why can't the irish pronounce TH's

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"