‘Th’ sound may vanish from English

Linguists say immigration and AI systems may change English by 2066

London, Sept. 29: ‘Th’ sound will vanish completely from the English language in the next 50 years, according to linguists who predict that immigration and artificial intelligence systems may fundamentally alter the Queen’s English by 2066.

Many foreigners struggle to pronounce interdental consonants — the term for a sound created by pushing the tongue against the upper teeth — such as ‘th’.

The ‘th’ sound also called the voiced dental nonsibliant fricative is likely to change to be replaced an ‘f ’, ‘d’, or ‘v’ meaning 'mother' will be pronounced 'muvver' and 'thick' will be voiced as 'fick'. Within the next few decades immigration will have fundamentally altered the English language, according to experts at the University of York.

“Given the status of London as the linguistically most influential city in the English-speaking world, we can expect to see significant changes between now and the middle of the century,” said Dominic Watt, a sociolinguistics expert from the University of York.

The report was produced from a study involving analysis of recordings from the last 50 years as well as social media language use, 'The Telegraph' reported.

Other changes likely to become widespread by 2066 include a habit known as 'yod dropping' in which the 'u' sound is replaced with an 'oo'. It means 'news' is pronounced 'nooze' and 'beauty' changes to 'booty'.

The 'l' at the end of words will be dropped so that the words 'Paul' and 'paw' will sound the same. Similarly, 'text' will lose the final 't' to become 'tex'.

Technology will also change the way people speak, and the experts predict that as artificial intelligence emerges, computers could begin to invent new words.

“Already we're seeing text words phrases coming into respected dictionaries. As time goes on we're going to see more and more of that kind of thing,” said Watt. —