Different Pronunciation Features of “TH” in China and India’s Official News

肖瀟　劉婷　陳自力

【Abstract】English is the most widely spoken language in the world. However， people from different countries usually have different accent when they speak English. Though English is Indias official language， there are much interesting phenomenon in Indians English speaking， of which we are quite fond. Therefore， we start to compare the English accent of Indian with that of China. This essay is written to study the difference “th” pronunciation between China and Indias official news.

【Key words】“th”； pronunciation； English； China； India

Discovery

As English majors， we find its difficult to pronounce “th” correctly， which is always pronounced as /s/ by Chinese. For example， the word “thanks” should be pronounced as /θ??ks/. However， most Chinese are used to pronouncing it as /s??ks/. And this kind of wrong pronunciation also applies to some other words， which are partly combined by “th”， such as theater /?θi?t?/， thunder /?θ?nd?（r）/， Thursday /?θ?：zde?/ and so on. In order to find out if people in different countries have special pronunciation of “th”， we find some Indian videos to study. And we discovered that most Indian official English speakers pronounce “th” as “d”. And this kind of incorrect pronunciation also applies to many words like something/?s?mθ??/， eleventh/?"levnθ/， month /m?nθ/， etc.

Observation

So， we decide to find the two countries official videos to observe their pronunciation of “th”.

For China， we watch videos of CCTV-9， which is the official English news of China， to observe the hosts pronunciation. And we find that Chinese hosts pronounce the words a little slightly although they try to pronounce them as English do， such as thing/θ??/， something/?s?mθ??/，three/θri：/，thanks/θ??ks/，south/sa?θ/ and thousand/?θa?znd/， which are surprisingly different from which we have discovered. However， their pronunciation of some words still need to be corrected like month/m?nθ/，which is nearly pronounced as/m?ns/， through/θru：/ as /sru：/ and eleventh/?"levnθ/ as /?levn?/.

For India， we listen to videos of India Today which is the official news of India. In Up South： Schools， Colleges Reopen in Tamil Nadu， we find their pronunciation of something/?s?mθ??/， anything/?eniθ??/， nothing/?n?θ??/ is standard. But when they encounter with the word month/m?nθ/，they would pronounce it as /m?nt/ instead. Besides， they easily pronounce eleventh/?levnθ/，twelfth/twelfθ/ as /?levn?/ and /twelf?/. Whats more， in Justice for Nirbhaya： Maneka Gandhi： on Juvenile Convicts release， we find that they easily pronounce three/θri：/ as /dri：/，thing/θ??/ as /???/ and thanks/θ??ks/ as /d??ks/.

Hypothesis：

For Chinese， official English pronounce “th” mostly like the the International Phonetic Alphabet， but they sometimes tend to pronounce “th” a bit like /s/ when “th” at the end of the word. While the Indian official English tend to pronounce “th” as /d/ when “th” at the beginning of the word， and they can pronounce “th” correctly when “th” at the middle of a word， and they pronounce “th” closely to /?/， when “th” at the end of a word.

Testify

We start to testify our hypothesis by listening videos from CCTV-9 and Indian Today which are both the official channels.

In the process of testifying Chinese official English speakers pronunciation of “th”/θ/， we listened to lots of videos， such as Toronto European returns to profit in Q4，UNV programme on CCTV-9 dialogue，CCTV-9 Biz China， etc. When we pay attention to “th” words like Thursday， thousand， both， we find the host pronounce them the same as International Phonetic Alphabet， but a few words pronunciation of “th”（month， both， etc.）are similar to /s/， while some “th” words are pronounced not so accurately.

As for Indian ， we watched Clash of Titans： Cong Legal Luminary on India Today， India today conclave（2014），India today conclave（2015）， which are all spoken in official English. The words in which “th” is placed at the beginning tend to be pronounced as /d/ like think， thousand， thanks， three， through and thirteen. When “th” is placed in the middle of the words， most of them can be pronounced accurately. However， “th” are usually pronounced as /?/ when it is placed at the end of the words.

In order to get more exactly result， we watched more videos focusing on the pronunciation of “th”， so that our observation can apply to the specific “th” words.

Conclusion

After testifying， we find hosts of CCTV9 can mostly pronounce “th”/θ/similar to International Phonetic Alphabet， when sometimes speaking “th” a little bit like /s/. But in India today， the situation is more complicated. Through researching， we find they dont simply pronounce “th” as /d/， but change the pronunciation according to its position in words.

Above all， when “th” should be pronounced as /θ/， we conclude that in CCTV-9， “th” tends to be pronounced as voiceless consonant /s/ ， while in India Today， it is more likely to be pronounced as voiced consonant /d/ and /?/.