why can't the irish pronounce TH's

county

why can't the irish pronounce TH's except for posh people is it a class thing or what,three[tree] thunder[tunder]??

simu

Because that sound does not exist in Irish so not pronouncing it became a feature of Hiberno-English

pickarooney

Why can't Londoners pronounce 'TH' ?

Tar.Aldarion

county wrote:

why can't the irish pronounce TH's except for posh people is it a class thing or what,three[tree] thunder[tunder]??

luckilymost people i know can pronounce th

Kingsize

shouldnt that be free & Funder???

county

pickarooney wrote:

Why can't Londoners pronounce 'TH' ?

thats for another days debate my friend

Pigman II

I think the classic word that really trips Irish people up is 'film'.

Invariably we pronounce it 'fil-im' when it should be said along the lines of 'fill-mm'

With regard to the 'th' I thought you were going to point out that we use words like 'dis' 'dat' and 'de other'. I know personally I'm always pronouncing the worth 'birthday' as 'bUrthday'.

But hey de English demselves can't even use-a de lingo proper so why shUd we?

Mossy Monk

i must be mega posh then as i pronounce them
oh wait i'm not posh at all

PunyHuman

Another example of this is the pronunciation by some Dubliners of the word 'throat' as 'troath'. Also 'bathroom' becomes 'battroom'.

God love us

dSTAR

Pigman II wrote:

But hey de English demselves can't even use-a de lingo proper so why shUd we?

I find that a very telling statement. It is interesting that the original post was about how the Irish cannot pronounce certain words yet the English are dragged into the argument as some kind of lame excuse.

That smacks to me of the worst kind of post colonial thinking. What exactly have the English got to do with Irish people not being able to speak properly?

It reminds me a funny sign I saw hanging on someones bedroom door which read:

Why should I tidy my room when the world is such a mess.

What a cop out. Classic victim mentality!

chillywilly

actually i think bathroom is just 'ba-room'

Pigman II

dSTAR wrote:

yet the English are dragged into the argument

Erm, maybe because the language is called 'English'? :rolleyes:

My point (before you started droning on about post-colonial victim-mentality yada yada) was to point out that no nation (not even the English themselves) really speaks the language in it's correct form and that we the Irish shouldn't be condemned because of the way we speak it. It wasn't an excuse, merely an observation.

You're far too touchy methinks. Either that or perhaps you're just going through a post-victimisation state of 'enlightenment' a.t.m.

munkeehaven

Invariably we pronounce it 'fil-im' when it should be said along the lines of 'fill-mm'

i say fil-um

i must admit that i am guilty of not pronouncing my "th's"
i also forget my "t's" aswell so i say fa for fat or tha for that
its fun though to notice how everyone has their own unique way of speaking

Gurgle

county wrote:

why can't the irish pronounce TH's except for posh people is it a class thing or what,three[tree] thunder[tunder]??

Its a Dublin thing.
They're pretty much West-Britts anyway.

Most of us pronounce th's perfectly well thank you.

monkeyfudge

I'm guilty of never pronoucing the 'g' in the word 'eight'

Actually... I'm not sure if I'm pronoucing the 'h' or the 'i' or the 'e' either.

Gurgle

monkeyfudge wrote:

I'm guilty of never pronoucing the 'g' in the word 'eight'

Actually... I'm not sure if I'm pronoucing the 'h' or the 'i' or the 'e' either.

You pronounce 'eight' as 't' ?

monkeyfudge

Gurgle wrote:

You pronounce 'eight' as 't' ?

Well I'm pretty sure I'm not pronouncing any of the other letters....

it is a rather silly word when you think about it...

el tel

While some Irish people pronounce 'three' as 'tree' it just dosen't sound quite as ignorant as when some English people pronounce 'th' as 'f' which is just poor diction.

How about getting one of these English people to say
"There are thirty thousand feathers on a thrush"

cringeworthy for sure.

