Perfect TH Pronunciation | British English Pronunciation Lesson | Voiceless TH Sound

hello everyone and welcome to another lesson with me Anna English here on English like a native today we are doing another perfect English pronunciation video focusing specifically on the th sound now there are two versions of the th sound but today our focus is on the voiceless th the Airy breathy sound many of you may know how to create the sound but still probably struggle when speaking generally in english to create the sound time and time again so regular practice of the th sound is really important so that you really nail that pronunciation to nail something is to get it absolutely right I've nailed it you'd say if you get it right alright fabulous so I have some patrons and already I've got Peter in hello Peter thank you for joining and patrons remember to chat to me in the Skype chat room so that I don't miss your messages and I've got lots of you joining me in the YouTube chat room hello Anna hello join Mohammad and Adnan a1a Wallner Ilona lovely beautiful names alright Mimi's here as well fabulous okay so let's jump straight into this th sound how do we create this sound so as you can see I've made some notes here as always these notes will be made available to my five-dollar patrons and above and they will also be available they are available to buy from my shop which is linked down below you can also get them with a MP and mp3 as well so there's additional things available if you purchase it from the shop and it will also be available to anyone dropping a super chat during this lesson so anyone who helps me you'll be rewarded so here we go the pronunciation of the voiceless th the Shh sound is created by placing the tongue between the teeth and allowing air to pass through creating a hiss if it's voiceless or a vibration mmm if it's voiced okay there are very few occasions where a th is not pronounced in this way for example the words Thames like the river in London pothole Thomas which is a boy's name and Theresa which is a girl's name now these particular example examples there are very few of them they have an letter T and H together but we don't do or mmm we say Thames the River Thames in London we say pothole there's a pothole in the road although I would argue that many natives actually miss off that T and say pothole pothole if you drive your car over a pothole you will do a lot of damage to your vehicle and then the names Thomas and Teresa our prime minister is Theresa May again it's pronounced always with this T but these these are exceptions normally when you see a th together you would have a or ov pronunciation but I think I mentioned this now so these examples are so limited that I would suggest beginners always assume that the letters th will represent one of these sounds or and if you don't recognize this these are phonetics so this is using the IPA the phonetic alphabet if you're not sure how to use phonetics then there is a video available for that I have it on my channel just type in phonetics or learn phonetics and you'll find that video all right so the rules how do we know when to use a voiced and when to use voiceless well unfortunately there are no rulz but there are some regularities which may help you to know when to use the voiced or unvoiced th following these guidelines will help you most of the time but there will be exceptions so these are not hard and fast rules they're just regularities which we've noticed okay so this should help to give you a basic idea so when do we have a voiced sound well you tend to have this sound if the T H is at the beginning of short functional words words like them that these and there you also have this voiced sound if the T H is in the middle of native English words words that originate from this country mother brother rather words that come from Latin or Greek we tend to change it to a voiceless th so for example Cathedral enthusiasm and it's a voiced th if the th comes at the end of verbs like breathe clothe soothe okay and then you'll find the voiceless th in all the words that don't fit into the above categories Oh have I written Cat Cat categories I've written that wrong haven't I oh dear I'll have to correct that typo goodness me that one slipped through the net that's another phrase that we use to slip through the net means something that I've missed that I didn't notice the first time around oh hello Tomic so Tomic has been my first super chat doneita thank you so much you said hi Anna summer Cheers for your lessons and it cheers to you to Tomic thank you so much oh this is hot tea hot peppermint tea because I can't drink caffeine be pregnant thank you so much for your donation and Tomic if you would like a copy of these notes and then just drop me an email and I'll send them to you as a thank you all right hopefully you're all receiving me well because it's saying that my live stream health is not so great but hopefully it's not a problem for you so let's get straight on with some practice of this voiceless th the best way to know whether it's voiced or voiceless really is just practice eventually you won't even think about those regularities or those rules that I've mentioned okay so let's have a look at these practices here right so we've got the first one here this word think think look at my mouth think I want you to repeat after me think fabulous what do you think try this word this one's a little bit more complicated but I do love it it's the word throughout throughout throughout I'll show you my mouth and then you should give it a go here we go throughout throughout you try good very nice then we have the sentence which uses both of these words and it is I think she yawned throughout the performance I think she yawned oh that's a yawn I think she yawned throughout the performance let me give you an example I think she yawned throughout the performance good very nice yond yond you might not have heard that word very often okay fantastic that's the first one done and Justin thank you so much that's very very sweet of you you've dropped a super chat as well you've said my surname is Thomas ah okay that's interesting