YAEPT: Voiceless TH in whether, worthy
From: | Jonathan Knibb <jonathan_knibb@...> |
Date: | Saturday, November 11, 2006, 13:27 |
H. S. Teoh wrote:
> It may be a British thing.
FWIW, I've lived in central and southern England all my life and cannot
recall ever hearing voiceless [T] in 'weather', 'whether' or 'worthy',
at least not in a standard southern British accent. The online OED
agrees. I can't speak for other British accents, though (no pun
intended).
In fact, the only (synchronically) monomorphemic words the OED can find
ending with /-T@/ in standard British English are 'author', 'naphtha'
and 'panther', and perhaps 'ether' and 'plaza'. More could be coined by
adding '-er' to a word ending in '-th' ('frother'), and there's always
Bertha and Merthyr (with apologies to Welsh speakers).
Jonathan.
==
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