I met Ailbhe's eldest daughter in Dublin a couple of years ago when she was two and a half, and I found the difference between her ths and those of a little boy a few months younger who'd always lived in Ireland quite astonishing. Obviously, I can hear the difference between various English Ths- and Irish ones, but there's something about small children doing it that really heightens the difference: they seemed to be approaching it from such different angles.
But Ailbhe says that the "f" sound for "th" is a fairly normal part of Irish children's development too, so perhaps I am generalising from too small a sample!
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Date: 2009-01-26 09:41 pm (UTC)I met Ailbhe's eldest daughter in Dublin a couple of years ago when she was two and a half, and I found the difference between her ths and those of a little boy a few months younger who'd always lived in Ireland quite astonishing. Obviously, I can hear the difference between various English Ths- and Irish ones, but there's something about small children doing it that really heightens the difference: they seemed to be approaching it from such different angles.
But Ailbhe says that the "f" sound for "th" is a fairly normal part of Irish children's development too, so perhaps I am generalising from too small a sample!