Thursday January 5, 2006
Say ‘three’ and ‘tree’ differently
Do the words “three” and “tree” sound the same to you? Are the words “den” and “then” homonyms? They shouldn’t be.
Indeed, the ‘th’ is one of the more difficult consonants to pronounce in English – for us, anyway. After you have read this, I hope you will gain a little understanding on how we can conquer that elusive ‘th’.
Phonetics is an aspect of the English language that is usually neglected in our school curriculum. When English is taught as a second language, other basic aspects such as vocabulary and grammar take centre stage. So most of us misguidedly, but understandably, don’t say words right.
As a Malaysian, I too fell into this category – not knowing the distinction, never being corrected but able to get by without the need to know the difference.
Since we were never taught the correct way to pronounce the ‘th’, we chose the closest speech sounds in our native tongues that resemble them, /d/ and /t/.
The French, who also do not use ‘th’ in their native tongue, use replacements such as /z/ or /s/. “Then” becomes “zen” and “thing” becomes “sing”.
‘Th’ belongs to a class of speech sounds called fricatives. Fricatives are all consonants and are characterised by a noisy sound generated by turbulent airflow at some point of constriction along the vocal tract.
In English, there are 8 fricatives; /s/ (as in sing), /sh/ (as in shout), /f/ (as in fun), /th/ (as in thunder), /zh/ (as in measure), /z/ (as in pizza), /v/ (as in vent) and /dh/ (as in then) (DARPA phonetic symbols).
‘Th’ actually consists of two different speech sounds: /th/ and /dh/. These fricatives are then divided into voiced and unvoiced categories.
Voiced – /v/, /dh/, /z/, /zh/
Unvoiced – /f/, /th/, /s/, /sh/
For fricatives, voicing means the production of sound when the vocal chords allow air through and vibrate – ‘active’.
We produce it when we say any vowel (your mouth is open, tongue in some sort of position and the vocal chords are ‘active’), or when we hum (your mouth is closed but vocal chords are ‘active’ and air escapes through the nose).
The next part may require the use of a mirror to understand. Before jumping onto the ‘th’ challenge, I would like to explain fricatives using two which we are pretty familiar with, /f/ and /v/. I use these two as examples because they are analogous to /th/ and /dh/.
Now, to fully understand fricatives, we need to isolate them from the vowel. For example, we examine the /f/ in the word “fee”. Try saying “fee” as slowly as you can. The first sound you make is the /f/; you place your upper front teeth above your lower lip and blow air through them.
As a result, you feel a small gap form; and the emitted noisy and high pitched sound is your /f/. This fricative lasts as long as you can hold your teeth and lip in this arrangement while blowing air.
Subsequently, articulate the vowel ‘e’ to form the rest of the word.
To help you understand /f/’s voiced counterpart, /v/, I use the vocalisation of ‘v’ or ‘vee’. You begin almost the same way as /f/ where you also place your upper front teeth over your lower lip.
However, instead of just blowing air you also apply some voicing. A gap also forms on the lip but this time, because of the voicing, your lower lip would vibrate a little depending on how much voicing you apply.
At the onset of the vowel, you just continue your voicing to produce the ‘e’ vowel sound.
The /th/ has a different vocal tract configuration. For beginners, the following configuration is advised: protrude the tip of your tongue through the upper and lower teeth. Check this with a mirror.
Like with the /f/ when you blow air, a small gap can be felt between the tongue and the upper front teeth. The sound produced is similar to the /f/ but not quite the same.
Attach a vowel after it to make it a word, e.g. “thin”.
Just like /v/ is to /f/, the /dh/ is the /th/’s voiced complement. Using the same vocal tract configuration as in the /th/, you not only blow air but apply voicing as well. You should notice that your tongue and front teeth are now vibrating.
Place an ‘en’ behind it and the word “then” comes out perfectly.
But do not consider victory just yet, a major phonetic change needs practice. Try a word at a time.
For example, from now on consciously start pronouncing “the” the correct way and over time, start pronouncing more ‘th’ words the right way.
This website gives an audio assisted tutorial: http://www.manythings.org/voa/ wm/wm151.html
– M.K. Moey
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