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I am watching a video course which teaches American accent (The video course is called 'The American Accent'). The teacher inside it says that most of Americans actually omit the [th] sound and pronounce 'months' as 'mons' and 'clothes' as 'clos', because they have problem to pronounce them as [ths] specified in dictionary. Of course, they still pronounce 'month' and 'cloth' as it is.

The 'ths' and 'thes' sound is indeed difficult to second language learners like me. But I am a bit surprised that most Americans feel the same as us:-)

Is it real?

Void
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Hua
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    Sad but true. In my experience we say "munts" and "clos" unless we are trying to be exceptionally clear. – Mark Hubbard May 27 '16 at 15:00
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    I don't think it's sad at all - "nths" and 'thes" are difficult to articulate quickly and it makes sense to elide the 'th' if it's obvious what the word is from the context. It's not lazy, it's efficient ;) – ColleenV May 27 '16 at 15:07
  • @MarkHubbard This is really interesting. But in some other videos the teachers are still trying to teach the original perfect pronunciation [ths] to English learners. I was frustrated and I can see many others too:-) – Hua May 27 '16 at 15:09
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    There is some value in learning to pronounce it precisely before you learn to pronounce it with an accent or informally. – ColleenV May 27 '16 at 15:53
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    My first reaction was to say "No way, we don't say that!" But after thinking about it I will say yes, we do tend to slur and elide sounds, particularly in combinations that would be hard to say quickly. For example, in the phrase "months to go", that combination n-th-s-t is awkward to speak quickly and clearly, so the "th" tends to drop out or get softer, so it can sound a little more like "munts tuh go" or even "munsta go". Same for "clothes" - in "clothes for", the combination "ð-z-f" is hard, so it approaches cloze instead of "clothes". But in isolation, the words sound much clearer. – stangdon May 27 '16 at 16:38
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    I would say generally yes, I pronounce it "munts" and "close", but this isn't because we have a problem saying "months" or "clothes", it's just easier and requires less thought to say "munts". – DJMcMayhem May 27 '16 at 19:34
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    Every accent of every language has similar shortcuts. I'm sure your native language does, too, even if you're not consciously aware of them. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 27 '16 at 19:46
  • We don't say "clos" with an /s/ sound, but rather a /z/ sound (because the th is voiceless.) – Azor Ahai -him- May 27 '16 at 20:26
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    I'm a domestic born American and I've never heard anyone pronounce months that way. I always hear the th. – Hack-R May 28 '16 at 00:40
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    Yeah, and then there's clothespin and clothesline, and YOU try pronouncing the th in those two! – Alan Carmack May 28 '16 at 03:35
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    Relevant scene from the movie My Cousin Vinny – Tobia Tesan May 28 '16 at 08:21
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    @TobiaTesan That film clip could almost be an answer! It illustrates not only the variation among speakers, a single speaker's ability to shift, and the perceived higher status of the more-articulated form, but the potential for confusion between speakers with different accents (rare in practice but it does happen). – Ben Kovitz May 28 '16 at 09:55
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    @Hack-R - When I say the word by itself – months – the "th" sound is fairly clear. But when I use the word in a longer phrase – such as ten months to go – the "th" is harder to hear clearly. if spoken fast, then, phonetically, it almost sounds as much like monts as months. – J.R. May 29 '16 at 17:02

4 Answers4

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Some do, some don't. Even one person's pronunciations can shift depending on the situation.

I pronounce months /mʌnθs/, with the θ. I think most people I know personally also pronounce the θ. But not all. When I hear it without the θ, I cringe (inwardly). To my ear, that sounds sloppy. There are also some East-coast regional accents that make it /mʌnts/. I've even heard /mʌmfs/.

When I was a kid, I pronounced clothes /kloʊz/, without the ð. That's how most Americans pronounce it. But I have heard some people pronounce it /kloʊðz/. To my surprise, many of those people grew up in the same region that I did, central Ohio. When I heard that pronunciation, it sounded clearer, more elegant, and more formal than my pronunciation, but also a bit fussy (to my ear, not theirs). As an adult, my pronunciation of this word tends to vary. While giving a talk at a research conference, I would probably pronounce it /kloʊðz/; while asking about when the washing machine will be ready, probably /kloʊz/.

