Pronouncing "ths"

I have difficulty pronouncing "th" when it is preceded or followed by "s" or "es". It really bothers me when I cannot pronounce words such as "months", "as though", "clothes" and so on. I can see how they are written in IPA , but I cannot say it myself.
I really appreciate it if you would guide me.

By the way, I want to thank Lazar for his accurate answer. It really helped.

As you're familiar with how they are written in IPA I reckon the best way to master this problem is just practise as much as you can.....it should then come naturally, as it did for us...the native speakers.

Some words containing these letter combinations are pretty nasty....how would you cope with something like "isthmus" (as in Panama) for instance? I know I have to be careful when trying to pronounce this correctly...it's a good thing that it's not an every day word for most people.

<<I have difficulty pronouncing "th" when it is preceded or followed by "s" or "es". It really bothers me when I cannot pronounce words such as "months", "as though", "clothes" and so on. I can see how they are written in IPA , but I cannot say it myself.
I really appreciate it if you would guide me.>>

Well for at least one of those examples you listed ("clothes"), don't worry too much about it, as many native speakers who normally pronounce "th" don't pronounce it in "clothes" (I'm one of them--I *can* pronounce "clothes" with "th" /D/ but I usually don't even tho I have /D/ in other places where it's expected). I'm not sure how to help you on the others, as I have no problem with "as though" or "months." However, I think in fast speech many native speakers may also say "munts." As with any other hard-to-learn sound, I guess all I can recommend is practice, especially if you have native speech as a model (whether by recordings or, even better, real people).

yeah, just say 'cloze' for clothes, and 'munts' for months. You'll have to work on 'as though' of course.

It's not at all unusual to hear months pronounced as /m@ns/. English has a way of dropping consonants when they are particularly tedious to pronounce together, although this is hardly unique to English.

The th in clothes is almost never pronounced, even in formal speech. The most common standard pronunciation by far is /kloz/.

Alireza,

All sounds in any language are learned within ten months of birth according to the experts. This would include the -ths sound of English.

Trying to learn new sounds that are radically different from those in your native language is difficult for anyone. For example, in Cantonese there is an -ô- sound pronounced deep in the throat as in Lô tò ("Green grass") which I found very difficult to pronounce when my Chinese friend, Dr. Lai, tried to explain it to me. Yet, he could pronounce this -o- sound effortlessly himself.

With enough practice you can probably eventually pronounce 'months' correctly. Otherwise, I wouldn't sweat it. Most speakers of English will still understand 'munts'.

The "th" in "clothes" is always pronounced where I'm from (Australia). I found it very strange indeed when, in Canada, I heard the word pronounced as "cloze". I heard this in an ad on TV, I get the idea that this ad may have been from America too because I don't recall ever hearing any Canadians pronouncing it this way. I have to say that it grated on me slightly but enough to have me remember if I'd heard the Canadians around me speaking like this. It may be the most common standard pronunciation by far in Mxsmanic's galaxy but he doesn't speak for all of us.

"Clothes" is interchangeably pronounced with or without /D/ in it in different dialects around the world. Apparently "clothes" without /D/ used to be almost the only way anyone said it, but the /D/ came about as a spelling pronunciation. Either way, don't sweat it--with or without the /D/ is fine.

Not meaning to sweat it but sometimes when someone puts a thing down to a "spelling pronunciation" I wonder how it came to be spelt that was in the first place. For example, I once read that "humble" with a /h/ was a spelling pronunciation and that it didn't used to have a /h/ but, I'm sure, if you trace it back far enough (probably to Classical Latin), you'll find that it once had. "Clothes" is too close in meaning to "cloth" to believe that it's unrelated (without checking a dictionary). "Coth" has a /T/ surely "clothes", coming from the same root, originally had a /T/ or a /D/. So, perhaps it lost this /D/ for a time and then regained it just as "humble" got its /h/ back. I dunno, just an hypothesis.

<<Not meaning to sweat it but sometimes when someone puts a thing down to a "spelling pronunciation" I wonder how it came to be spelt that was in the first place. For example, I once read that "humble" with a /h/ was a spelling pronunciation and that it didn't used to have a /h/ but, I'm sure, if you trace it back far enough (probably to Classical Latin), you'll find that it once had. "Clothes" is too close in meaning to "cloth" to believe that it's unrelated (without checking a dictionary). "Coth" has a /T/ surely "clothes", coming from the same root, originally had a /T/ or a /D/. So, perhaps it lost this /D/ for a time and then regained it just as "humble" got its /h/ back. I dunno, just an hypothesis.>>

You bring up a good point. Yes, historically, "clothes" came from OE "claðas" and presumably some time the /D/ was normally ommitted in pronunciation but with the influence of spelling eventually came back for some speakers. We've seen this happen with "often," which in OE ("oft") had its /t/ pronounced, but the /t/ disappeared there in about the 16th century, only to return for some speakers centuries later as a spelling pronunciation (I don't happen to normally have /D/ in "clothes" and never have /t/ in "often" so those spelling pronunciations don't apply to me but I have other pronunciations which have been borne of spelling pronunciations). Spelling pronunciations aren't necessarily bad, and in Modern English everyone has some pronounciations which were originally spelling pronunciations but are now accepted.

<<For example, I once read that "humble" with a /h/ was a spelling pronunciation and that it didn't used to have a /h/ but, I'm sure, if you trace it back far enough (probably to Classical Latin), you'll find that it once had.>>

That's not always the case though, Jim. Just because a certain word has a silent letter in it doesn't mean that the silent letter used to be pronounced. ''debt'', for example, was never pronounced with a /b/ sound and didn't originally have a ''b''. Same thing goes with the ''s'' in ''island'', it was never pronounced with an /s/ sound and didn't originally have an ''s''.

However, as for ''clothes'', It did originally have a /D/ in it and was spelled with an eth.

<<Just because a certain word has a silent letter in it doesn't mean that the silent letter used to be pronounced. ''debt'', for example, was never pronounced with a /b/ sound and didn't originally have a ''b''.>>

At least not when it came into English, as a loanword from French "dette." It wasn't pronounced with a /b/ in French either, as the historical Latin /b/ had dropped out of the word by that point.

<<Same thing goes with the ''s'' in ''island'', it was never pronounced with an /s/ sound and didn't originally have an ''s''.>>

Yeah, the orthographical "s" in "island" is in false analogy to French "isle" (which became "île" in Modern French), when English "island" actually came from OE "ieg" or "igland," and further back from Proto-Germanic *aujo from a Proto Indo European root *akwa for "water." Compare to Dutch "eiland" or Swedish "ö," also both from *aujo. Dutch and English obviously later tacked on "-land" to the word.

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