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How to distinguish th and f sound? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| wky92hk Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5688 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 1 of 32 01 May 2009 at 6:44am | IP Logged |
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hello..I am learning English and come from Hong Kong.
It's a problem for me that, though I know how to pronounce th sound, but I can't distinguish the difference between th and f by hearing I think it kinda like the problem r-l from Japanese Is it impossible to be corrected? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maya_star17 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5917 days ago 269 posts - 291 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 32 01 May 2009 at 7:06am | IP Logged |
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Do you listen to a lot of English? Movies, music, radio, friends etc?
"F" sounds much stronger than "Th", to me. I think if you keep listening to a lot of English, it will become easier because you will become more used to the sounds of English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| khatrineluz Newbie Philippines Joined 5755 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Studies: English | Message 3 of 32 01 May 2009 at 7:20am | IP Logged |
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It is possible to be corrected, i agree with ,Maya that if you listen to a lot of English you will learn the difference. And keep practicing imitate how they pronounce it. Or might as well, have a voice chat in Skype. Find people who speak English and voice chat with them. I'm sure some will be glad to help u out.
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 32 01 May 2009 at 7:57am | IP Logged |
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It's just a matter of training.
Just a short while ago there was this thread: Best Technique to Learn New Sounds? The only ready-made solution mentioned in the comments is with Japanese as teaching language, though. For some people, increasing the amount of auditory input will work well, like maya_star mentioned. I can imagine that shadowing might help, as well as dictation exercises. For me, watching native speakers while listening to them seems to make the biggest difference, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6374 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 32 01 May 2009 at 8:05am | IP Logged |
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Some native English speakers cannot tell the difference. It's the most common speech
impediment in the English language. Because the 'th' sound in English is one of the most complex phonemes. Native children tend to learn it last and substitute it until they get it. It is very important to get it right if you want to sound correct but the only way is to listen to it over and over. F sounds a bit faster and higher frequency than 'th' to my ears. But as a native you really have no idea how you do it. It is completely different to my ears. In some areas in the UK they actually have an accent where 'th'(unvoiced) and 'f' have merged together and th(voiced) and 'v' have merged together. So if you cannot figure it out you can rest assured that you will still be understood but you will sound little weird to most speakers. Edited by zerothinking on 01 May 2009 at 8:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 32 01 May 2009 at 10:15am | IP Logged |
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It may be a problem to separate the two sounds when you hear them, but not when you produce them:
f - lower lip against upper front teeth th (as in think) - tongue tip against upper front teeth However I could see I problem with speakers who produce an f'like sound without actual contact between the lower lip and the teeth, but with a tiny mouth opening. If you then put the tongue close to the backside of the upper front teeth then you have effectively a sound that is midway between a f and a th. In a broader perspective this shows that language learning should include graphical indications of mouth positions, it is not enough to rely on sounds. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5900 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 7 of 32 01 May 2009 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
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"th" is very difficult, I don't hear it also.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 8 of 32 01 May 2009 at 11:42am | IP Logged |
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I think you just have to watch a lot of English films, or listen to English radio a lot.
It's the same thing with the tones in Chinese! At first it is very difficult for a foreigner to hear that some tones are different from others. But practice fixes the problem! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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