Thread: round & around

Try this......
To make the TH sound press the tip of your tongue to the back of your upper front teeth, now gently exhale through your mouth.

To add the S sound let the tongue slip forward then drop it into position for the S motion.
It will not be a smooth continuous sound (that really is impossible even for native English speakers). Do it slowly at first then gradually increase the speed. The THS combination is always said a little slower than the rest of the word and is said and heard as a two part sound.

( I will never get ы sound correct)

Originally Posted by marina

But how do you, Aaa, really say these "fifths" and "sixths"?
As to me I pronounce "Zdravstvuytye" as "zdrastvuyte" or "zdras'te"

In quick speech, "fifths" comes out as "fiths", and "sixths" comes out halfway between "sixths" and "sixth".

But in normal speech, "fifths", "sixths", and "crisps" are all completely pronounced. Scary, huh?

I think the hard part for new speakers to English is that most think that since the difficult consonant cluster is in a single syllable, it must be said at the speed of any other single syllable. Hard ones like the ones mentioned above usually take a little longer to say.

Take your time, say the syllables as slow as you need to. Speed will come later.

I say z-drav-st-vuy-tye. Very slowly. But it's understandable (I hope), and I'll pick up tempo later.

Almost no one in my area of the US is able to pronounce the "th" sound, let alone the "ths" sound, so people learning English really shouldn't feel bad about having trouble with it. Most of the people around here are children and grandchildren of Polish and German immigrants from between WWI and WWII, so there is still a lot of Polish spoken (the Germans integrated a lot faster) and there is a strong influence on the English that we speak here. Younger people, who grew up with more TV and radio and such, tend to have less of an accent and more luck with some of the more difficult English sounds (I can say "the" or "sixths" correctly, if I think about it before I say it) but generally you will hear people pronouncing the "th" sound like it is halfway between "t" and "d." I've pretty much given up on ever losing the accent.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

I say z-drav-st-vuy-tye.

BTW Nobody in Russia says this way. Everybody says zdrast-vuy-tye omitting v, so You have one letter less to pronounce

I never understood why foreign speakers find the th sound so difficult (french speakers are the worst, "zis is ze..." instead of "this is the") and equally I have no problems with crisps, but fifths and sixths are both almost impossible to say so I wouldn't worry about it. say fiths and sikths, nobody will notice because they say it like that themselves unless they think about what they are saying

Originally Posted by Oddo

I never understood why foreign speakers find the th sound so difficult

Because it is not present in their native language. And it is difficult to learn how to produce sounds foreign to your language after you've grown up. It is not impossible, but it needs a lot of training.

Yes, think of how difficult it is at first to say Lju (Лю) from an English point of view. This is because there are no words that have this sound so it isn't something we are accustomed to. Except maybe French-derived words like milieu and lieutenant, but the first is easy because the first syllable includes the l sound, and the second is easy because nobody bothers to pronounce it correctly anyway. I've noticed English-speakers drop the liu from words that are Chinese as well.