Bob Bogart

Its better than turning it nto an F (eg. Thanks = Fanks) like the Londoners. if you ask me Tanks is better than Fanks.

Sleipnir

You always get variations of pronunciation, especially with a language as widely-spoken as english. I'm fairly tolerant of it but one I can't stand is country folk who pronounce "advertisments"
as either
"advertizzzment"
"adver-ties-ment"

The "tis" is short but I can't spell it out!

Mis-pronunciation often becomes the actual word.
For example, the word "bird" comes from "birdies" which was originally "bridies"
But through rampant mis-pronunciation the incorrect way became the
norm.

How long before before you'll annoy people by saying "crisps" instead of "crips" ??!!

Gegerty

county wrote:

why can't the irish pronounce TH's except for posh people is it a class thing or what,three[tree] thunder[tunder]??

Because thats our accent. Accent has got nothing to with whether you can speak the language properly or not. Every region on the planet has a different accent.

People who say things like "I done a runner" or "He does be wrecking me head" or "Ah jasus me fannys scratchy" are examples of not speaking proper English.

Kingsize

i used to hang around with a kid from coventry when i was about 10 he was nicknamed "fings" cos of the way he pronounced his "th"

Exit

What's all this about proper English? It's all proper English, it's just constantly evolving is all.

dSTAR

Pigman II wrote:

You're far too touchy methinks. Either that or perhaps you're just going through a post-victimisation state of 'enlightenment' a.t.m.

I think that the post was referring to english as a race not as the language is spoken.

And no I am not defending my inner englishman!

derek27

well 'vis' 'fred' has been ciculating 'frew' the latest posts quite a bit lately. i'm only reading it because 'ver' is little else happening on boards at 'vis' time.

cut to it. what strikes me is that irish people have a better qualification in the english language than english people. we have a greater vocabulay and a better undestanding of the proper grammatical use of the language... possibly because it is a compulsory leaving cert subject here. check that out.

jcoote

say what u like about the irish but we have the vocabulary,personality and wit to express ourselves better than any other nation on earth...if an irish person is annoyed with u u will cry and if they love u or are happy with u u will smile...pronounciation doesn't come into it when u are dealing with expression!

Ruu_Old

Irish dont pronounce 'th and Americans dont pronouce the h in herbs I still pronounce the h here, fighting the power

Dizzyblabla

I remember learning the phrases in school:
This, That, These and Those, this is the way the T-H goes!

and (I can't believe I actually remember this but..)
My thread is too thick, my thread is too thin, so this is the thing we shall do, we shall go and ask mother to give us another and with it a thimble too!

now, everyone try and say it while pronouncing all their th's!!

Zaphod

Pigman II wrote:

I think the classic word that really trips Irish people up is 'film'.

Invariably we pronounce it 'fil-im' when it should be said along the lines of 'fill-mm'

The extra vowel is called an epenthetic vowel. It's essentially a 'helper vowel' which makes the word flow more easily. It's a hang-over from Irish (guta cúnta) similar to the inability to pronounce 'th'. An example in Irish is 'gorm' (blue) which is pronounced 'gorum'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_orthography#The_epenthetic_vowel

Prof. Terry Dolan's site is very good on all aspects of Hiberno-English.
www.hiberno-english.com

dSTAR

Ruu wrote:

Irish dont pronounce 'th and Americans dont pronouce the h in herbs I still pronounce the h here, fighting the power

Funny you should mention that. I was just chatting about that exact point recently. I think it is because you say "an herbal remedy" as opposed to "a herbal remedy". Saying it the first way sounds too much of a mouthful if you pronounce it with an H! English language grads/experts correct me if I am wrong here.

NotMe

Dizzyblabla wrote:

I remember learning the phrases in school:
This, That, These and Those, this is the way the T-H goes!

and (I can't believe I actually remember this but..)
My thread is too thick, my thread is too thin, so this is the thing we shall do, we shall go and ask mother to give us another and with it a thimble too!

now, everyone try and say it while pronouncing all their th's!!

