Recently I have been listening to an interesting audio book about linguistics, the study of human language.
One thing the book talked about was how some sounds tend to soften in languages over time, and other sounds tend to disappear. A hard consonant such as “t’ might soften to “d” over time, or “K” might become “g”. Breathy sounds, which require the speaker to use a hard breath to make a sound, quite often disappear. This includes the sounds “th’ as in “think”, and “h” as in “hat”.
The most likely explanation is that lazy speakers of the language don’t take the time to pronounce each sound clearly when speaking. If this lazy spoken form can still be understood, then it becomes more and more common until the lazier form is considered the only correct form of the language.
When the book said that “th” is a sound which often disappears in language, I thought of my English friend, Joanna. I have noticed that she often pronounces “th” as “f”. She will say, “I had a baf last night,” or, “Let’s fink about it.”
I am not, by the way, calling my friend lazy! In her local dialect, people were saying “baf” and “fink” before she was born. She is showing her pride in her local area by using her dialect when she talks with me, instead of standard English.
I do the same by answering her in my Glasgow dialect of English. We change words and phrases in what probably started as a lazy tongue too. For example, I often say “Ah cannae,” which in standard English is, “I can’t.”
Thank goodness for writing. As long as we share a writing system, we can learn a standardised form of English at school, and be able to communicate with each other. At some point, Joanna’s son will ask, “Mummy, why is ‘fink’ spelled ‘think’?”
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