How to Pronounce TH The ULTIMATE Guide for English Learners
Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!
In this lesson, I’ll go over the pronunciation
of the ‘th’ sounds.
I’ll remind you how to make the sounds
because actually there are two sounds
made by the letters ‘th’
and I’ll give you some guidelines
to help you to decide when to use each sound.
And more importantly,
we’ll practise using these sounds in sentences
because that’s when it gets tricky.
Before we get started,
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Okay so the ‘th’ sounds are really common,
really common in English,
though, not many other languages use these sounds.
So if you’re having trouble pronouncing the ‘th’ sounds,
then don’t feel bad about it, you’re definitely not alone.
But the good news is you can improve this sound
and you can start to feel more natural as you’re using it
but you have to commit!
Improving your pronunciation is like going to the gym.
The first time, you’re gonna suck at it.
But each time that you go back
and you work those muscles a little bit more,
the easier it will get
and the better you’ll feel about yourself, right?
So remember, that the tongue is also a muscle
and you need to strengthen it, you need to workout.
So let’s review the position of the tongue.
Open your mouth and push your tongue through,
just a little,
not like this,
like this.
Put your finger there if you’re unsure about
where to stop your tongue.
Notice that the tongue is not completely relaxed,
there’s a little tension.
If you rub the bottom of your teeth with your tongue,
can you feel the tension in your tongue?
This is the same amount of tension that you need to
hold the ‘th’ position.
The tongue is not completely relaxed, it’s lifted
and running through the middle of your mouth.
If your tongue is too high in the mouth,
up behind your teeth,
you’ll make that /t/ or /d/ sound.
And if your tongue is not coming through your teeth,
if you keep it inside, you’ll make a /s/ or a /z/ sound.
So you really must pay attention to the tip
of your tongue,
it must come through between your teeth.
Now as I mentioned, there are two ‘th’ sounds,
a voiced sound and an unvoiced sound.
Now both of these sounds use exactly
the same mouth position.
It’s just that the sound comes from a different place.
Voiced consonant sounds
are made using the vocal cords.
So once you’ve got your teeth and your mouth in
position and you make a sound here,
you should feel a buzzing.
It might even tickle your tongue a little.
Unvoiced consonant sounds are made by air
pushing through your mouth.
So it’s the air that creates the sound.
So keep your tongue and your mouth
in the same position,
make sure you’ve got some air in your lungs
and push the air through.
So this is the unvoiced ‘th’ sound.
So when should you use the voiced
or the unvoiced sound?
That’s a great question
because both sounds are represented
by the same letters.
And I wish I had a simple answer for you,
I know that you like it when I have a simple explanation
of why this rule is like that and when you should use it
but unfortunately in this situation,
there are lots of exceptions.
But there are some guidelines
that I’m going to share with you,
guides that will help you to make a decision
and help you to use the correct ‘th’ sound.
Remember they’re guides, not rules
but let’s focus on the unvoiced sound first,
made with air.
So a ‘th’ at the beginning of content words
is usually an unvoiced ‘th’ sound.
So content words are words that provide
the meaning in a sentence.
There are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
Words like ‘think’ and ‘thought’ and ‘thirsty’
and ‘thankful’ and ‘theory’.
So the ‘th’ at the start of content words
is usually unvoiced.
Now if there is a ‘th’ in the middle of a word,
before a consonant,
it’s usually unvoiced.
‘bathtub’
‘faithful’
‘worthless’
And a ‘th’ at the end of a word is usually unvoiced.
‘month’
‘strength’
‘warmth’
‘teeth’
‘fifth’
There are some exceptions though.
And I’m going to talk about those in just a minute.
Now the voiced ‘th’ sound
made using your vocal cords.
So if there’s a ‘th’ at the beginning of a structure word,
they’re usually voiced. So structure words,
sometimes called function words,
are different to content words
because they don’t have a lot of meaning in
English sentences. They’re grammatical words.
They don’t tell us a lot of information but they’re
important to the structure of English sentences.
So structure words are words like ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘those’,
‘these’, ‘the’, ‘there’, ‘then’ or ‘than’
So all of these words, I mean, some of these words are
very, very, common English words, right?
They’re very, very common.
So learning to pronounce the different ‘th’ sounds
is really important
if you want to sound natural when you speak English.
There is a noticeable difference.
Now a ‘th’ in the middle of the word, when it’s between
two vowel sounds is usually this voiced sound.
‘bother’
‘worthy’
‘mother’
Now I said the ‘th’ is usually unvoiced
at the end of words but except
if the word ends ends in ‘-the’
like ‘bathe’, ‘breathe’ and ‘loathe’.
So these are pretty good guides
but there are always exceptions, aren’t there?
English!
There are exceptions like ‘smooth’
and ‘clothes’
and ‘frothy’.
All of these words are breaking the rules
and there are more!
Actually if you can think of any more,
please add them to the comments
so that we can talk about
some of the exceptions in the comments.
But anyway,
now that you’ve got through most of these guidelines,
it’s time to practise.
So I want you to repeat after me.
Throw those things.
Throw those things to Theo.
There are three of them.
There are three of them over there.
Ready for this one?
At three thirty on Thursday,
a thousand of those thrilling thinkers will gather.
At three thirty on Thursday,
a thousand of those thrilling thinkers will gather.
I love tongue twisters!
Can you think of your own ‘th’ tongue twister?
I think I thought I..
If you can think of one, put it in the comments
so that we can all practise together.
Put your ‘th’ tongue twisters
right down in the comments and let’s practise!
What a workout!
Well done to you!
I mean your tongue might feel
a little exhausted after that
so you can take a break now.
But make sure that you come back to this lesson
tomorrow or the next day and practise again.
It’s just like doing sit-ups right? Each time you do it,
it will get a little bit easier.
Well that’s it for this lesson!
I really hope that you enjoyed it.
Please make sure you give it a ‘like’
and subscribe to my channel
because I make new lessons here, every single week.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson!