why can't the irish pronounce TH's

Praetorian

I believe that the average Irish person speaks and writes English to a higher standard than the people of any other English speaking nation in the world. I converse with Americans, Australians and British people every day and I’m now no longer surprised by their inability to speak or write English properly. Of course each nationality has their own hang-ups, some Irish people cannot pronounce “th” for example, but don’t get me started on the Americans! The education system in Ireland is pretty good, but could be tweaked to iron out the relatively small problem. “why can't the irish pronounce TH's”; barring specific speech impediments, Irish people can if they try

dSTAR please try and familiarise yourself with the rules http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=90759

pickarooney

dSTAR wrote:

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

Your question is, as you well know, based on a fallacious assumption.
What you mean to ask is:
Question: some Irish people do not pronounce their TH's in the RP manner because:

nesf

Praetorian wrote:

I believe that the average Irish person speaks and writes English to a higher standard than the people of any other English speaking nation in the world.

Really? I wouldn't go that far. Yes we have a highly educated workforce but that doesn't translate directly into have a high standard of English. Plus something like that is quite hard to measure without making gross approximations.

Alun

nesf wrote:

Really? I wouldn't go that far. Yes we have a highly educated workforce but that doesn't translate directly into have a high standard of English. Plus something like that is quite hard to measure without making gross approximations.

Right! Some of the stuff that passes for English, written by highly qualified engineers, that I have to review before unleashing it onto unsuspecting customers beggars belief.

In_the_sea

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]??

Irish people should be speaking Irish, not English. Our language was taken from us. If you teach a German person how to speak English, and they pronounce worried as vorried wud u understand why? Same applies here, our language was different from theirs and they forced it on us and well we pronounced things wrong and like an accent, it stayed with us. So its part of us as being Irish. If you have a problem go somewhere where they speak "posh" English!

pickarooney

If you've a problem with your language being "stolen" from you, you could always just learn it.

Skip

Good point

Btw, An Beal Bocht isn't an attack on the Irish language and culture, but an attack on abusing them in a false and forced way to assert the people's Irishness in order to enhance some "cultural revival". Sure Joyce was very critical about his people too, but just read "Dead" from Dubliners, I wouldn't say it focuses on oafish characters. Without wanting to simplify things or disregard certain aspects, I bet when Joyce wrote those short stories he was disillusioned on every level and dissatisfied with how things were going, so he projected his whole doom on the city -- that's what people tend to do anyway, you don't have to be a writer to say "I gotta fukk off from here, this place is killing me". Although he did it well at least, I mean that's what writers are for

As for not pronouncing th's, I find it charming Of course only after I get used to it and start to understand it And obviously it has nothing to do with someone's being a cultivated person or not, I'm shocked this idea has even come up as a valid or serious assumption.

In_the_sea

actually i can speak irish...and i notice many irish people change their accent to americanise it or whatever...i notice the older people in some towns have the typical accent but the younger ones sound like they have lived somewhere else for a while..good thing about wexford is we have such a strong accent its hard to loose..cities i have noticed have more poeple with put on accents...Irish is irish..why be ashamed, it who u are if u are! no need to be some1 else.!! they dont try to be like us and theyd laugh if we tried to be like them so ur a fool if u try to som1 else! im proud of me and being irish so its all crap tryin to b diff

simu

dSTAR wrote:

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.

Well, take it to the literature forum and find out where you're wrong!

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.

You still haven't answered my questions - see post 45 above. If you don't want to, don't bother but there's no need to pretend you're leaving the thread on some moral high ground.


/pffft

egan007

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]??

This is a very stupid question.
'The Irish' all 4 million of them can pronounce TH's
there is however a minor factor that you may not of tought about called Accents!

WOW!

Why can't all Irish play hurling...

In_the_sea

I agree with egan! :cool:

horseflesh

My 4 year old son called his youngest brother "Ar-ur" the other day.
I was horrified....... :eek:

titanic_lettuce

its all down to the accent, the same way as in parts of england they add an r to the end of every word ending in a vowel

foxybrowne

I pronounce pronounce prunounce.

Alun

titanic_lettuce wrote:

its all down to the accent, the same way as in parts of england they add an r to the end of every word ending in a vowel

Such as? I'm English myself, and I can't imagine what region you're talking about. Also, there are very few words that end in a vowel, and of those that do, most of these end in an 'e' preceded by a consonant, so that would make a very peculiar accent indeed

foxybrowne

The English prounce English Inglish whereas ze Germans prounce English English.

cmaclo

simu wrote:

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

aha, thats a come back i could use for my mam now.. :rolleyes:
im 21 and she still gives out to me for pronouncing my mate Ruth as "Rute" and teeth as "teet"...

...i cant help it... id love not to tbh ...im really aware of my accent in work where most ppl are from the southside ...id hate ppl to think i was less intelligent or educated than i am because of the way i speak, but lets face it - its gonna happen...

