The most important CONSONANT in English

The Japanese heavy metal group Babymetal has a song called “Babymetal Death”, which is really just them introducing themselves. “Babymetal desu” becomes “Babymetal Death” when sung to heavy metal music.

There is a famous story about Marlene Dietrich and her ‘battle’ with English ‘th’. When filming her breakout movie, Blue Angel, in 1930. Dietrich was playing a cabaret singer, and had trouble with lyric with a song that she had to sing in the movie. She just could not get her mouth around the ‘ths’ combination in the line; “Like moths around a flame”. After several failed takes, the director, Josef von Sternberg, solved the problem by having an extra in the movie call out for a waiter at the moment she sang the word ‘moths’, obscuring her voice for a spit second. ‘Blue Angel’ became a classic of European cinema, and the song, ‘Falling in Love Again (Can’t Help It)’ became a worldwide hit, and Marlene Dietrich’s signature tune. The poor woman had to wrestle with that English consonant combination for the rest of her life.

The more I watch Dr Lindsey’s videos, the more I become frustrated by language education. I’ve come from studying English at a young age to today living in an English-speaking country and no longer considering myself a “learner”, yet throughout the entire time, I was not told how to pronounce “clothes” or “months” and always thought it was my “th” prononciation. Anyone studying English needs to be shown Dr Lindsey’s videos at a very early stage.

I'd be interested in Dr Lindsey speak with ventriloquists about th-s-sh and alternative ways of making them, since I imagine ventriloquists need that skill.

That transition to the sponsor was a masterclass. Well done

my boyfriend is french, and although he has lived in america for ~16 years now, he still drops the final -s off of words!! i've always found it really interesting!

That advert blend was impeccable lol

Oh my goodness, 4:56 was THe Smoothest transiTIOn to an ad I've ever seen

TH-fronting definitely is a thing for some non-natives. My French dad once walked into an Indian restaurant in Dublin meaning to ask for "a table for three" but instead requesting "a table for free", which the lady found hilarious.

As a native Polish speaker, where we have a triple contrast between "s", "sz" (english "sh") and "ś", I felt like these sounds didn't ever pose a problem for my pronunciation. Polish does not, however, have "th". This led me to coping with it for a long time by saying "dat" or "fenk you". Living in the US right now I feel I've improved at both voiced and unvoiced variants of "th", but I think I still pretty often retreat to "d" and "f" when speaking more quickly. Your video was very helpful for my understanding why my Japanese friends would often baffle me by pronouncing "senk you" where my Polish brain would expect "f".

It never occurred to me that the finger to the lips when shushing someone is, intentionally or unintentionally, enhancing the potency of the shush.

I am an American from deep in the Ozarks. I pronounce “months” as “munts” and “month” as “munt”. Didn’t realize it until I moved somewhere else. Crazy.

You literally said “it’s just finished” (2:50) like within 3sec of my laundry finishing in the other room

I’ve been making the “bottom lip S” this entire time, and I never noticed! I was so confused for 80% of the video because the mouth shapes didn’t look what I was used to doing at all.

As a French speaker of English, Japanese, and Spanish, who is hypnotized by spelling and scared of th, this video was awesome

The segue to the ad was incredible. I was floored with the smoothness

Dr Lindsey, you’re worth your weight in gold. I was learning RP pronunciation, but gave up when it came to „s” sound. Even though I don’t have a lisp, I just couldn’t do the „s” sound the way the articulators were shown on the mouth cross-section image. I was thinking, either I do have a lisp, or I’m mental, or deaf, but I can’t reproduce the sound the way which is shown, even though I seem to achieve the same effect in some different way... Now it’s all clear, and I even can make the „s” closer to English way ☺️

I had some tooth complications and had some teeth removed almost two years ago, and I have braces now. At first I found it really hard to make sibilant sounds without enough teeth near the front of my mouth, but discovered that I could actually use the wire bridging the gap where the teeth used to be as the air blockage point to articulate the sound. My sibilants now honestly sound better than they ever used to before, even if how they're articulated is a little unorthodox.

Also, I recommended you earlier African Grey parrots, they, unlike many other parrots, can make distinction between human sounds at the level of pronounced letters (some can make up new words out of sounds) and transform them to their understanding - and it is remarkable because they don't have the generic human speech adaptation for the specific range of frequency and sequences - resulting in clearly distinct and characteristic identification and reproduction of separate sounds - in particular, "s" is reproduced as loud vowel-type high frequency sound (it appears that most of African Grey parrots who learned to identify separate sounds reproduce it in that way). It is still perceived by humans and parrots as "s", loud and clear "s".

My English phonetics teacher at uni told me I had a lisp, which completely shocked me. I even saw a speech therapist, who quickly gave up, saying that my front teeth are just hella weird. She made me put the tip of my tongue behind my lower front teeth, which is what all the diagrams show for Czech /s/, but I just can't produce the right sound like that. Made me realize I pronounce the English /s/ when I speak Czech. Years later, job interview at a school. The headmistress says I pronounce the English /s/ when speaking Czech, which is a problem, but that she's willing to overlook it and hire me. Made me self-conscious, so I refused and ended up with a better-paying job somewhere else.