2009-06-07

'TH' Stripped down to 'S'

Listening to Rammstein's Stripped cover I've hit another speech mannerism that Till has in common with my grandfather, and probably most Swedes, Germans, etc. - the pronunciation of the English 'Th' sound as 'S'. Nobody's taught him the tongue-to-teeth trick. I don't know how many speakers of Germanic languages read this site, but a good trick when speaking English is to consider Th as a 'T' with a slip of the tongue:

When we pronounce the sound of the letter T we touch the tip of our tongue to the roof of our mouth, just behind the top incisors. If you do exactly the same thing, but move the tip of your tongue forwards so it's touching the bottom edges of your top incisors you will produce the English Th sound. It's an easy trick, but it doesn't seem to be one that's taught to Germanic language speakers, which seems a bit daft given how simple it is.

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