If you want to sound educated, intelligent, high-class, or formal, then articulate every vowel and consonant clearly, in the standard way. If you want to sound uneducated, not-so-intelligent, low-class, or casual, then slur anything that's hard to pronounce. There's more subtlety to the way people perceive clarity in speech than that, but if you master clear speech first, you'll be fine. Later, you can learn when to "lax up".

By the way, for some time when I was a little kid, I was puzzled about how you could make "clothes" singular. No one says /kloʊ/. And "clothe" (/kloʊð/) is a verb. I had to wait a long time before I learned the phrase "article of clothing", which is the singular.

Ben Kovitz
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    Stick to the formal/casual dichotomy. I never, and would be offended if others did, consider eliding parts of pronunciation an indicator of stupidity. – kettlecrab May 27 '16 at 17:51
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    Folks could just as easily say that fully articulating words like clothes is a good way to sound pretentious. I agree with @Joshua that it's better to say formal/informal. – ColleenV May 27 '16 at 18:09
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    @JoshuaLamusga Are you suggesting that speakers should not take into account how their chosen eliding might be taken by their audience? Whether good or bad, I don't think we should ignore the connotations and assumptions that surround our language - particularly when someone else is attempting to understand how best to communicate. Ignoring that it happens isn't a good solution to resolving it. – Adam Davis May 27 '16 at 18:10
  • Isn't it also related with how fast you speak? Whenever I heard a native speaker pronounce "clothes" /kloʊðz/, it was either they were speaking very slowly or they were in a video or audio explaining how to pronounce it. :-) –  May 27 '16 at 18:31
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    @JoshuaLamusga You are going to be very offended if you talk with the two-legged primates. Seriously, I don't mean to be sarcastic; an important social function of language is to continuously demonstrate social class and intelligence. Rightly or wrongly, people judge you by your clothes and by the way you say "clothes". Notice that these variations in speech are commonly used in drama to quickly convey these traits of a character. For some non-subtle examples, see animated cartoons. (If you want to be horrified, look up the research on what correlates with IQ.) – Ben Kovitz May 27 '16 at 18:37
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    It's simply not true that eliding certain sounds in certain situations makes you sound stupid. It's also not true that articulating every vowel and consonant makes you sound smart. Accent comes down to "normal" (aka like me), "foreign" (aka not like me), and "weird" (aka there's something wrong with you). If you speak too slowly and carefully, you fall into the "weird" category. If you've recently moved from Boston to central Texas, you're somewhere in between the "foreign" and "weird" categories, even though you're "normal" in Boston. – ColleenV May 27 '16 at 19:23
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    @ColleenV I didn't say that it simply makes you sound stupid. There are lots of other things that people infer from how you talk, like social background or class. Dropping r's originated as (and still is) a way to demonstrate higher social class. Elegant elision is usually perceived positively, sloppy inarticulation negatively, and the line varies by region. As you said, clearer articulation can be seen as pretentious—that is, better/higher than you are. A safe way for a learner to go, though, is to first learn to articulate clearly, then get fancy. Do we really disagree about any of this? – Ben Kovitz May 27 '16 at 19:55
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    If you had said in your answer what you said in your comment, there probably wouldn't be any commentary on it. But what you said was articulate every vowel/consonant='educated, intelligent, high-class, or formal' and 'elide anything that's hard to pronounce'='uneducated, not so intelligent, low-class, or casual'. I'm not arguing that certain dialects are perceived as uneducated. There's a (very angry) TED talk by Jamila Lyiscott about the three ways she speaks English that covers that. Eliding difficult sounds, however, is 'normal' for most folks in many contexts. – ColleenV May 27 '16 at 20:22
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    @ColleenV Thanks. As usual in ELL answers, I struggle with balancing the true complexity of the topic with the need to be reasonably brief and not let the main factors be obscured by tangential ones. In this question, we're talking about perceived sloppiness rather than deliberate elision for elegance, sloppier speech does tend overall to be perceived negatively (even by people who sloppily), etc. There's even some (inconclusive) research that suggests that such perceptions have some real basis. I'll take into account what you've suggested and revise it. – Ben Kovitz May 27 '16 at 21:40
  • That way, all Indians are educated, intelligent, high-class, or formal. Wow! – Maulik V May 28 '16 at 05:18
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    @MaulikV It's true! Indians in America are often perceived in these positive ways. I've often heard statements like "She's so sharp! She speaks better than I do." It's a common observation that certain British accents (such as the "posh" accent) give the speaker a 30-point IQ boost in American perceptions—and Indians are often taught to speak English with those accents. I once read (in a source I'm not sure of the reliability of) that the accent perceived by Americans as the smartest and most educated was common among uneducated, lower-class London cab drivers! – Ben Kovitz 2 hours ago – Ben Kovitz May 28 '16 at 09:43
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    @MaulikV No joke. What Ben Kovitz is saying is true. – Codeswitcher May 28 '16 at 21:44
  • @ColleenV - This conversation reminds me of Son can you play me a memory / I'm not really sure how it goes / but it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete / when I wore a younger man's clothes. Nice rhyme, that is. – J.R. May 29 '16 at 16:57
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    @Codeswitcher no joke here as well! You'll hear Indians pronouncing each word and syllable so clearly that you'd ask them not to do that all time! – Maulik V May 30 '16 at 05:43
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I've lived all over various parts of the USA.

