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Normally when I say "I don't have to do that" (meaning I'm not obliged to), I find that as well as putting heavy stress on the word "have", I pronounce if haff.

Is this common? If so, why does the trailing consonant change from "v" to "f"? Are there any other contexts where this or a similar change occurs?

Edit: It's starting to look like have to in the sense of "must" is almost a completely different verb to the standard have. That allows it to conjugate differently, which explains why in "I had to to that", I often say hat.

Edit2: We seem to have identified have, use, and suppose as verbs that can undergo significant changes in pronunciation when coupled with 'to' to indicate a special meaning (the required, habitual, and requested/ordered senses). Per @PPL's comments, there's also the ought/owe pair, and various (often dialectal) changes with some forms of go, want and get. Any more?

FumbleFingers
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  • +1 What a nice question. I can't believe you beat me to it! – Daniel Aug 12 '11 at 20:52
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    ty. The non-native speakers should pay particular attention to this one. It's a subtlety of the spoken language that's not easily picked up by listening, but if you hear a non-native reproducing it correctly I think you probably uprate your opinion of their command of English. Even if you're not conciously aware of what they did. – FumbleFingers Aug 12 '11 at 21:11
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    This question brings to mind another common one (at least around where I live): "supposed to", as in "I'm supposed to be helping". Rather than being pronounced "suppozed", as usual, it is pronounced "supposed" with the "S". I'm thinking it might be merely an American thing, but I don't know. – Daniel Aug 12 '11 at 21:26
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    When I emphasise "supposed" in that way, I'm likely to say spOst [to], (just a single syllable before "to"). – FumbleFingers Aug 12 '11 at 21:28
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    Like everyone, I have my own idiolect, but I know I'm not alone in my pronunciation of "spost" there. – FumbleFingers Aug 12 '11 at 21:32
  • Then neither am I! :D – Daniel Aug 12 '11 at 21:35
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    The same thing happens to used to when it means accustomed to. It's pronounced with /s/ instead of /z/. That makes three verbs that do this used to, supposed to, have to. Any others? – Peter Shor Aug 13 '11 at 00:42
  • To some extent, going to fits this pattern, with a sound change to (roughly) gonna when used to indicate future tense, and not when used to mean travelling towards. On the other hand, the sound change is much les obligatory in this one, and is much more dialect-dependent — unlike the others, gonna is far from standard in the UK. Want to and got to are also partial examples. – PLL Aug 13 '11 at 14:15
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    On the other hand, I guess we also have at least one example which started like these but has progressed a bit further: owed to has become ought to not only in pronunciation but in spelling. – PLL Aug 13 '11 at 14:17
  • @PLL: I don't think the use of "ought" in "ought to" is the result of assimilation. – herisson Nov 05 '17 at 07:17
  • @sumelic: I don't remember taking in PPL's comment years ago, and it's only just now prompted by your comment that I've become aware *ought* does indeed derive from *owed. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "assimilation" there, but if you can get through the paywall there's a fairly long discussion in the full OED, including In English owe has undergone much change both of form and sense ... The Old English past tense āhte, Middle English ahte, ohte, survives as ought*. – FumbleFingers Nov 07 '17 at 16:56

4 Answers4

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This is very common — it’s almost universal in standard English. For instance, Merriam-Webster gives the pronunciation of have as

\ˈhav, (h)əv, v; in “have to” meaning “must” usually ˈhaf\

It’s an example of the general phenomenon of voicing/devoicing. Many consonant sounds come in “voiced/unvoiced” pairs: (z / s), (d / t), (v / f), and so on. In English (as in many other languages), there are a lot of situations where a consonant which would normally be voiced is not, or vice versa. For instance:

  • d in missed is pronounced as its unvoiced counterpart t;
  • s in dogs is pronounced as its voiced counterpart z;
  • v in have to is pronounced as its unvoiced counterpart f.

In all these cases, the change in voicing comes from the consonant immediately preceding or following the one in question. In the case of have to, this is slightly more surprising, since as written, the vt is not a consonant cluster but split across two separate words; roughly, the reason for the devoicing here is that have to acts (both grammatically and in pronunciation) almost like a single word, hafta. See the links below for more on this point.

The detailed rules governing voicing assimilation (and related phenomena) are ridiculously complex and fascinating (as ever: English pronunciation is a mess!), but Wikipedia is of course a good starting point.

Edit: what I said above applies when have to is being used in the sense of must, like in the OP’s example. In other senses, eg in I will give everything I have to charity, the /v/ of have would not usually be devoiced, or at least not nearly so strongly.

Edit again: There’s an excellent discussion of this particular case, hafta, here (by John Lawler). There are also a few mentions in passing Language Log.

