A number of newspapers have reported this week that the "th" sounds will die out by 2066 in British English (here's an article in the Daily Telegraph)*. How likely is this assertion?
Dental fricatives [θ] and [ð], spelled "th" in English and found in words like thin and this respectively, are very low incidence in languages of the world; they are found in fewer than 50 of the world's 6000-7000 spoken languages**. In some cases, they only occur because of a phonological process. For example, [ð] appears in Castilian Spanish between two vowels, where it is an allophone of the phoneme /d/.
Dental fricatives are also late acquired in English - i.e., children start using them later than some other consonants. SLT Info, for example, explains that English-speaking children do not start using them until around four years of age, while some consonants, such as /p/, /b/, /m/ and /w/ (what's the common factor here?), are produced as linguistic sounds as early as the age of two.
Most new varieties of English around the world do not use dental fricatives. Hong Kong English speakers, for example, produce /θ/ as [f] (three sounds like free) and /ð/ as [d] (this sounds like diss).
There are also accents of British English which have been around for a very long time which do not use dental fricatives. Do any British readers of a certain age remember the Qualcast advert "It's a lot less bovver than a hover" (see around 48 seconds)? This works because accents such as Cockney, for example, have been substituting dental fricatives for other sounds for some time. /ð/ word initially is often produced as [d], and between two vowels as [v], as in this advert. /θ/, just like Hong Kong English, is produced by Cockney speakers as [f]; in fact, as a child learning Maths, when the new teacher arrived who was ethnically Chinese and from Hong Kong in the 1970s, we all thought she was from London as she pronounced Maths as /mæfs/.
Producing /ð/ as [d] is known as stopping - i.e., the fricative is produced as a stop or plosive consonant - and producing /ð/ as [v] and /θ/ as [f] is known as fronting - i.e., the fricatives are produced further forward in the mouth, in this case, as labio-dental fricatives. These are both processes which are common in developing child language in English. Some varieties of English stop /θ/, so it is produced as [t] or similar; Southern Irish accents do this, as does Jamaican English.
Given that dental fricatives are very low incidence in languages in the world, late acquired, and often substituted in regional and global varieties of English, it is not really a surprise that they are predicted to die out at some point in the future. This might be down to multiculturalism, or it might simply be because they seem to be of less importance in international communication in English. Which is it? It might be difficult to decide.
Update, 03/10/2016
* This was in the context of multilingualism in British English. My discussion looks at other issues.
** My Twitter colleague Ben Zimmer (@bgzimmer) has found that there are at least 112 languages with dental fricative phonemes.
Update, 03/10/2016
* This was in the context of multilingualism in British English. My discussion looks at other issues.
** My Twitter colleague Ben Zimmer (@bgzimmer) has found that there are at least 112 languages with dental fricative phonemes.
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ReplyDeleteThe dental fricatives seem to be on the decline in England (and possibly Britain), but there is no evidence that they're dying out in North America or the Antipodes. A lot of the commentary about this report has been rather Anglocentric.
ReplyDeleteThe dental fricatives seem to be on the decline in England (and possibly Britain)...
Delete...and possibly the United Kingdom! You can hear TH-fronting from quite a few Northern Irish boys and young men now too. I'm not sure how it spread there, but I would be surprised if it was through face to face contact with the English. It's interesting to me that so far this feature seems to only be found in the part of Ireland that's politically united with Britain.
One exception to that last statement is a 20-something, stand-up comedian from County Donegal whose show I went to one time. He had some TH-fronting in his speech. As you may know, Donegal is linguistically, but not politically Northern Irish. But it's still part of Ulster and I've yet to hear an Irish person from outside of that province who had TH-fronting.
Indeed. The inertia of 350 million North Americans is yuuuuuuuuge. And the few th-stopping accents that exist here (traditional New York and New Orleans) are very much in regression on this point.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAnd the few th-stopping accents that exist here (traditional New York and New Orleans) are very much in regression on this point.
DeleteI'm almost 2 years late, but I just wanted to write that that's an oversimplification. There are 2 types of th-stopping that I'm aware of:
1. The Irish Type
This is the type of th-stopping that doesn't lead to the collapse of the distinction between /θ/ and /ð/ on the one hand and /t/ and /d/ on the other hand. /θ/ and /ð/ are realized as dental stops ([t̪] and [d̪], respectively), in this type of th-stopping.
2. The Caribbean Type
This is the type of th-stopping that DOES lead to a loss of distinction between the alveolar stops and the dental fricatives of English. ''Think'' has an alveolar [t] as its first consonant and the ''th'' in ''father'' is pronounced [d].
