pronunciation

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

> I don't understand at all. Are you saying that you pronounce voiced
> "th" ("either") as "v" or "f" and unvoiced "th" ("ether") as "s"?

I currently pronounce 'th' as 'th'. I learned how to pronounce it when
I was seven or eight years old. Before that, I was subjected to
endless sneering from classmates and endless nagging from my mother
about my mispronunciation. (Thus I feel vindicated whenever I find
that some language does say Feodor for Theodore or Moder for Mother.)

In those days, I used very similar sounds in its place. A great deal
of "vv" for voiced th (either, brother, mother, bother = eevver,
bruvver, muvver, bovver). A great deal of 'ff' for unvoiced th (ether,
Thursday, thirsty, thin = eeffer, Fursday, firsty, fin). I learned how
to turn the F sound into TH sound by carefully touching my tongue to
the bottom of my two front teeth, so I can't imagine how anyone could
say TH before their two front teeth came in.

> I *think* you're saying that you [spoke] with a bit of a lisp, or 
> maybe
> a reverse lisp, like a child who says "thip" for "sip," only you say
> "sink" for "think"?

Reverse lisp, yes.  I don't understand why lisping is so common a
speech defect that it has a name, when th is so difficult to say that
I can't understand why a child able to pronounce th would have trouble
with easier sounds, but reverse lisping is not common enough to have a
name.

"I sink" for "I think", yes. I think both "thin" and "think" are
unvoiced TH, right? And I put my same tongue on the same cutting edge
of my same teeth (teef) when saying them. But they sound different to
me! Different such that "think thin" doesn't sound alliterative to me!
Because the 'th' in 'thin' sounds more like an 'f' than like anything
(any sing) else and the 'th' in 'think' sounds more like an 's' than
like anything else, and I Do Not Appreciate my DH (not meaning a book)
replying "They both sound more like TH to me".

> Neither form of "th" is normally pronounced vv/ff or zz/ss, AFAIK, 
> so your examples are confusing for me. ("D" for voiced "th" is, I
> thought, strictly Brooklyn. That one I do at least recognize.)

Yeah, intense New York accents are consistent about it, saying Dem
Brudders rather than Dem Bruvvers. But little child me would have said
Dem Bruvvers, because the two unvoiced THs sound that different to me.
But I would have to think up more examples to know if that is just
because one is the beginning and the other is the middle of a word.

VV for voiced TH is supposed to be a normal part of working-class
London dialect, which Toad told me not to call Cockney because that is
at closest only one flavor of many available. (Toad is a middle class
Londoner from working class parents, and Americans often think his
accent is Australian.) Gang kids supposedly called beating someone up
'bovvering' them. Or knocking out their teef. Maybe Geoff can tell us
how the gang kids pronounced 'them' and 'their'. I can't imagine
anyone pronouncing them Vem and Veir.

(By de way, 'thin' alliterates wivv 'thick'.)