Th-stopping

''Th''-stopping is the realization of the dental fricatives as stops—either dental or alveolar—which occurs in several dialects of English. In some accents, such as of Indian English and middle- or upper-class Irish English, they are realized as the dental stops and as such do not merge with the alveolar stops ; thus, for example, ''tin'' ( in Ireland and in India) is not a homophone of ''thin'' . In other accents, such as varieties of Caribbean English, Nigerian English, Liberian English, and older, rural, or working-class Irish English, such pairs are indeed merged. Variation between both dental and alveolar forms exists in much of the working-class English speech of North America and sometimes southern England. ''Th''-stopping occurred in all continental Germanic languages, resulting in cognates such as German ''die'' for "the" and ''Bruder'' for "brother".

New York City English

For the working class of New York City and its surrounding region, the fricatives and are often pronounced as affricatives or stops, rather than as fricatives. Usually they remain dental, so that the oppositions and are not lost. Thus ''thanks'' may be pronounced , , ''or'' in decreasing order of occurrence; all are distinct from ''tanks'' . The variant has a weakish articulation. The opposition may be lost, exceptionally in the environment of a following (making ''three'' homophonous with ''tree''), and in the case of the word ''with'', (so that ''with a'' may rhyme with the non-rhotic pronunciation of "bitter-bidder"; ''with you'' may be , following the same yod-coalescence rule as ''hit you''. These pronunciations are all stigmatized.

The opposition seems to be lost more readily, though not as readily as the "Brooklynese" stereotype might lead one to believe. As in many other places, initial is subject to assimilation or deletion in a range of environments in relatively informal and/or popular speech, e.g. ''who's there'' ; as in many other places, it is also subject to stopping ''there'' . This option extends to one or two words in which the is not initial, e.g. ''other'', which can thus become a homonym of ''utter-udder''. But it would not be usual for ''southern'' to be pronounced identically with ''sudden'' or ''breathe'' with ''breed''.

African American Vernacular English

In African American Vernacular English, in the words ''with'' and ''nothing'', may occur corresponding to standard , with the itself being succeeded by the ''t''-glottalization rule: thus for ''with'' and for ''nothing''. ''Th''-stopping is also reported for some other non-initial s, apparently particularly when preceded by a nasal and followed by a plosive, as ''keep your mouth closed''. In initial position, occurs in AAVE just as in standard accents: ''thin'' is , without the stopping of West Indian accents. Stopping of initial , however, is frequent making ''then'' homophonous with ''den''.

Frequency in other accents

''Th''-stopping is also commonly heard, specifically from speakers of working-class origins, in the American English dialects of the Inland North (for example, in Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Scranton), the Upper Midwest (for example in the especially Fennoscandian-descended locals of Minnesota's Iron Range and Michigan's Upper Peninsula), and the Mid-Atlantic region (for example, in Philadelphia and Baltimore), It is also heard in a minority of speakers of England's Estuary dialect (for example, in London), but only in the case of word-initial . Many speakers of Philippine English and some speakers of other variants in Asia also have ''th''-stopping.

The dialect of Sheffield in England is sometimes referred to as "dee-dar" because of the Th-stopping to change initial to . However, a 1997 study in Sheffield found this was then largely confined to older males.

Homophonous pairs

See also

* List of Th-stopping homophones
*Th-fronting

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Th-Stopping
English phonology
Splits and mergers in English phonology
English th