Previously, we have touched on the phenomenon of th-fronting, where the ‘th’ in words like ‘three’ and ‘thing’ are pronounced like an ‘f’. This makes words like ‘three’ and ‘free’ sound almost identical. Today, I want to talk about one of the other options mentioned in the poll done in that essay, one where the ‘th’ is pronounced as a ‘t’. This would make words like ‘three’ and ‘tree’, and ‘thing’ and ‘ting’ sound almost identical in some varieties of English. This phenomenon is called th-stopping.

The term th-stopping features the [θ] and [ð] being realised as stop consonants, usually [t] and [d] respectively. These are known as alveolar stops, as these consonants are articulated using the alveolar ridge. However, some varieties of English may realise these sounds as [t̪] and [d̪] instead. These are dental stops, which are articulated using the teeth instead of the alveolar ridge. In these cases, these dental stops can be distinguished from the alveolar counterparts, unlike in other varieties of English where [θ] and [ð] seem to merge with [t] and [d].

TH-stopping has been documented in various Englishes around the world, with some notable ones being those spoken in the Caribbean and West Africa, as well as some varieties in East Asia like Singapore English. For Singapore English, for example, th-stopping usually occurs at the start of a word, such as the, which sounds something like [də]. However, th-fronting may occur at the end of some words like teeth, in which it would some something like [ti:f]. A similar pattern is noted in Malaysian English, which has several studies assessing its phonotactic alterations, and how they differ from standard American English or British Received Pronunciation. Some examples will be linked below in Further Reading.

A couple other examples include Irish English and Indian English. In these Englishes, words like thin and tin are still distinguished, unlike previously mentioned Englishes wherein both words would sound like tin. In Irish English, thin would sound like [t̪ʰɪn], which uses a voiceless aspirated dental stop, while tin would sound like [tʰɪn], which has a voiceless aspirated alveolar stop. Meanwhile in Indian English, thin would have the some pronunciation as that in Irish English, but tin would use the voiceless retroflex alveolar stop, as [ʈɪn]. However, some demographic groups which speak Irish English such as working-class or rural speakers might merge the sounds together.

In the United States, th-stopping may be seen in some particular demographics, such as the working class, or immigrant communities. Amongst these, New York City English has been raised as an example where th-stopping has become a feature, as a rich history of immigration from Italy, Ireland, and Poland may have been attributed to a substrate effect for the variety of English there. Luiza Newlin-Łukowicz’s 2013 publication has analysed the phenomenon of th-stopping in bilingual Polish Americans in New York City, providing a contemporary look into th-stopping in a particular immigrant community in the United States.

TH-stopping in African-American Vernacular English or AAVE does indeed occur, but not to the same extent as that found in Caribbean English. Other variations to the ‘th’ sound do occur in AAVE, such as th-fronting as well. Firstly, th-stopping usually occurs in the start of words, but this only applies to words starting with the [ð] sound, which would sound like [d] (and sometimes [v]). The [θ] still sounds like [θ], and may also undergo th-fronting to sound like [f]. This makes this sound like dis. TH-fronting also usually occurs at the middle and end of words, however, making month sound like [mʌmf]. But for words like nothing, which sounds like [nʌʔɪn] and with, which sounds like [wɪʔ], an extra process occurs in addition to th-stopping. Here, where the [θ] occurs in Standard American English would correspond to the [t] sound in AAVE. That is the th-stopping part. However, there is the process called t-glottalization that changes this [t] to a [ʔ] sound, a glottal stop. This t-glottalization is usually seen in many accents in the United Kingdom (hence the ‘bottle of water’ meme), making it a stereotype of British English.

Interestingly, this phenomenon seems to have spread to younger speakers in Manchester in the United Kingdom. Reported by Rob Drummond, this phenomenon was seen amongst 14-16 year-olds who have been ‘excluded from education’, but was not influenced by ethnicity. Instead, the influences largely come from social practices or culture such as music, with grime and dancehall music named as among the more relevant factors. Grime, for instance, is a genre of electronic dance music or EDM that arose in London in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s. Some songs or tracks in this genre may include rap. This influence could have fostered some form of ‘street identity’ in that particular demographic, leading to the rise of th-stopping in some of the United Kingdom’s urban youth population.

While th-stopping does not universally occur in the varieties of English, this phenomenon has occurred in many other Germanic languages, making sound correspondences between the dental fricatives and the alveolar stops notable. Think of cognates between German and English, such as Mutter and mother, Bruder and brother, and der and the. However, when we hear strong German accents in English, we find that the dental fricatives are replaced by something different. In fact, you might have seen this replacement in some memes about such accents. Next time, we will talk about the phenomenon of th-alveolarization, wherein /θ ð/ becomes [s] or [z].

Further Reading

Ali, B. A. J. K. (2020) ‘Phonological contrastive analysis of consonant and vowel phonemes of Received Pronunciation and General Indian English’, ADRRI Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 13(3), pp. 1-24.

Baksaran, L. (2008) ‘Malaysian English: Phonology’, Varieties of English, 4, pp. 278-291.

Chan, L. X. (2023) ‘TH-stopping and laryngeal contrasts in Malaysian English’, Proceedings of AJL, 7, pp. 71-80.

Drummond, R. (2018) ‘Maybe it’s a grime [t]ing: th-stopping among urban British youth’, Language in Society, 47(2), pp. 171–196. doi:10.1017/S0047404517000999.

Newlin-Łukowicz, L. (2013) ‘TH-stopping in New York City: Substrate effect turned ethnic marker?’, University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 19(2), pp. 151-160.

Panek, M., Ferrange, E. & Zumstein, F. (2015) ‘TH-stopping and /t/ lenition in Irish English’, PAC 2015: Variation, Change, and Spoken Corpora, Toulouse, France.

Phoon, H. S., Abdullah, A. C. & Maclagan, M. (2013) ‘The consonant realizations of Malay-, Chinese-, and Indian-influenced Malaysian English’, Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(1), pp. 3-30.

Yamaguchi, T. & Pétursson, M. (2016) ‘The new [t] in Malaysian English’, English in Malaysia (Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture 14), pp. 45-64.