Talk:Decoding exercises: "th"

Hi Ghoti First my apologies. I'm new to editing Teflpaedia (or Wikipaedia) and didn't read all the instructions. Nor did I realise that you had written the page and you were the 'chief editor'. I'm a retired schoolteacher with speech and drama qualifications, also with many years teaching English as a foreign language both prior to and following my retirement. When I checked out the th sound recently for a student in the many language books I've studied since my speech qualifications in the 70s, I also came across your page, which was extremely helpful.is However, I would disagree with your inclusion of clothes as an example for the silent th; 'Silent "th": clothes /kləʊz, kləʊðz/' I believe that without a ð before the z it becomes lazy, almost slovenly spoken English. I would always add the ð. Look forward to your reply. DByron

Hi DByron. I'm not the owner of Teflpedia, nor the owner of any of the articles. You are welcome to modify my mistakes. In this case I should put a reference, which is. Maybe you can add a usage note. Thanks for your feedback, and feel free to modify any articles. Ghoti (talk) 04:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks Ghoti for your prompt response. I notice your link to the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries (and indeed other dictionaries) does add the silent th. This doesn't 'sound right' to me and can be confused with the verb close! However, I've found some don't include the silent th for 'clothes' - Encarter English and Cambridge English, though I must admit the American audio sounds very much without the th. I'll try to correct it properly this time, but do check my alteration. I will of course bow to your longer experience on Wiki editing and will gladly accept your revision should you've found the silent th is commonly used in your experience. I was considering what we teach students, rather than what we often hear! DByron

I'm not a native speaker, so you judgement is much better than mine. I also think that /kləʊz/ can be confused with the verb "close"; however the alternative may sound even sloppier (I'm thinking in students who struggle at consonant clusters). Note that I suppressed the sentence "Silent th" in the article. Ghoti (talk) 13:41, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

That looks fine now. I can certainly agree with taking out "Silent th" and adding the reference to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionaries to show their pronunciation /kləʊz/. Thanks for the chat and debate. I wish you well in all you're doing for these pages. DByron

Thanks. Ghoti (talk) 21:04, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

The above text was copied from Teflpedia:Teachers' room