Pronunciation of "months" and "shrimp."

[lauralie2]

For "months" just forget about the "th" and say "munce" (rhymes with "once"). There will be those on this board who tell you that is wrong, but no native speaker will notice the difference.

I'm not one of those. Many native speakers say it that way (munce), even I do. I also say mon[θ]s.

It's convincing my students that a) and b), below, have the same pronunciation that proves difficult, as students seem to have been conditioned to believe otherwise:


a) clothes
b) close

[birdeen's call]

I'm not one of those. Many native speakers say it that way (munce), even I do. I also say mon[θ]s.

It's convincing my students that a) and b), below, have the same pronunciation that proves difficult, as students seem to have been conditioned to believe otherwise:


a) clothes
b) close

I think I sometimes pronounce "clothes" like "cloves" (/vz/ doesn't make me do this difficult movement of the tongue that I would have to do to in /ðz/). Do native speakers do this often?

[lauralie2]

I think I sometimes pronounce "clothes" like "cloves" (/vz/ doesn't make me do this difficult movement of the tongue that I would have to do to in /ðz/). Do native speakers do this often?

Native speakers compensate by omitting /ð/, giving clo[z] (which has the same pronunciation as close, as in close the door). The pronunciation clo[vz] is non-native.


______________
Your pronunciation tells me a little bit about your native language:

• It has complex consonants (CC), which is why you don't add schwa between the CCs (as do, say, Japanese speakers of English whose language does not permit CCs).

• It does not have dental /ð/, which is why you opt for the closest sound, labio-dental [v].

[TheNewOne]

NikkiBarber
Saying "munce" is a real way out for me too
I like to speak fast in Russian so people ask me to slow down and I want to speak fast in English, but this th problem slows me down a little bit.
lauralie2
I'm gonna use clothes=close

BTW, sometimes I hear that some native speakers pronounce the th sound as /f/. What can you say about this?

[birdeen's call]

Native speakers compensate by omitting /ð/, giving clo[z] (which has the same pronunciation as close, as in close the door). The pronunciation clo[vz] is non-native.


______________
Your pronunciation tells me a little bit about your native language:

• It has complex consonants (CC), which is why you don't add schwa between the CCs (as do, say, Japanese speakers of English whose language does not permit CCs).

• It does not have dental /ð/, which is why you opt for the closest sound, labio-dental [v].

You're right about both things but I'm wondering how you could guess it from such a tiny piece of information...

We don't have phonemic schwas in Polish, that's true. (I think the record holder is "bezwzględny", which has a five-phoneme consonant cluster /zvzgl/.) But I don't understand how my pronunciation of this particular lets you guess it. Don't you pronounce "cloves" without a schwa too?

As for dental consonants, we don't have them. But again, I'm not sure how my pronunciation of "clothes" reveals this fact. I don't have any problem at all with /ð/ in most words. It's only diificult for me to pronounce in "clothes", as is for everybody I think...

[lauralie2]

BTW, sometimes I hear that some native speakers pronounce the th sound as /f/. What can you say about this?

It's called th-fronting;e.g., ma[f]s / maths.

[2006]

I'm not one of those. Many native speakers say it that way (munce), even I do. I also say mon[θ]s.

It's convincing my students that a) and b), below, have the same pronunciation that proves difficult, as students seem to have been conditioned to believe otherwise:


a) clothes
b) close

a) and b) do not have the same pronunciation, not even close. Even if one doesn't stress the th sound, they have different final sounds, z and s.

[2006]

I just now realized that lauralie2 meant the verb "close", not the adjective. What I wrote before pertains to the adjective.

But even the verb "close" has a different pronunciation than "clothes". They both end with a z sound, but "clothes" of course has the "th" sound in it's full pronunciation.

[5jj]

I just now realized that lauralie2 meant the verb "close", not the adjective. What I wrote before pertains to the adjective.

But even the verb "close" has a different pronunciation than "clothes". They both end with a z sound, but "clothes" of course has the "th" sound in it's full pronunciation.

No.
lauralie is right, for most of us at least - in normal, informal conversation, 'clothes' is pronounced in the same way as 'close' (verb).

[2006]

No.
lauralie is right, for most of us at least - in normal, informal conversation, 'clothes' is pronounced in the same way as 'close' (verb).

Are you actually saying that most of you deliberately pronounce "clothes" the exact same way as "close", taking care not to include even a hint of a th sound? That's what it sounds like you are saying.

And I don't know why any English teacher would want to try to convince her students that the pronunciation of "clothes" and "close" is the same, when they are not the same.
Students "have been conditioned to believe" that there is a difference in the pronunciation of the two words because there is a difference.