Months often pronounced as munce, sounding like dunce. Some people use proper annunciation, but it's more rare than common.

Clothes often pronounced as close, sounding like the normal word. Common alternative is clo'th's, extended phonetically as clo (hard O) th (th sound, clipped and brief) s (extended s, like a brief hiss). Like months, some people use proper annunciation, though it's more rare than common.

kayleeFrye_onDeck
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    On the topic of how dropped consonants reveal a person's social background, let me guess: you're not Catholic, are you? Please don't correct the error, though. It really is a nice illustration and it makes your answer informative in a surprising and genuine way. – Ben Kovitz May 27 '16 at 23:13
  • You want get any statistically or anecdotally useful categorization information from me unless your focus is mutable, roaming vagabonds :) – kayleeFrye_onDeck May 27 '16 at 23:34
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I don't know about most Americans, but /kloʊz/ is a standard pronunciation of "clothes" (noun). It's not a mark of being uneducated or lazy, it's just a pronunciation. Just like thumb is pronounced without the b sound. Anyone who insisted on pronouncing the b would be looked upon as weird.

Many speakers of American English are unaware that they pronounce clothes as /kloʊz/ , until you bring it to their attention. And even when you do, some will still deny that they pronounce it in this way. It's similar to how most English speakers don't know that in everyday conversation they pronounce handbag as hambag. ('I dropped my handbag in the parking lot'.)

The th sound can cause difficulty in certain environments. Many native English speakers do not pronounce the second f in fifths. Or the d in width.

But the pronunciation is not impossible. The same people who pronounce the noun clothes without saying the /ð/ do say it in the third person singular verb form

/kloʊðz/

as in

She clothes the tree with holly before Christmas.

Probably few would drop the /ð/ here, despite the ensuing /ð/ in the. Thus, the /ð/ sound is maintained to distinguish the noun from the verb, even though the two can rarely be confused.

Thanks for this sharing. I guess I have three points I'm not sure. 1) Do you mean some native speakers would drop the second /f/ sound in 'fifths'?

Yes, the second f in fifths is not pronounced by many native speakers.

2) The last paragraph seems to imply that /ð/ in 'the' would influence the pronunciation of 'clothes'. What is exactly it? 3) Do you mean some speakers would use /ð/ to imply that they are saying a verb instead of a noun?

I know of no one who would pronounce the verb clothes as /kloʊz/.

The verb phrase ... clothes the (door) is a difficult sequence. I meant that we might expect the pronunciation of the verb clothes to change in this environment. But, in fact, if speakers were to make a pronunciation change, they would most likely change the pronunciation of the. Why? The is unstressed and it is not a content word.

Alan Carmack
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    Thanks for this sharing. I guess I have three points I'm not sure. 1) Do you mean some native speakers would drop the second /f/ sound in 'fifths'? 2) The last paragraph seems to imply that /ð/ in 'the' would influence the pronunciation of 'clothes'. What is exactly it? 3) Do you mean some speakers would use /ð/ to imply that they are saying a verb instead of a noun? – Hua May 29 '16 at 04:28
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Since nobody else seems to have mentioned this, I (US/New England) casually pronounce months as [mʌn̪t̪̚s], with both the <n> and <t> sounds pronounced with the tongue in the same position where I would pronounce [θ] <th>. I pronounce clothes as [kloʊ̯ð̆z] or perhaps [kloʊ̯d̪z], with the tongue definitely moving to the [ð] <th> position very briefly before retracting to pronounce the apical [z] <z>; I can't tell for sure whether it's just a very short [ð] <th> or has collapsed entirely into a plosive [d̪].

A. R.
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