Irish People Do Say 'th'

A very academic discussion of the "th" sound in one specific dialect of Irish English.
At 2:38 I meant "soft palate", not "hard". Velar sounds like "k" and "g" are made with the back of the tongue on the soft palate.
As someone pointed out in the comments, Irish for Irish is "Gaeilge" not "Gaelige". I'm sorry.

Written and Created by Me.
Art and Additional Editing by kvd102

Translations:
PumaPandora (w/ help from Ivan) - German
Leeuwe van den Heuvel - Dutch
Jesper Berglin - Swedish
PD6 - European Portuguese
Rubýñ - Spanish

[dyla-gent]

Well I never thought I would be given instructions with a mouth diagram and everything on how to talk like I normally do.

[cee_ves]

As an Irish person, I can confirm that Ireland just really liked England so they decided to very peacefully join and there was absolutely no rebellions or civil wars I did a 3 year course on in school

[belltowersubductions]

Speaking as an Irishman, I never consciously noticed this, despite understanding and knowing basically everything you explained. That was an odd experience.

[seaneastman]

This explains really well why fake Irish accents are so grating to Irish ears. The exaggerated t's and d's from non-natives always sounds so harsh in comparison. Thank you!

[ranshin_]

The "your mom joke" hidden at the end was foolishly fun.

[mmcworldbuilding]

as an irish person from dublin i really like this video, and can say that what youre saying is true! ive even heard people with slightly different accents (still dublin ones tho) using /t̪/ even in words where a perscriptivist would say there should be a /t/, like "later"
i can definitely distinguish that sound, even if i personally dont use it all too often

[oddwukk]

As Ukrainian, I am sure that you all just pretend that "man" and "men" sound different.

[RoGo]

I'm Dutch and I followed your "guide" only to learn I've always spoken Irish english lol

[skeetsmcgrew]

My one professor was from Ukraine and she would explain differences like this in her language all the time, and I was like "bish you just said the same thing twice." Interesting how we learn to make these sounds perfectly with zero knowledge how to do it, then later cant even tell the difference between sounds in other dialects let alone other languages

[Astrodexterous]

As someone with the Ulster Dialect (in which this phenomenon does not occur) I’ve never even noticed the difference between the two ‘t’ sounds. Pretty cool tbh

[SKO_PL]

I love how well you made the distinction between what, in Polish, we call ś and sz, even though you probably don't hear the difference yourself 😅

[fgvcosmic]

As a bengali speaker, I can tell the difference between t/th, d/dh naturally. In bengali, those are 4 completely separate letters (with aspiration being another 4 letters)

[MonaLu]

01:03 Irish people pronouncing "th"
01:29 reproducing sounds exercises
02:28 producing plosives
03:11 hearing the difference
03:24 allophones
03:42 phonemes

[michealjones]

As an Irish man I clicked in out of curiosity, I must say I was not expecting this. Very good 👍

[saresartus]

Thank you for making this!!! I'm an English teacher from Ireland in a language school in London and I've been at pains to explain to my colleagues that the whole 'turty tree' thing isn't what they think it is because they can't hear the difference. Now I can just direct them to this video!
(ps you probably already know, but the *reason* it's like this is one of the many Irish-language hangovers that migrated across into Hiberno-English; Irish has 'soft' and 'hard' versions of consonants, kind of like how Russian softens a normal consonant with the Ь).

[daniel.lopresti]

I grew up in Australia (born in UK) and I remember noticing this very strongly aspirated 't' in some stronger Aussie accents, and being intrigued by it, and later realising it most likely came from Irish conv-- err, settlers. :)

[hlibushok]

I laughed when the result of the "interactive" part was just "t".

[tonyhart]

This comes from the Irish language. The t and d sounds are not the same as in English. For example, the (shortened) word for our police is Gardaí. In every day speech people pronounce it "gar-dee", with an English d sound. But when you hear it on the news and they're trying to sound more proper, they say "gor-thee", with an English th sound.
But really, both are wrong, but the sound is half way between d and th.
This distinction is also important in Arabic and Arabs are shocked when a white person can tell the difference. It's quite entertaining

[Veriflon]

I have now successfully watched all your videos on one sitting. I am not a linguist, just your average European speaking three languages but I do find your videos educational, highly fascinating and concise. Please keep up the great work!

[turtlellama]

"I want you to relax your mouth"
Me, with braces: that makes 2 of us