My tread is too tick, my tread is too tin, so dis is the ting we shall do, we shall go and ask mudder to giver us anudder and wit it a timble too!


I just can't pronounce 'th'! Even though my mam is from London (she pronounces 'thing' not 'fing' ) I remember once my granny saying that we (me and my brothers) should learn 'proper' pronounciation so that our English relatives will be able to understand us when we go visit them. :rolleyes:

Alun

dSTAR wrote:

Funny you should mention that. I was just chatting about that exact point recently. I think it is because you say "an herbal remedy" as opposed to "a herbal remedy". Saying it the first way sounds too much of a mouthful if you pronounce it with an H! English language grads/experts correct me if I am wrong here.

To an Englishman such as myself, the American pronunciation ('erbal) sounds just like an English west country accent, you know, country yokels, "Ooooh, aaar!" and all that.

Personally I always say "a herbal remedy", and (another example) "a hotel". "An hotel" although considered "correct" by some, sounds very upper-class English to me.

simu

NotMe wrote:

I just can't pronounce 'th'! Even though my mam is from London (she pronounces 'thing' not 'fing' ) I remember once my granny saying that we (me and my brothers) should learn 'proper' pronounciation so that our English relatives will be able to understand us when we go visit them. :rolleyes:

Just put the tip of your tongue on the tips of your upper front teeth and blow for the unvoiced th (thin, think etc).

Do the same but make your vocal chords vibrate for the voiced th (the, that etc).

dSTAR

derek27 wrote:

cut to it. what strikes me is that irish people have a better qualification in the english language than english people. we have a greater vocabulay and a better undestanding of the proper grammatical use of the language... possibly because it is a compulsory leaving cert subject here. check that out.

Pure conjecture. I think maybe you should go back and reread what you have just written. Bad spellings, incorrect grammar and poor use of language. Is that leaving cert standard english??

:cool:

simu

dSTAR wrote:

Pure conjecture.

Agreed. Ireland may have produced many great writers but I see no evidence that the average Irish person speaks English better than the average English person. Would the posters who have claimed this to be so like to back up their points?

ecksor

Since moving to England I've tended to notice more people who construct their sentences oddly or leave words out of their sentences. However, the various odd things that have creeped into our own way of speaking ("I'm after having my dinner" for example, and most other examples which would have resulted from translations from Irish) wouldn't strike my ear as odd so I wouldn't notice them in Ireland.

dSTAR

simu wrote:

Ireland may have produced many great writers but I see no evidence that the average Irish person speaks English better than the average English person...

This lovely land that always sent
Her writers and artists to banishment.
And the spirit of Irish fun
Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.

Why was it that so many great Irish writers left Ireland? Was it that Irish culture was so stifling to their creativity and genius? If you read through many Irish books by the likes of Joyce and Beckett you will see ordinary Irish people depicted as being oafish and badly spoken or in the words of Oscar Wilde "foolish in their wisdom".

ecksor

Well, as you've implied so often here on the English forum, Ireland is a netherworld filled with troglodytes and illiterates. If only our superiors in the rest of the English speaking world would deign to deploy some weapons of mass destruction to save the world from our impeded speech and backward ways.

simu

dSTAR wrote:

Why was it that so many great Irish writers left Ireland? Was it that Irish culture was so stifling to their creativity and genius?

I don't see what this has to do with this thread but Ireland wasn't the only country to stamp down on freedom of expression in the early to mid twentieth century - see the Lady Chatterly triall in England for example. Different writers left the country for different reasons - it's impossible to generalise and others stayed here happily all their lives. In many cases, Irish culture gave the writers the raw material for their work as well - see Joyce, Yeats etc.

If you read through many Irish books by the likes of Joyce and Beckett you will see ordinary Irish people depicted as being oafish and badly spoken or in the words of Oscar Wilde "foolish in their wisdom".

