Irish slang - “t” vs “th”

old Irish man laughingSo you speak English. Why not travel to the land of saints and scholars where English has been lyrically embellished since the dark ages; a week or two in Ireland and I won’t even need a translation dictionary!

A few weeks of hearing your language dancing gracefully and coherantly across the Irish tongue might be more challenging than you think! Ireland may be a predominately english-speaking nation, but the thing that tickled my ears the most when I first moved here and that tends to confuse our stateside guests is some of the slang. So, below is the twenty-fifth in a series I’m publishing on some common Irish slang that used to confuse us when we first arrived.

T vs TH - Chances are, most places in Ireland, speakers will swap these two sounds, depending where they fall in a word.

It’s a well-known idiosyncrasy of the Irish accent that words beginning with “th” get changed to a hard “t” sound. If you’re not prepared for it, it can cause some confusion.

Despite the well-known Irish preference for hard “t” at the beginning of a word, Irish folks actually have no problems pronouncing the “th” sound. In fact, a hard “t” occurring mid-word will probably get changed to a “th.” However, should a “th” sound occur naturally mid-word, some regional dialects swap it for a hard “d” sound. Confused? Perhaps some examples will help:

Three - “tree” [Initial "th" becomes a hard "t"]
Butter - “buth-er” [mid-word hard "t" becomes a "th"]
Other - “udder” [mid-word "th" becomes a hard "d"]

Here’s a few more:

The - “tuh” [Initial "th" becomes a hard "t"]
Better - “beth-er” [mid-word hard "t" becomes a "th"]
Brother - “brudder” [mid-word "th" becomes a hard "d"]


By Seán | Permalink

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Comments

Irish slang - Master Post - About Ireland | August 3rd, 2007 at 2:05 pm
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Séan (There's an awful lot of them) | November 4th, 2007 at 12:48 am
top comment

I can’t say I totally agree with that, Up here in Donegal we have a decent amount of control over our t’s and th’s.
If there’s any softening of a word such as butter or water, it’s usually in jest, and the r at the end is rolled ever so slightly, signifying the jocular nature of it further. :)

Pye | April 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
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The worst thing in Ireland is the posh people who pronounce the TH in Thomas as the TH in through. It grates my head when people talk like that. I blame RTÉ. The others are perfectly normal though.



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