Why "Th" doesn't matter for English Pronunciation...
And why it also does matter...
The “TH” sound (well there are actually two TH sounds)…
The “TH” sound is a bit of an enigma in English, we often talk about how important this sound is. There are ways in which it is important but also ways in which it almost doesn’t matter at all. This can be a point of contention amongst pronunciation coaches, and a point of confusion amongst students learning pronunciation.
Today, I will give my point of view of how and why this sound is important, but how and why it might not matter as much as we think it does.
In short, I think we should still work on this/these sound(s) - but we also shouldn’t worry ourselves too much if we don’t use it perfectly at all times.
Let me start with why the TH doesn’t really matter when speaking English.
Have you ever heard of the ‘functional load’ theory?
I won’t go into excess detail here, I’ll keep things simple…
What is functional load? Let me define that for you because it’s important here!
The Functional Load Theory of Phonemes:
Put in basic terms, some sounds are easily mixed up with others, getting them wrong will cause lots of communication issues because there are many similar words with a similar sound - therefore it’s more important to say these sounds clearly and correctly.
E.G. ship / sheep - the only difference between “ship” and “sheep” is the /I/ and /i:/ sounds - the vowel in each word. So we would say that the /I/ sound in ship has a “high functional load” … Getting it right is important or we will mix it up with the /i:/ sound.
Woah! Back to TH - that was our focus, remember?!
So, the reason why TH doesn’t really matter is this: It has a “low functional load”…
If we mix up the TH sound in “THEM” and we say “DEM” … Well, I will still understand the word clearly in context, if we say “TINK” instead of “THINK” it’s likely I still have no issue interpreting what you say.
“I TINK DAT IT’S GREAT” - I probably still understand pretty much what you are trying to say here, “TINK” and “DAT” are not really words according to the English dictionary, so we will still interpret them as “THINK” and “THAT”…
However, if we mix up “I LIVE IN LONDON” for “I’M LEAVIN(G) LONDON” then I might have a little trouble understanding the exact point.
So you see that in this sense, the TH sound(s) don’t matter too much, if you get it wrong it’s likely you will still be understood.
WHY THE TH SOUND DOES MATTER…
Why it does matter is a lot easier to explain, and can pretty much be explained using the following list:
It does help your English to sound much more natural, people will notice this.
People will probably understand you if you mispronounce TH, but they will get distracted (in a human way) “Did they just say ‘dem’ instead of “them”… 🤔
TH provides a great confidence boost! Most students perceive TH as this ‘mystical’ sound, but actually it’s not that difficult, when students realise that they can actually do it - it provides a huge CONFIDENCE BOOST!
This is why I often begin any course with the TH sound as a focus, it’s a lot easier that we think it is, the only reason it’s often perceived as difficult is that most languages don’t have it, it’s a kind of ‘alien’ sound.
So I would encourage you to learn the TH sound, even if it won’t dramatically improve your ability to be understood, it will make you feel like you have more ownership over English, you will feel AND sound more natural when speaking English.
And that’s what you want, right?…
Peace.
Alex.