Well, I've read quite a bit of Joyce and Beckett and I didn't see Irish people being caricatured in this way. Sure, they were honest writers and showed less savoury aspects of the country in their works as well but you could hardly say that their portrayals were completely negative.

nesf

This will not be news to most people, but I feel like stating the obvious.

Well, first off, the "irish dialect" of english, or "hiberno-english" is not pure (although no spoken dialect is pure tbh). It's heavily influenced by Irish, and it's a well established seperate dialect. Although, there is quite a difference within the country. Mostly due to English not becoming the primary spoken language at the same time in all parts of the country. The pale versus the rest of the country and all that

Add in that Irish itself was hugely varied to begin with. Watch someone from Cork trying to speak Irish with someone from Donegal and the confusion is almost amusing.

Also, there is huge variety in the way english is spoken across the world. It's actually very interesting and there are times when two english speakers can barely understand each other, even though they would both spell the words the same. Arabic is worse for it iirc.

Anyways, this wiki should interest people, although most will probably have seen it already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English

Relevant section to this thread.

In some varieties [θ]/ and [t], and [ð] and [d] merger, making thin and tin and then and den homonyms; /tɪn/ and /dɛn/.

It's a different dialect. It's not less proper than "British English". Not that there is really a "british english" spoken by the majority of British people. Scouse versus the Glasgow accent anyone?

Languages, when spoken, will always diverge from the "phonetically proper" formal spoken standard. This doesn't make it less correct or less cultured. Quite the opposite really. Cultural influences are not something to be ashamed of. Irish people speak differently to the proper standard because of both a strong influence from a non-Germanic language (this will naturally effect things strongly, since the sounds, pronounciations and grammatical structure is so different between the two) and because of a natural tendency of a spoken language to evolve within a geographically distinct area.

If we all spoke "perfect Queen's English" it would be totally forced, and not correct with respect to the dialect. Spoken languages don't work like that. Speaking "proper, formal english" is not actually easy. If you do public speaking, you might train yourself to do this, but to be able to speak "properly" is not something you can do overnight. It takes a lot of effort and is not something most people have the time or inclination to learn.

I'll quit stating the obvious now.

dSTAR

simu wrote:

I don't see what this has to do with this thread...

When viewed in the broader context of Irish language and culture it is quite significant. The original question posted was why Irish people cannot pronounce their TH's and my point was used to illustrate why a considerable number of Irish writers had fled Irish shores partly because of stifling culture in Ireland at that time. It has a lot more to do with freedom of expression and points back to the prevailing culture in Ireland at that time.

Below is a quote from a speech by Tom Collins describing various aspects of Irish language and culture.

In Joyce’s case, his depiction of Dublin is invariably negative. He described it as a city built upon a dump. The key themes in his work, especially in the Dubliners, is the theme of death and paralysis.

You can read the entire speech by downloading it in pdf format at:

http://www.dublin.ie/getFile.asp?FC_ID=158&docID=132

ecksor

When viewed in the broader context of Irish language and culture it is quite significant. The original question posted was why Irish people cannot pronounce their TH's and my point was used to illustrate why a considerable number of Irish writers had fled Irish shores partly because of stifling culture in Ireland at that time. It has a lot more to do with freedom of expression and points back to the prevailing culture in Ireland at that time.

This doesn't show any connection between the two things. "Freedom of expression" is not actually the opposite of "speech impediment" in this context.

pickarooney

And what of thick-tongued mumbler Kavanagh whose own delusions of grandeur pushed him into and out of Dublin?

dSTAR

eksor wrote:

This doesn't show any connection between the two things. "Freedom of expression" is not actually the opposite of "speech impediment" in this context.

Let me get this straight. Are you implying that the majority of Irish people have a speech impediment?

simu

dSTAR wrote:

When viewed in the broader context of Irish language and culture it is quite significant. The original question posted was why Irish people cannot pronounce their TH's and my point was used to illustrate why a considerable number of Irish writers had fled Irish shores partly because of stifling culture in Ireland at that time. It has a lot more to do with freedom of expression and points back to the prevailing culture in Ireland at that time.

