. In some orthographies, the sounds are distingished by spelling one dh, but few people every notice.
Ok… I don’t hear the difference, but I believe you. I’ve had several sounds in other languages that I’ve tried to learn that I could never differentiate. I just wasn’t aware that there was one in my native language.
Thanks for trying, Skald. Still don’t hear it. And the more I repeat those words trying to hear a difference, the less they sound like words.
I notice in Skald the Rhymer’s post that there are superb examples but not an explanation.
In “thousand” the th sound is not voiced. During the pronunciation of the “th” part, your voice does not make a sound. The only sound is the air rushing across your tongue and teeth, and your voice doesn’t kick in until you reach the “ou” sound. When you say “those”, the th sound is voiced–you are sort of humming while you are saying it.
You will notice it more if you start to say the words VERY slowly and just stay on the “th” sound without saying the rest of the word.
also, put a finger on your larynx as you say the words - you should feel a bit of vibration for the voiced “th” because it uses your vocal cords, but no vibration for the unvoiced “th”.
Fascinating, really.
IME of learning English some 20 years ago in the Netherlands, pretty much all students had some difficulty with the “th” sound, since it doesn’t occur in Dutch. To most people here, it apparently sounds like a sharp S for some reason; thunder sounds like “sunder”, while “funder” would be closer to the mark. My English teacher encouraged students to try to produce the “F” sound while mouthing “S”.
From Grade 2 to Grade 6 I was in speech therapy learning how to talk correctly. The th and ch sounds were my absolute worst problems. I do credit this time with allowing me to talk with no hint of the hillbilly accent my entire family speaks with.
Here’s a (potentially) easy way to tell with “th”: Pretend to have one of those old timey Brooklyn tough guy accents; “So den, I tawt my mudder a ting or two… or tree”. If you have an ear for how to do it properly (and I feel like most English speakers probably do, if they don’t think too consciously about it), the sounds which become [d]s are the voiced ones, while the ones which become [t]s are the unvoiced ones.
It might not help you actually “hear” the difference in the typical pronunciation, but it will reveal that you at least have latent knowledge of its distribution.
Where do you put it?
[Though there is some complication with the neutralization of the voicing distinction brought about by intervocalic alveolar flapping (e.g., since “mudder” and “mutter” are pronounced the same way, you might not know what to make of the middle sound in it), but this should still give you a general idea wherever that complication doesn’t arise]
Is the voiced/unvoiced thing also the difference between P and B? Or is that a different difference?
Yes, as well as D/T, S/Z and K/G. If you pay attention to where your teeth and lips and tongue are while saying each member of those pairs, you’ll see that basically everything is identical between them. The only difference is voiced and unvoiced.