it's a very common Welsh surname yes that's correct and so you'll know full well Thomas is pronounced with that strong T sound not a th you wouldn't believe how often I get asked if there's an H in the spelling I've not seen it spelt any other way yes I have to agree with you there I do sometimes see people shortening their name to Tom but keeping the th at the beginning which i think is a little unusual normally when people shorten their name from Thomas to Tom they spell it t om but there are a few people who spell it th om do you ever shorten your name I'm guessing you don't because it's a surname but it'sit's interesting isn't it okay let's carry on so we have the next example is the next example we've got is thick thick thick is very similar to think isn't it and then we have thin thin thin so that's thick and thin I'm going to give you those as a visual reference thick thick you try and thin thin you try good the next word is through through through and the example sentence I'll just show you now and then I'll show you the text we have been through thick and thin together we have been through thick and thin together to go through thick and thin means that you've been through everything you've been through big troubles and no trouble so you've had good times and bad times you've taken the hard times and you've taken the good times together so we've been through thick and thin it's a very common saying here in the UK now someone is asking am i pregnant yes I've been announcing it for I think the last month now okay so let's just look at these together with the with this with the notes up here so you got through and we have been through thick and thin together please repeat it after me we have been through thick and thin together fantastic okay and Wow goodness me thank you Peter another super chat has come through it's very generous of you Peter did you leave a message I can I see a message from you no you didn't leave a message but thank you so much and Peter obviously you can message me on the Skype chat room the patron chat room anyway thank you so much for your your kind donation so the next example we're looking for here is thank hopefully a word you're going to use often thank thank make sure this this a is nice and short ah that thank thank you thank and this one trips a lot of people up a lot of people struggle with this okay and we have Thursday Thursday of course we have the th then we have the awkward vowel sound ignore the letter R but we have a I'll show you this in a minute we have a Z sound surfers Thursday Thursday so thank and Thursday I'm going to show you that as a visual reference Thursday Thursday Thursday lots of people pay attention to the letter R but you shouldn't because what you end up with this Thursday Thursday and it's a little unusual see how flat my tongue is Thursday my tongue does nothing it sticks out at the beginning of course 4 th and then nothing Thursday Thursday okay so thank you for seeing me last Thursday is the example let's do it together thank you for seeing me last Thursday and again thank you for seeing me last Thursday fantastic good ok so let me just take a moment to go and check in on my patrons hello patrons hi Francesca you're a new patron thank you so much for joining it's wonderful to have you here Justin I never shortened my surname no and that makes sense so Thomas would only be shortened if it's a first name perhaps Alexander hello Anna could you please explain the meaning of these two sentences I'll do that after the lesson our Alexander I just want to stick to th pronunciations for this live session okay Peter so super chat mucked it up a bit but the important bit worked oh thank you Peter if you have a comment then please do leave it here you know I'm always here to answer okey-dokey so let's jump back into the example text now the next one is a very tricky one for many people and it's the number thirteen thirteen oh it's a tricky one isn't it thirteen sir so you have again that like Thursday and then just into teen thirteen how old is he he's 13 fabulous okay if you're finding this helpful guys then please do show your appreciation by giving this lesson a thumb up and if you know anyone else who might benefit then it would be it would mean the world to me if you could click that share button and let people know that we're here let's get some more people in see if we can push that number above 200 viewers that would be nice wouldn't it for a Friday afternoon okay so after 13 we have the word thermal thermal again we're ignoring this letter R it's interesting isn't it ignore the letter R even though we use it often is what we're looking at thermal thermal and here we have the example sentence that uses both thirteen and thermal thomas is wearing thirteen thermal vests Thomas is wearing thirteen thermal vests listen and repeat Thomas is wearing thirteen thermal vests Thomas is wearing thirteen thermal vests fantastic okay so the next one is important you learn how to pronounce this word whether it's the whole word or just this one on its own tooth because you may need to speak to someone about your teeth or about a toothache obviously you would probably speak to your doctor or your dentist more likely so toothache to fake so think of the th going into this part of the word fake fake toothache toothache it's a tricky one I'll show you a visual reference in a moment but then we also have birthday which so many people struggle with birthday birthday birthday and then we have the word nothing nothing nothing all right let's give you a visual reference on this one so we have ouch toothache toothache my tooth is hurting I have to fake tooth ache yeah then we have birthday again we have that flat our sound birthday not birthday or bird a birthday boy such tricky one birthday birthday your tongue has to do gymnastics for that one then we have the word nothing nothing nothing nice and easy okey-dokey then we have the example sentence you all of those words there's nothing worse than having tooth Oh than having a toothache that should say I'm sure I corrected that maybe I didn't download the correct version there's nothing worse than