Are you implying that Irish people don't pronounce "th" because of cultural stiflement? How does that work? I still don't see why you're bringing all these writers and how they were treated in Ireland into what is essentially a discussion on phonetics and dialects.

Below is a quote from a speech by Tom Collins describing various aspects of Irish language and culture.

In Joyce’s case, his depiction of Dublin is invariably negative. He described it as a city built upon a dump. The key themes in his work, especially in the Dubliners, is the theme of death and paralysis.

There's a difference between being negative about Dublin and depicting the Irish as "oafish and badly spoken". Joyce was keen enough on the way Dubliners spoke to make it a central part of his work, after all.

ecksor

dSTAR wrote:

Let me get this straight. Are you implying that the majority of Irish people have a speech impediment?

It was merely a bit of word play. You claim that freedom of expression and how we pronounce 'th' are linked somehow. I was trying to connect the speech / expression and impediment/freedom ambiguity.

nesf

To be fair, if we were all forced to pronounce 'th' in a specific way he'd have a point.

Fortunately, the world we live in and the one his head seem to be quite different.

Firstly, he assumes we all have the same accent. That's just.. mind boggling. I mean the difference between just the provincial accents is so huge that it invalidates what he's trying to say.

Also most of the "quaint irish pronounciations" have their root in Irish. Now Irish was, as we all know, spoken very differently across the country, with many distinct dialects and sub dialects. So the root of these sayings is very different depending on which area of the country you are talking about.

Overall his arguments are as valid as someone trying to claim that all Irish people talk like the characters in those "Murder She Wrote" Ireland specials. The ones where a guy is hiking from Dublin to Cork but decided to pop into the Roscommon hotel as he was passing by.

He hasn't shown a single glimmer of knowledge regarding the irish dialect of english and has no awareness of the variety of dialects within the country itself. All Irish people don't pronounce 'th' the same way. Damnit, two Cork people mightn't pronounce it the same way. Or someone from D4 and someone from Bray for that matter. Nevermind the completely seperate dialect of English that exists in Ulster.

Meh.

dSTAR

"Yis are all tick eejits", as Flann O'Brien noted "...a country full of gawns and gobs'hites"

simu

dSTAR wrote:

"Yis are all tick eejits", as Flann O'Brien noted "...a country full of gawns and gobs'hites"

You still haven't answered my questions. Also, the quote above has absolutely nothing to do with the this thread. Is this the best you can do at trolling?

dSTAR

simu wrote:

Joyce was keen enough on the way Dubliners spoke to make it a central part of his work, after all.

This is nonsense. Joyce like many Irish writers thought that a lot of Irish people were vulgar, stupid and badly spoken. In most of Dubliners he shows the absolute worst aspect of Dubliners, as well as the best (sic). He was no supporter of the Irish Literary Movement and fiercely attacked 'Irishness' as did Flann O'Brien in An Beal Bocht and plenty of other Irish writers.

Many say that he really loved Dublin but my interpretation of reading Dubliners was it was an almost Swiftian style attack on the petty minded uncultured and badly spoken population of Dublin. It doesn't appear you have ever read any of James Joyce's work so I recommend reading it before you make the above assertions.

So as not to be accused of being a troll I will not post anything further to this thread because you seem determined to bring this down into a petty argument and it seems to runs its course anyhow.

To finish off this thread I will leave with a multiple choice questionaire.

Question: Irish people cannot pronounce their TH's because:

a) They are badly educated / stupid
b) Thats just the way they are
c) TH does not exist in Irish (as has been claimed)
d) It comes down to phonetics / dialect

pho·net·ics (fo-nĕt'ĭks)
n. (used with a sing. verb)
The branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their production, combination, description, and representation by written symbols.
The system of sounds of a particular language.

ecksor

You know, in your own mind perhaps you're not a troll, but I haven't seen one post from you that doesn't seem designed to either dodge a question or wind someone up. I have no more patience for it.