Plural th

[pizza]

How do I pronounce a th ending word that is in plural?

For example: swath /swɑθ/ and swaths? /swɑθz/ ?

I ask, because, If it is /swɑθz/, I find it difficult to produce a sibilant (s sound) after a /th/ sound.

 

[Tdol]

I say /sweɪð/ and /sweɪðz/. With a word like month, the plural /mʌnθs/ can be difficult to pronounce- my wife's Japanese and a very good English speaker, but she always says something like /mʌnθɪz/.

 

[raindoctor]

You don't hear voiceless th at all, unless you wanna sound foreign or sound academic. It is a fronted sibilant (fronted s, if th is voiceless; if not, fronted z).

months = pronounce like munts

 

[pizza]

Well, I thought it was like raindoctor said, however, just trying now I realize I can do /th/ + /s~z/, but it just feels a little strange, because I am basically transitioning from one sound to the other pretty quickly. After /th/ I quickly pull in the tongue and let out a sibilant. Technically speaking it works.

I don't remember this being a problem before, however I just recently thought about it and wanted to ask here.

 

[raindoctor]

I was not clear earlier. th + s = an allophone of s = fronted s. No more that business of clearly articulating th, which is peddled by the ignorant 'elite'!

There is a similar phenomenon: s + th, leading to fronted z.

 

[5jj]

No more that business of clearly articulating th, which is peddled by the ignorant 'elite'!.

That sort of comment is unnecessary.

In informal conversation, I tend to say /mʌn(t)s/. If I am speaking more thoughtfully, I quite naturally say /mʌnθs/. I do not consider myself elitist when I use the second form; I like to think that I am not ignorant.

 

[raindoctor]

My apologies, fivejedjon. No native speaker is ignorant. However, when it comes to teaching others, they end up teaching citation form pronunciations, citation form sentences.

Let me give a concrete example.

When I was in India, I was looking for bus that goes to a town, spelled as "Vijayawada" in Indian English. When I asked local speakers there about its pronunciation, they gave me "citation" form. In speech (not presidential, of course), I dont hear anything closer to that citation form, because all approximants in that language get deleted in high frequency words. This is what I have in mind. Native speakers do many things, without being aware of all that go in there. When native speakers are questioned about non-citation forms, they say 'yeah, I know that; I speak in so and so contexts': I am not questioning this 'knowing'!

To me, the elite = those who teach citation forms, making the learners content with whatever the little they have mastered. This fits well with toastmaster/presidential speeches, singing, etc.
.
Phonetics, phonology, rhythm, melody, etc--all these are gradient. Citation forms sit at the entrance of this gradient.

 

[pizza]

If I retract the tongue in time before the /s/ sound comes in, it seems to work.

 

[5jj]

My apologies, fivejedjon. No native speaker is ignorant. However, when it comes to teaching others, they end up teaching citation form pronunciations, citation form sentences.

To me, the elite = those who teach citation forms, making the learners content with whatever the little they have mastered. This fits well with toastmaster/presidential speeches, singing, etc..

You are over-generalising. Most of us native speakers in the TEFL world who are professional teachers teach the natural pronunciation of words.The LPD, which gives commonly accepted forms gives, as I do, /mʌnθs/ - with /mʌn(t)s/ as an alternative. the EPD gives only /mʌntθs/.

There is no evidence for your claim: "You don't hear voiceless th at all, unless you wanna sound foreign or sound academic".

 

[birdeen's call]

I say /sweɪð/ and /sweɪðz/. With a word like month, the plural /mʌnθs/ can be difficult to pronounce- my wife's Japanese and a very good English speaker, but she always says something like /mʌnθɪz/.

How do you spell the word? "Swath" or "swathe"?

 

[pizza]

Both are correct according to OED:
swath |swɑθ|(also swathe ||)
noun ( pl. swaths || or swathes |swāT͟Hz| )

By the way, I found this cool site with pronunciations:

Pronunciation of swathes - how to pronounce swathes correctly.

I still find it a bit hard to produce the 'ths' sound, if someone could offer some tips I would appreciate it.

 

[raindoctor]

You are over-generalising. Most of us native speakers in the TEFL world who are professional teachers teach the natural pronunciation of words.The LPD, which gives commonly accepted forms gives, as I do, /mʌnθs/ - with /mʌn(t)s/ as an alternative. the EPD gives only /mʌntθs/.

There is no evidence for your claim: "You don't hear voiceless th at all, unless you wanna sound foreign or sound academic".

Dictionaries, dictionaries, dictionaries, dictionaries. There is a guy from your country, who has a lot to say about dictionaries and citation forms. And he is Claudefield, and his work
"Streaming Speech: Listening and Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English" says a lot!

 

[5jj]

Dictionaries, dictionaries, dictionaries, dictionaries. There is a guy from your country, who has a lot to say about dictionaries and citation forms. And he is Claudefield, and his work
"Streaming Speech: Listening and Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English" says a lot!

What about dictionaries?

The only reference I can find to "Streaming Speech: Listening and Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English" is by Richard Thomas Caudwell, not Claudefield. Is that who you meant?

It is not very helpful to those of us who do not possess this book to be told that it 'says a lot'. Can you give an idea of some of the main points he makes, if they are relevant to this discussion?

 

[pizza]

This must be a very high level discussion because I don't know what's going on here lol.

 

[Tdol]

I still find it a bit hard to produce the 'ths' sound, if someone could offer some tips I would appreciate it.

Can you try to describe how you say it, or record it?

 

[pizza]

@Tdol Thanks for the suggestion, I will when I get back from work.

 

[5jj]

This must be a very high level discussion because I don't know what's going on here lol.

Sorry if the 'high-level' discussion confused you. If you can record your version we will try to help you, as Tdol said.

In the meantime, pronouncing months as munts, clothes as close (the verb) and swathes as sways will be very close to the way many British speakers produce the words in normal conversation.

Many speakers even pronounce five sixths in normal conversation as though it were spelt simply five six.

 

[pizza]

Well if I can add something to the high level discussion, I would say you can't rely in just one single dictionary. Use them all, Cambridge, Longman, Merriam-Webster, Oxford. Not only is enlightening reading different definitions of the same thing but you get a second and a third opinion on pronunciation which is always cool.

Here is my recording of:

Month, months.
Swath, swathes.
Cloth, Clothes.

Download th.mp3 from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

By the way I noticed that pronouncing an | ā | in swathes instead of an | ä | makes it a little bit easier, but I had already recorded and uploaded it the way suggested by OED which is what I would have guessed anyway.

Thanks.

 

[5jj]

Here is my recording of:

Month, months.......Swath, swathes.......Cloth, Clothes.

Download th.mp3 from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way.

Sorry, pizza, but I could not get that loud enough for me to hear clearly. If you wait a little, someone with sharper hearing will soon turn up.

 

[pizza]

By the way, a couple of English teachers friends told me that they remove the th when pronouncing ths, or put another way, ths becomes z.

Therefore, clothes becomes an homophone of close (as in close the door not as in near which has an unvoiced s).

To make matters clear:

(1) close: a short distance away /kloʊs/

(2) close: cover an opening /kloʊz/

According to my friends mentioned above, clothes is pronounced just like (2), incidentally, all /ths/ become /z/ so:

months /mənz/
swath /swɑz/ or /sweɪz/
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