having a toothache on your birthday there's nothing worse than having a toothache on your birthday it's true there is nothing worse let me show you the notes so you can read along just imagine there's a little aah in there I have corrected it I've just opened the wrong version of these notes there's nothing worse than having a toothache on your birthday fabulous yes that's right the toothache toothache not to fake with an F so what normally happens is people will exchange the th for an F sound so you'll hear thick and thin to fake and that's not correct and we can hear it natives can hear when you don't pronounce the th properly alright okay we have five more example sentences coming up and then that will be the end of the lesson so about ten more minutes okay if you have specific words that you'd like me to pronounce for you hold them for another ten minutes let me get through these other examples and then I'll help you out okay so the next one is another important one something I hope that you all are and it's healthy healthy healthy healthy all that's tricky you have the L and the y sound healthy huh healthy lots and lots of tongue movement going on there are you healthy I hope so I hope you had good health the next one it is athlete athlete do you consider yourself an athlete do you have the body of an athlete I certainly don't well maybe a pregnant elf athlete but now I'm very unfit nowadays haven't been able to do nearly as much exercise so I'm not very healthy and I'm certainly not an athlete so let's put those two into a sentence in the sense it says healthy athletes are ten a penny healthy athletes are ten a penny now the phrase ten a penny can an even remember what this means I'm sure I've covered it in the slang lessons this is a phrase that means they're very common they're ten a penny meaning you could probably buy ten for one penny that's how that's what it literally means but the general meaning is they are very common healthy athletes are ten a penny okay so let's have a look at that centers written down and then try it all together so repeat after me healthy athletes are ten a penny fantastic all right let's have a look at the next one shall we something something nice and easy all you have to do is get the tongue out between your teeth something then we have authentic oh that's a lovely word authentic authentic if something is authentic it means it's real it's not fake so if I go to my local Indian restaurant the people who work in the restaurant the chefs and the waiters and everyone everyone who works there are from India they are Indian and therefore I am offered an authentic Indian meal because it's real is made by Indian chefs with all the ingredients I would expect to find if I was eating in India so I have an authentic Indian meal if I'm buying perhaps some leather shoes you can buy fake leather or you can buy real leather and if it's real leather than it might be rather than saying real leather it will say authentic leather okay so it's not fake it's real and the example sentence here is she was determined to buy something authentic for once she was determined to buy something authentic for once it's let me give you an example she was determined to buy something authentic for once something authentic repeat after me she was determined to buy something authentic for once great fantastic alright so the next one is an important word I'm sure you'll use this often and it's the word south-south not dissimilar to north south south do you live in the north or the south of your country do you live in the northwest the southwest do you live in the Northeast or the southeast so this word gets thrown around quite a lot and the next one is quite tough we have 8/8 so number eight is the eighth in the sequence eighth eighth eighth gosh let's try this example sentence this was his eighth visit to the south of the island this was his eighth visit to the south of the island good good alright let's oh gosh didn't mean to jump up there let's try these ones uh-uh obviously we all live on the earth so it's one that we should be able to pronounce this is a very basic verb what am I talking about a very basic vowel sound then lots of people struggle with is that flat ah that I've been talking about earlier we don't pronounce the R uh see how flat the tongue is it doesn't curl ah ah good then we have month month month that's a tough one what month is it what month is your birthday in I'll be there for a month you might say and then we have this one aftermath mm-hmm so the results afterwards what happens in the wake of an incident and accident a disaster the aftermath the aftermath it's a tough one so the example sentence let's look at this together the earth suffered another blow this month in the aftermath of the alien attack who is like from a sci-fi film the earth suffered another blow this month in the aftermath of the alien attack fabulous okay so we've got the last example now we'll go through and then I'll open it up to your questions your pronunciation problems will be resolved hopefully so we have the word youth hopefully we all have youth on our side Youth youth and then we have beneath beneath what is beneath the carpet then we have the word bath bath now many people mispronounce this and give me a short ah sound bath bath but you would only pronounce that in British English if you're from the north of England or you might pronounce it this way if you're learning American English which is fine as well but Americans say bath bath so they do a short-ass sound but for us if we're learning southern standard British English it should be bath bath okay and finally the all-over sentence is reports say a youth was discovered beneath a bath in bath would see this is capitalized and that means it's a place so we have a city in the UK called bath and it's a very beautiful city and they have a very good university there so reports say a youth was discovered beneath a bath in bath oh so caleb has said what does beneath mean ah okay so beneath means underneath so if it's under so if I put something under my phone I'll say it's beneath my phone it's beneath my phone okay I'm gonna try and