So, as you can see, th-stopping doesn't always endanger the distinction between the alveolar stops and dental fricatives of English. The Irish Type of th-stopping is much more common in American English than the Caribbean Type. I bet it always has been too; it's just that a lot of people mishear dental stops as alveolar stops, but they aren't the same. Type 1 (Irish type) th-stopping is the kind I almost always hear from modern day northeastern Americans and some African Americans. I still hear a lot of northeastern stand-up comedians who use lots of dental stops in place of dental fricatives.
And the New York City (or Tri-State Area) accent is still alive; it just doesn't sound as old-fashioned and extreme as a lot of people want it to. A lot of people seem to want it to sound like Bugs Bunny or the Three Stooges. It doesn't and it hasn't for decades. Sorry people. Just because someone doesn't drop a ton of r's or have an extremely high (close-mid or higher, let's say) THOUGHT vowel, doesn't mean they don't have a Tri-State Area accent. There is much more to the accent than that and there probably always was. American linguists just always focus on the extremely obvious features of an accent. Maybe that's why you used the term "Traditional New York." Maybe you were referring to the Bugs Bunny and Three Stooges accent. I think calling that accent "very much in regression" is pretty generous. I would probably call it extinct.
Some African Americans have th-fronting too, at least in certain phonetic environments. I don't know if that will ever lead to a collapse of the distinction between the labiodental fricatives and dental fricatives in African American speech though.
I've amended the opening of this post. The newspaper articles on this topic are specifically about British English. But there are more speakers of non-British/American/Antipodean Englishes around the world than speakers in those groups, and many of them do not use dental fricatives.
ReplyDeleteExactly- the lingua franca does quite nicely without these quirky little items 😎
DeleteExactly- the lingua franca does quite nicely without these quirky little items 😎
DeleteIt can depend on your target as a learner, though, Paul. They are tricky for speakers of L1s which do not have them and the LFC does not rate them as necessary for international communication, but speakers/learners of English who wish to sound like e.g. British or American native speakers of English will need to master them to manage this.
DeleteMy colleague John Coleman at Oxford who works on historical linguistics and predicting change explains that, although low incidence in languages in the world, dental fricatives have survived for 4000+ years in languages which use them and are, therefore, highly robust. The newspaper articles are talking about social change in the UK because of the number of speakers in Britain now who do not use them. That might be the deciding factor ... or they may not die out at al.
ReplyDeleteMy dad never pronounced dental fricatives, and he was born and raised in the US. Of course, he grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is known for a pretty heavy Fargo-like accent. His pronunciation went like this:
ReplyDeletethis, that > dis, dat
thick, thin > tick, tin
three, thread > tree, tread
Apparently widespread social acceptance of TH-fronting is also part of the reason that some of us would predict that this change will spread and stick in the UK. The same goes for a phonetic change, the increase of heavily labialised /r/, though in the latter case, speakers seem to be unaware of it rather than accepting it (though they do seem to note it and reject it when there may be merger with /w/).
ReplyDeleteAdditional things I often notice that are MUCH more common than they used to be (it seems, to this old geezer), and which are apparently not worthy of vocal dislike are of course fronted GOOSE and GOAT, vocalised /l/, ejective /k/, phrase-final lip-closing.
Some of these might stick diachronically too.
The low functional load of TH vs. F, the late acquisition of some TH forms, social acceptance: these all argue for loss of one or both TH forms.
Love your reply..! Could you give us an example of labialized /r/? Much obliged!!
DeleteComedian Paul Merton produces his /r/ sounds as labiodental, but this does not necessarily involve heavy labialisation (i.e., strong lip-rounding). See here, from about 1 minute in. Watch his mouth when producing /r/ sounds in 'pressure' and 'satirical programme'. There is not a lot of lip-rounding here, but the /r sounds are most definitely labiodental. Labiodental /r/ sounds are common in may accents of British English.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMdF19coO2s
DeleteI think Jonathan Ross does too.
DeleteYes, with lots of lip-rounding!
DeleteArticle contains so many fruitful information which will be liked by the readers as in my opinion
ReplyDeletethis is the best article in this category.
Online vocabulary
Hello, I would like to ask a question on the issue: for a native speaker of English hearing the speech of a non-native, which sounds 'less incorrect' or 'less awful' , th-fronting or th-stopping? Thanks
ReplyDeleteDifficult to say, really, as this will depend very much on the listener. Fronting is associated mainly with /θ/ in some British accents (it does also happen with /ð/) and tends to carry negative associations among British speakers/listeners, so it's possible that one might be less acceptable. But without empirical research I can't really say.
DeleteThank you for the reply. I asked about that because I heard that th-fronting would sound more or less associated with poor education or something alike while th stopping would not sound more like just a non-native speech. Thanks once more
ReplyDelete