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.

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 advert blend was impeccable lol

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.

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!

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.

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.

there's a kid book (i think it's from the narnia's series) where the protagonist is trying to hide with another person, and they decide to speak without the "s" because they sound too loud even when you're whispering.

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.

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

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

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

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.

When you removed the "th" and it still sounded like "thin", that might have been the most important moment of my life. I'm really shocked

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’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.

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

More than one of my German colleagues ends up saying "thomesing" for "something". i love what this suggests about the cognitive processes happening for them

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".

9:50 - Today I learned that the 12 divisions of the year called "mumfs" are spelled "months".

Totally brilliant! Talk about learning things you didn’t even know you didn’t know.

Just finished a year in Japan as an English teacher. This video might've been helpful if I'd been able to watch it a year ago!

I was on a red-eye flight some years ago and I heard a couple speaking softly to each other a few aisles in front of me. I didn't understand the language, but I got the impression that it was quite sibilant - hissy, like two snakes speaking together. I was *very* surprised when I listened more closely, trying to identify the language, when I suddenly realized it was my own native English - and that I was hearing it the way non-native speakers probably hear the language! 😮🤣 And now I have a better understanding of *why!* Thanks, Dr. Lindsey! 😄

Like in the song " 'S Wonderful", you can even cut the "it" out of "it's" and just leave the 's.

A fascinating video, as always! I'm a native speaker of American English, married to a native speaker of Venezuelan Spanish. Venezuelans seem to be particularly prone to de-emphasize or sometimes completely drop the final "S" from words in Spanish. And their Spanish is perfectly understandable the way they pronounce it. I've picked up that habit from her when I speak Spanish, while I've tried (with mixed success) to break her of the habit when she speaks English. You've clearly articulated what I knew intuitively but didn't know how to explain: Proper pronunciation of that sound is absolutely vital to carry the meanings of so many English terms. On a related note, my wife neither hears nor articulates the difference between "n" and "m" at the end of English words. I'm frequently trying to fix her pronunciation of "gum"/"gun", "William"/"Willian", "drone"/"drome" and similar pairs, some members of which are not actual words in English. I've heard her sisters and other Venezuelan friends make the same mistakes. I suspect the distinction between those two final consonants is rarely crucial in Spanish.

I like that it seems like you found a good portion of your clips while watching videos about making RU-vid videos. Always encouraging to see people you respect working to improve their craft

As a child I remember learning (from a Narnia book?) how to avoid being overheard when whispering. They said to consciously speak with a lisp, as the S sound is so strong that it can clearly be noticed even if you're trying to be quiet. I'm really pleased to hear the linguistics behind this explained so clearly decades later!

2:50 and even "does" or "us" as in "what's he want" and "let's do it"

"sixths" is a fun one. So many ways to (fail to) resolve that "-ksths" consonant cluster. So far as I can tell, I actually tend to lose the s sound from the x, but there are definitely people who lose the th (and then struggle with having two distinctly Seperate S sounds with... nothing in between, because it's obviously not just siks, but there's no vowel in there, but...)

Great video. So many L2 speakers say English is 'easy'. That's only because learners of English are not expected to learn the language to as high a standard as learners of other languages - it's almost a given that you don't have to bother learning the difficult pronunciations. If you actually learn English to a truly high C2 standard rather than just swapping out the bits you can't be bothered to master, it's extremely difficult

My daughter has gotten over a lisp almost completely, but I was kind of confused why words like "complex" cause her lips to come together somewhat, hiding her bottom teeth, compared to how "dentally" I say it (with very open lips). Only from this video (and having her say some of these words) did I realize that she was using her bottom lip! And not only that, but Dr. Lindsey pointed out that it's even somewhat common. So in a very practical way, thanks for the video; I feel that I need to worry less about this particularity about her speech. Linguistics is way more complicated than it seems!

As a Dutch speaker, I usually replace th sounds with t or d, instead of a sibbilant. I believe that this is what has historically happened to the Dutch language as well, as can be seen in our definite article (English "the" vs. Dutch "de") and demonstratives (English "this" and "that" vs. Dutch "deze/dit" and "die/dat").