PLL
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  • I'll admit I never really thought I was a minority of one. But, complex as they may be, those "rules" outlined in Wikipedia don't mention this specific change when "have" means "must". But I think it's because actually it's always "have to". As you imply, that following alveolar "t" somehow makes it more awkward to enunciate the "voiced" (labial?) "v" when stressing the preceding vowel. – FumbleFingers Aug 12 '11 at 18:15
  • @FumbleFingers: Yes — I was also quite surprised I couldn’t find hafta mentioned on Wikipedia. I’ve added a couple more links to discussions of it, and also to include your point that it’s because it’s a fixed phrase. – PLL Aug 12 '11 at 18:23
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    I wish I could give another upvote just for the John Lawler link! Now I understand! It's not really about preceding/following sounds at all in this case - purely because speakers know instinctively that "have to" is being used in an odd way (even if they don't know it's a periphrastic modal construction), so they're receptive to hearing and repeating any distinctive pronunciation that others already use. I don't really care who started it, now I can see why we're happy to learn and repeat it ourselves today. – FumbleFingers Aug 12 '11 at 18:43
  • I'll strongly disagree with the claim "The form represented in "eye dialect" by hafta is the only pronunciation of the modal paraphrase represented in spelling by have to.", though. It can definitely be pronounced with the proper vowel in "to". The linked article conflates two very different phenomena when dismissing "fast speech" - though, the fact that it is a phrase may also enable the vowel change (along with similar ones in "coulda" "shoulda" "woulda", which also drops the 'v' sound from "have") – Random832 Aug 12 '11 at 21:01
  • @Random832: I don't really understand what you're saying, but I do think wanna / gonna / oughta somewhat confuse the issue we're talking about here. I think the important thing is that "have to" acts rather like a single word when it means "must". And we know when that is, because the contexts where it's used are clear-cut. So we're quite amenable to giving it a different pronunciation in defiance of spelling, because we partly think of it as a different verb. – FumbleFingers Aug 12 '11 at 21:26
  • @Random: I’d partially agree with you, that the Lawler link overstates what’s going on, and that in some contexts, eg “I’ll do it if I have to”, it definitely keeps a full vowel in to. So hafta isn’t a perfect representation. But he’s concentrating mainly on the devoicing of the v and the effective fusion of have to into a single word; and as far as those go, I think he’s on the mark. – PLL Aug 12 '11 at 21:49
  • I think the equivalency to "going to", "want to", etc, which don't have a sound change in all registers in the way that "have to" does, is a mistake. And it's not just a matter of thinking of it as a different verb - the same argument can be made for, at the very least, "going to". (And indeed you don't say "I'm gonna [place]"). "Have to" is unique in that most people will never (according to Wiktionary, this is US dialect, and British people will) pronounce it with a /v/ in any register. – Random832 Aug 12 '11 at 22:22
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    @Random832: If Wikitionary says "haff" is US-not-UK pronunciation they're just talking tosh. And PPL's point about “I’ll do it if I have to” is spot on for showing that the v/f switch is nothing to do with "fast speech" (Lawler says it's not, anyway). So far as I'm concerned now, "have to" is a sort of composite verb, only loosely linked to "have" in the normal sense. – FumbleFingers Aug 12 '11 at 23:13
  • (Lawler says it's not, anyway) - right, the problem is, he also claims the vowel switch is and "gonna" aren't. – Random832 Aug 13 '11 at 00:34
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    @Random832, @FumbleFingers: Looking at other sources beyond Lawler (googling eg hafta modal) clearly backs up that (a) he somewhat overstates the analogy with gonna, etc. which we can all see is not a complete equivalence; but also (b) the basic picture he describes, of have to having essentially fused into a modal verb (some seem to call it a “quasi-modal”) pronounced with an /f/ in the middle, is widely shared. So I don’t think there’s much to disagree about, except the Wiktionary claim of a UK/US difference, which I’m pretty sure is tosh and will check in the OED as soon as I can. – PLL Aug 13 '11 at 00:39
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    A minimal pair: "These are the things I have to play with." takes on two different meanings, depending on whether have is pronounced with an /f/ or a /v/. – Peter Shor Aug 13 '11 at 01:13
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    @Peter Shor: Brilliant minimal pair! What I like is that neither meaning is any more likely, and they can both be spoken with equal stress. The only difference is the f/v toggle (between verb1 and verb2, IMHO). – FumbleFingers Aug 13 '11 at 02:14
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    An even sharper minimal pair would be "These are the tools I have to work with." – Mike Jones Oct 23 '11 at 11:13
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    @Mike Jones: I'm not so sure about "even sharper" (distinction in meanings, I assume you mean). It seems to me that in your case the two possible meanings each imply the other to some extent, because there's a stronger implication that "the work" will be done, one way or another. With Peter's example, there's always the possibility that even though he has these toys, he might not play with them at all. – FumbleFingers Oct 23 '11 at 15:48
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This is an example of assimilation, where one sound modifies a bit to be more like a nearby sound.