put my leg down here without knocking this microphone oh I did little okay there we go right ladies and gentlemen so um this is now your time to put your questions forward so if you have a particular word I'm going to favor the ones that have th's in because that's the focus of this lesson but if you have a particular words that you're struggling to pronounce or a phrase write it in the comments now I could scroll back but it becomes very difficult what I'll do is look at all the comments after the lesson so I see up them all but if you have something you want me to pronounce now rewrite it in the comments so I've got it all together same for you patrons I will go through your comments in a minute and just to let you know if you do buy these notes from my website there is also a little task for you so I ask you to go through this particular paragraph here and underline the voiceless th is in this passage and on the next page I provide the answers of course then you also get all the examples and the passage spoken out by me on an mp3 accompaniment to your purchase so if you're interested in that it's actually on sale so you get fifty pence off it's only $2.99 at the moment on my website and that sale will last until the end of the weekend so if you are interested in getting your hands on those the link is in the description box below okay fantastic so let me help you now all right so the first one I can see here is a Mina says walk to walk versus work we all work hard and you walk on your two legs walk or and work it's a different vowel walk work walk work okay all right I'm gonna jump to my patrons and then come back let me say hello patrons right so what are you guys saying is replacing the th with f acceptable in some English dialects think instead of think in Australian English this is very wrong although many kids use it but I hear a lot of British adults using using it use it yes they do particularly in South London so dropping the th is part of many dialects so if like the cockney accent for example or the general London accent if you have a London accent then the th will likely be dropped that's correct there are other accents as well which tend to drop the th's but I would always encourage you to pronounce your ths properly because it makes a huge difference to your overall pronunciation okay ok fantastic Francesca and I could you please pronounce earth and earth earth and earth they're both the same it's just you have an additional aspirate sound at the beginning here earth we Italians have a problem with the H yes you're probably constricting it if you're Italian from Earth or earth Oh Italians yeah yeah you're either constricting or you're missing it out where you should put it in so just think about breathing like you're trying to smell your breath or you're trying to you're trying to steam up the window earth ok ok Peter I'll answer your question after the lesson antastic okay so yes if you're trying to pronounce the H properly just think of going like that huh that should help okay so could you please pronounce could you please pronounce thirsty thirsty again we have that vowel ah it's a common vowel sir thirsty I'm thirsty are you thirsty now I'm thirsty could you pronounce the difference between very very and very very so very meaning a lot I'm very happy or very which means they are different they have differences very they're there they're there so it's the different vowels very very could you please pronounce I think you're trying to write the word schedule but I'm not sure it's terribly miss spelt if you are otherwise it's a word I don't know but if it's schedule then British English pronounce it Shh edge all and American English is schedule DF coat has asked for thunder storm thunder storm there's a thunderstorm what else could you please pronounce Gina Gina we don't we don't really see the difference between a J or a G in this particular instance ly so Gina with a J and Gina with a G I would pronounce both of them Gina what is the main problem in pronunciation for Polish people have you had polish students yes I have regular polish students and there's one that I spoke to just this morning who's a regular student again constricting constricting H is normally that huh th's for Polish this so this lesson is very good for Polish in learners because the sound is difficult the earth vowel sound along our shirt work world birthday words like this always cause issues for Polish natives of course everyone's different but that's generally what I've experienced what else do we have where where is it where and were so where were you where were you I was next door hmm how do you pronounce rural I think I have this every single lesson how do you pronounce rural rural could you pronounce meh meh meh I know it's spelt very bizarrely for the pronunciation but we say mayor the mayor of the town okay please tell me please tell me the difference between to help and to help out to clean and to clean out to help and to help out are the same you it's just helping it's assisting to clean and to clean out have a slightly different meaning if you clean out something it means that you're getting rid you're removing things from that place so if I had a clean out in here I would be taking things away and putting them in a bin or taking them to a charity shop so to take out to remove to clean might just be to Hoover to polish to dust so to make it look clean and tidy but to clean out usually means removing something okay I've tried lots of times to write and speak in English but I can't any advice so I guess just lots of practice you need to surround yourself in as much influence English in fluence as possible so listening to music that's English listening to watching English language films listening to podcasts I do have some links to things like that down below trying to make friends with someone who who is learning English or already speaks English and practicing on a daily basis watching lots of lessons going to classes one on one with a teacher would help so it's just it's just practice really unclothed says for at unclothed so if you take clothes off something you unclose it on clothes it