Some say the gopher from Winnie the Pooh haunts the nightmares of Dr Geoff Lindsey. And now you’re re-reading this post in the gopher’s voice, whistling each ‘s’…

Dr. Lindsey, after watching your video, once again I am left questioning things I took for granted. I consider you a true scientist; you base your thoughts on your own tangible research instead of just echoing what is said by those who are esteemed. You inspire me to trust my own thoughts and dive deep into my own suspicions. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with the world.

My linguistics professor in grad school picked up on /sh/ for the s in street when a student spoke in class and correctly guessed her family had come from Britain. I have never forgotten that difference and now I live in the UK and I hear it every single day.

As a speech-language pathologist, I appreciated the Peachie Speechie cameo😆 Absolutely love your videos!

"What are you sinking about" wahaha

I remember an ancient Benny Hill (radio!) sketch where he was playing a supposedly French character who spoke in perfect English. When challenged if he was really French he replied "It's hard enough to pronounce all the s's in English, let alone with a French accent"

I'd like to thank (fank🤭) Dr. Lindsay. I'm a Brazilian linguage teacher (Portuguese and English). Some of these videos help me a lot to produce more and better English classes to my studants. Cheers from Brasil!

Due to profound hearing loss, I can't hear frequencies over 1500 Hz. I completely rely on the cues these sibilants impress on the following vowels. Yet my brain still thinks it can "hear" them in speech. But when Dr. Lindsey pronounces them in isolation, there's only silence for me. Brains are weird 😄.

Beyond being important for grammatical purposes, the /s/ phoneme also has sociolinguistic connotations, at least in American English. Hypersibilant /s/ phonemes are associated with femininity, to the point where males who use this phoneme can be perceived as effeminate. This phoneme is made with the tip of the tongue pointing upwards. In contrast, hyposibilant /s/ phonemes are often associated with masculinity, and are pronounced with the tip of the tongue pointing downwards. AAVE is a dialect where this pronunciation is particularly common among both males and females, while other dialects have a prominent gender divide in terms of the pronunciations of that letter. This is very interesting because it also affects mouth posture and the way that some vowels are pronounced.

I often come to these videos with a strong sense of accomplishment in my L2 skills and leave with a profound insecurity that I may insufficiently pronounce something I had never questioned before. Today's video did not disappoint. Especially considering I heard the 's' that supposedly wasn't there in the clip starting at 10:46. I just thought it was retracted like the 'n' before it.

That Berlitz ad is hilarious, and it's been around long enough that my dad used to quote it in the late thousands. He went to Norway in the 80s for a year of high school exchange, and all he had to learn from was old Berlitz tapes because it wasn't a common language to learn or place to exchange to.

I would enjoy Dr. Lindsey crafting several creative sentences for us to submit/tag for review, while including the subject’s home town, teenage town, college town, and parent’s information as well. Map/diagram where changes are happening and the potential influences. Also, include a few tongue-twisters for fun.

When you removed the "th" in thin, I heard "bin". Also, to this day I can't pronounce s properly, and I'm really self-conscious about it. I was always told growing up that I'd grow out of it but I never did...

4:03 "I can't call to mind a single process of English which deletes a final /s/ or /z/ - they're just too important." Unless I'm misunderstanding, isn't AAVE an example? Possessive 's can be deleted, so you get phrases like "my momma house."

Would love to see a teeth vs lip survey. Never knew lip S was a thing

I could never understand why so many so many English speakers pronounce 'th' as though it were an 'f'. Eg; wiff, free-two-one, I fink... etc. We regarded it as a speech impediment and always corrected our children when we heard them repeating it from TV or something. Great video with superb content! 👍🏻😎

Thank you for including that clip at the beginning! That has been my favorite ad for 15 years!!

this is the first video i've ever seen from you. i'm hooked

When I had a brace as a teenager, my "s" moved because of the new obstacle. Later, the brace was removed, and I had a lisp while I adjusted to the obstacle change.

In Ireland - not uncommonly, Irish travellers or people in the midlands will say things like “two year ago” or “I have three pair”

Fascinating. I have a gap between my upper two front teeth, and when I'm tired I can find my s's starting to slip into th's -- a particular problem when singing. While I've never had a lisp, this video has helped me work out some issues with my s mouth shape and develop some potential strategies for more effective sibilant formation. My singing teacher will be very happY!