Another example (from wikipedia) is 'handbag' which in non-careful speech is pronounced [hæmbæg], the 'n' changing to 'm' to be more like the 'b'.

Mitch
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  • It sounds convincing to me that there's a tendency to swap "n" to "m" in handbag. But I think that to the extent the word assimilation is used at all by linguists, it's more in the context of describing certain "gross" pronunciation errors commonly made by children (saying gog instead of dog, for example). Anyway, I don't think it's a factor in the verbs we're discussing here. Consider @Peter Shor's These are the things I have to play with, where the speaker easily articulates either "v" or "f", purely on the basis of which meaning he intends. Neither version is "harder" to say. – FumbleFingers Oct 23 '11 at 16:04
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    It's much easier to say two unvoiced consonants in succession than it is to switch from voiced to unvoiced. Similarly for point of articulation or frankly any feature. That's what assimilation is all about. – Mitch Oct 23 '11 at 16:12
  • I'm not a professional linguist, so I can't really argue with you on either your the "easier to say" point, or whether "assimulation" is a standard term for the process. But I really can't believe that it's involved in the very specific context we're looking at here, where a small number of verbs relating to desirability/probability have a distinctive pronunciation which is only used when one particular meaning is intended. – FumbleFingers Oct 23 '11 at 16:21
  • The "distinctive pronunciation" (assimilation) is shared by so many other instances unrelated in meaning. – Mitch Oct 23 '11 at 16:31
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    I don't think so. For instance, have with a "v" can be used for all meanings of the word, but if it's pronounced with an "f" it always has the "obligation" meaning. And as a verb, use with an "s" rather than "z" always has the "accustomed" meaning, not the "utilise" one. These are real changes/pinpointings of meaning, made and recognised by almost all native speakers. – FumbleFingers Oct 23 '11 at 16:47
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    I don't disagree at all on the phenomenon of the particular situation, but I disagree about the description of it. The 'obligatory' meaning of 'have' only occurs as 'have to'. The continuant aspect form of 'used' only occurs as 'used to'. It's not about the meaning it's about the phonological context; that it is a change in meaning (or even the context of being specifically followed by 'to') is coincidence. That is you're overfitting your theory (making much too narrow a hypothesis) when it can be explained much more simply by assimilation. – Mitch Oct 23 '11 at 17:02
  • let us continue this discussion in chat – FumbleFingers Oct 24 '11 at 01:31
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The phenomenon that you are referring to is a special case of the general rule that subordination is associated with terminal voicelessness (analogous to the practice of keeping one’s voice low in a house of worship when you need to speak outside of the liturgical proceedings).

That is, some words can have either a voiced or an unvoiced ending. Choosing an ending that is unvoiced (there sometimes being more than one unvoiced ending possibility) indicates some kind of subordination or deficiency.

have:

example of non-subordination: “I have two apples.”

example of subordination: “I have to make a phone call.”

has:

hath:

example of non-subordination: “He has two apples.”

example of subordination: “He has to make a phone call.”

Extra-deep subordination is expressed by “hath”.

example: “The wisdom of the Lord hath no bounds.”

stoppeth:

Like “hath”, expresses extra-deep subordination.

example: “It is an ancient mariner, and he stoppeth one of three.”

    (from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

adding ’st gives extra-deep subordination, /st/ being a pair of unvoiced consonants.

example: “stopp’st”.

example: “did’st”.

suppose:

example of non-subordination: “I suppose they want some tea.”

example of subordination: “You’re suppose to serve them tea when they arrive.”

use:

example of non-subordination: “I have used a computer before.”

example of subordination: “I used to know French very well.”

must:(/st/ is a pair of unvoiced consonants)

With this word, subordination always implied.

example: “You must do your homework before watching TV.”
Mike Jones
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From p.103 of the book Practical Phonetics and Phonology (B.Collins, I.Mees)

Assimilations may involve a reduction of the lenis/fortis contrast, a type which is termed energy assimilation. In stressed syllables, energy assimilations are less frequent in English than in most other languages, but they occur in a few common words and phrases, e.g. I have to (meaning 'must') /hæf tə /, I used to /ju:st tə/, newspaper /'nju:zpeipə/->/'nju:speipə/. In unstressed syllables, they occur regularly, e.g. it was spectacular /ɪt wəz spek'tækjulə/-->/ɪt wəs spek'tækjulə/.

Bogdan Lataianu
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