it's not not a common word I have to say worthwhile if something is worthwhile then it's worth doing it's it's it's going to be good for you to do it's worthwhile these live lessons are worthwhile and make them worthwhile for me and for you because I get to connect with my audience and you hopefully learn something it's worthwhile okay Anna is this complete series of pronounciation alphabets or just some letters a killer I do plan to do all the sounds so over time I will get through all the sounds yes so yes consider it a series button rotten rotten rotten so any words that have two t's together you can either say two-button rotten or you can do what we call a lateral plosive button button cotton but cotton it's where the tongue stays up on the roof of the mouth and there's a little explosion of air to the side but you can do either and both are fully acceptable okay Justin let's have a look at what you're saying you've said do you pronounce the th in clothes clothes yes I think it sounds the same as clothes is that wrong clothes I guess a lot of natives when you're having a general conversation may be lazy and say clothes clothes I threw my clothes into the drawer I need to hang my clothes up in the wardrobe clothes I threw my clothes on the floor I threw my clothes in the wardrobe I guess more often than not natives do cheat it a little bit because it's difficult with the th straight into the S clothes clothes but we should practice and work towards a th pronunciation okay JJ has asked for enthusiastic enthusiastic that's a great word isn't it enthusiastic I'm enthusiastic about teaching English hopefully you're enthusiastic about learning English ok Mohammed what does a pear-shaped and odds and sods mean if something goes pear-shaped goes pear-shaped we usually use the verb go if it goes pear-shaped and then it goes wrong it doesn't follow the plan it goes wrong so imagine I'm talking to you now I spill my tea the microphone sets on fire and the lighting breaks everything goes wrong I could say my live stream went pear-shaped my live stream went pear-shaped today okay and odds and sods just means little little things lots of little unimportant things or it could refer to tasks if you ask me what I have in my drawer I could say nothing important just a few odds and sods so a cloth a memory stick a plug just odds and sods little bits and bobs that aren't important or you could ask me what are you doing today and I could say no our odds and sods I'm doing lots of little tasks nothing big nothing important to talk about okay last few questions and then I'll have to close the session but thank you so much for joining me so far how do you pronounce immediately immediately immediately which means right now how do you pronounce week like this week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday week-long II and week I'm not feeling strong I'm week exactly the same pronunciation week week okay what is the pronunciation of the word minority minority minority fabulous although although with this word although I would say cheat the L don't say all though although it's very difficult make the L sound on the teeth all although so put the tongue out for the L although although and that makes it much easier and that's what the natives do Imran has asked for the weather what sorry the weather what's the weather like today weather and the the word weather whether I go outside or whether I stay inside it will still be bad weather outside there's a great tongue twister which is weather the weather is cold or whether the weather is hot will beat together whatever the weather whether we like it or not it's a great one I like that one the best okay is it normal to say ain't in daily English conversation ain't is not grammatically correct it is in some songs ain't no sunshine when she's gone so it's famous its famously used but we don't I guess some people use it but I guess if you've had I don't know I was gonna say if you had a good education but I don't really think it comes down to that I don't think many people realize it's grammatically incorrect I didn't until I started teaching English I just never used it because it didn't feel right so I guess some people do use it but I don't hear it very often is the answer okay or am i darlings I think I should leave it there thank you so much for joining me if you haven't already subscribed then please do I know about 60% of you don't subscribe you watch these lessons and yeah you aren't subscribed and that's a shame because without being a subscriber I can't grow the channel I can't reach new people and you don't get notified when I upload lessons so please do subscribe and press that Bell notification button if you're not receiving notifications even though you have done that go to your notification settings and there you'll find exactly what's going on I will be live on Monday at 4 o'clock on the dot and we will be covering some more phrasal verbs also there will be a new video lesson out tomorrow so something for you to look forward to this weekend so a lesson tomorrow and a live lesson at 4 p.m. UK time on Monday so I hope you will join me for that in the meantime if you're really missing me then I will be on Instagram so come and ship me out ship me up check me out on Instagram British English Pro great have a lovely day everyone lots of love from London take care and I remember every time that my software goes a bit funny so I can't say goodbye right this second here we go there we go it's caught up thank you for joining me you

Channel: English Like A Native

Views: 37,456

Keywords: Learn English, English like a native, Anna English, british english, english lesson, Live english lesson, english vocabulary, learn english, english, british, speaking english, english phrases, pronunciation, english accent, british accent, british pronunciation, english pronunciation, pronunciation lesson, th sound, voiceless th, th, how to pronounce th, pronouce voiceless th, english th, correct th pronunciation, perfect th pronunciation, th pronunciation british

Id: ofdm_IfB3EY

Length: 44min 21sec (2661 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018