Hagar

Personally I don't pronouce it because I don't want to.
They can't make me. Fook 'em. Fook 'em all I say.

kleefarr

Alun wrote:

Right! Some of the stuff that passes for English, written by highly qualified engineers, that I have to review before unleashing it onto unsuspecting customers beggars belief.

That sounds just like the kind of job for me. Where do you work?

Capt'n Midnight

dSTAR wrote:

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

After an adenoidectomy there is a risk of hypernasality.
This is sometimes used to explain some inner city accents.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2005/01/14/voices_linguist_feature.shtml

Where does that classic ‘blocked-nose Scouse’ way of speaking come from?

Well the sort of folk belief about it is that it was adenoids – that children growing up in Merseyside in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when Scouse as an accent was being forged, listened to older speakers who all suffered from adenoids. If you think about when you’ve got a cold you can‘t actually put air through your nose, so you talk differently. So the idea is that the children were listening to that cold-ridden voice and imitated it.

simu

I doubt it tbh. It's perfectly normal to have nasal sounds in a language - French has them as do some dialects of Irish.

Capt'n Midnight

The therory was that more people in the inner cities had the operations and so thier accent/intonation changed more than in richer or in rural areas.

LordSutch

Of course Irish people can pronounce TH, but alas many are just too lazy or have been mistaught in school, but I must say Irish people generally are very good at written English, but many are very poor at speaking it! (The English have problems too)
The TH thing baffles me because so many Irish people admit they have a problem with TH but then you hear them actually pronouncing TH 'but' using it in the wrong words!
Example: Matt Cooper on Today FM, constantly says "trueout the day" or "True the key hole" but I have heard him saying on the Radio that he was "Thought Irish Trueout his school life" ..............
So much for Matt having a problem with TH's, he sure does have a problem, not with pronouncing them but by putting them in the wrong words!

BlaasForRafa

if you pronounced your "th"s in waterford they'd think your right posh altogether.

people from other parts of the country or england can't seem to understand the way I pronouce the number 8 as "aaaaay-att" or the letter H as "haaaay-atch"

Capt'n Midnight

Alledegedly the writings of Shakespear (SP) rhyme better when pronounced in HibernoEnglish than in Modern English.

London Letters
"F" for Sugar
"S" for Foxtrot
Somfink else
Missing H's and extra H's 'n stuff.

Plus we have more phonemes (distinctive sounds) than they or most other English speakers have.

www.shef.ac.uk/q/quechua/cognates/notes.pdf

e.g. what we note is difference between a dental and alveolar [t] is not phonemic in any major Germanic language (to my knowledge), this difference is one of the key indicators of Hiberno-English as opposed to most other accents of English. Any such departures from the normal form assumed for a given language family should be transcribed, i.e. dental [t] in Germanic languages, and alveolar [t] in Romance.
- 5 -
e.g. Even though the difference between a dental and alveolar [t] is not phonemic in any major Germanic language (to my knowledge), this difference is one of the key indicators of Hiberno-English as opposed to most other accents of English. Any such departures from the normal form assumed for a given language family should be transcribed, i.e. dental [t] in Germanic languages, and alveolar [t] in romance.

e added by me

bmaxi

conversely, why do rte journalists pronounce irish "t" sounds as "th" such as theeseach or thawnaiste, Bryan Dobson is a particular offender but there are many, including that man of the people Gerry Ryan and why feena gwale and not Fine Gael ? Is this a means of separating themselves from us lesser mortals?

Capt'n Midnight

bmaxi wrote:

conversely, why do rte journalists pronounce irish "t" sounds as "th" such as theeseach or thawnaiste, Bryan Dobson is a particular offender but there are many, including that man of the people Gerry Ryan and why feena gwale and not Fine Gael ? Is this a means of separating themselves from us lesser mortals?

Sex - what potatoes come in.
Creche - what happens when two cars collide.

sexualsheep

simu wrote: »

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

Well it does not exist in Munster Irish (and I presume didn't in Leinster Irish either) but it does in Connacht and Ulster which is why we say things like butther and wather. A good example is the Irish word traoi, in munster it's pronounced tree and in connacht and ulster, three

Yakuza

Zombie Thread!

looksee

Shame, I was quite enjoying it, then I saw the date.

mike65

Yeah cos the TH problem has since resolved itself!

me_right_one

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Sex - what potatoes come in.
Creche - what happens when two cars collide.

Only in Cork

alphasun

This morning I heard a reporter on a film item use fillum, but he went on to say "Palme d'Or" without saying "Pallum".
Other examples:
ondly for only
heighth for height
fawther for father, Awr TE etc.
entoosyism (on the wane lately)
crisays, diabetays, Mercedays (ecclesiastical Latin)
Odd or displaced emphases, e.g. 'CONtribute' or the verb 'protest' pronounced like the noun (PROtest).
Newsreaders leaving out some but not all of the gs in ing endings -- distractin' when you are listening.

I love some of the Dublin idiom though, e.g. 'the neck a ya' for "what a cheek"