Another issue is the voiced/voiceless versions of these sounds. The placement can almost be the same, but the sound differs greatly when the voice is employed versus when the sound is just the sibilant noise of the air rushing through. Spanish speakers in South America do not use the /ð/, /z/, or /ʒ/ and instead use /θ/, /s/ and /ʃ/ for both, and have great difficulty switching on the voice in these cases, since in Spanish they are always voiceless, and sometimes even muted. So, while this was a great video, we need to show those voice/voiceless distinctions, too! :D

When I was in school, we actually learned pronunciation in the 2nd grade, possessive and contractions in the 4th, and even learned about conjugation of verbs in all the tenses and even the subjunctive mood and imperatives. We learned grammar in elementary and middle schools, culminating in diagramming sentences. By high school we were writing creatively using compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. To read any of the classic literary pieces by great authors such as Faulkner, these skills are essential. Today, very few people have the skill, and that includes SCOTUS, to diagram the 2nd amendment to our Constitution correctly. They do not know what a gerund is, which is critical to its understanding.

The amount of thought and work that goes into Dr Lindsey’s videos is mind-blowing, and this is no exception. The transition into the sponsor read is, as has been pointed out, nothing short of brilliant. Thank you, Surf Shark and thank you, Geoff!

I spent years dealing with a mild lisp unable to figure out what to do with my tongue to pronounce s properly. After several years of trying and many searches on youtube i came across a video that explained it as a breathy t which did wonders. I am glad to see the wide diversity in means of making what we perceive as an s.

0:05 Reminds me of an old Victor Lewis sketch where he calls an electrical goods shop pretending to be a German customer wanting help with a TV that he accidentally poured Blue Nun ("very good, expensive wine") into and is now "very smoking". "and so I put my hand into ze back." "I would switch off the mains first before you put it out." "I do not come from Mainz, I am from Frankfurt." "Switch the electricity mains off!" "Please sir, please.. if I touch the one on the side like this..." *bang!* "Hello? Hello?" "Hello... I was thrown across the room. The television has blown, there is glass everywhere. What is the number of the ambulance, please?" "999" "Why are you saying no to me?"

14:05 Ok this makes sense now. I was listening to a cover of a song called Cinnamon and Clove by a Japanese singer named Ichiko Hashimoto, and it kind of sounded like she was lisping. I’m not really familiar with her music, but this would explain why she pronounced certain words the way that she did. Thanks.

I have been learning English more than 50 years but nobody ever told me the essential difference in decibels between th and s! Extremely useful information, it solves my problems with that and for many Czech speakers too I think, thanks very much.

I remember, twenty-five years ago, reading the Hobbit to my children (before the movies came out) and reading aloud the words spoken by Gollum [oops, I originally said "Golem"] ("my preciousss") and how they got into "Gollum" speak for a while. Did enough 'S' sounds for a lifetime. Yes, the 'S' is preciousss!

8:20 i didn't hear "thin" here, i heard "bin" for some reason. I'll try it again later with a different pair of headphones, and some speakers I've got at home

Related to the 'Articulation' section: a decade or so ago I got a prosthetic device to replace a front tooth that had to be removed (lateral incisor). It's a clever little thing that goes across my palate and fits in a gap on the other side of my mouth. Anyway, my point is that I basically have a false palate from this prosthetic that sits a bit lower in my mouth than my real one and it made pronouncing S really hard for a good few weeks until my tongue got used to it. Now, whenever I take it out, it's equally difficult to pronounce S sounds without it!

In the Austrian Army, you learn to replace s by th for camouflaged communcation. The s can be hard much farther than any other sound. Using th keeps everthing perfectly understandably, as German has no use of th, and it can be understood as a allophone of s (while considered wrong and a possible language disorder.)

Dr Lindsey is just brilliant. Thank you.

I am now trying to figure out how I naturally/automatically make an s sound. It might explain why I was identified as having a slight lisp in Lithuania after growing up (and not being labeled as lisping) in the US.

I thought for sure this would be about the "TH" sounds but "S?" What's so hard about the letter "S?" I guess it's something I never thought about. I had always just noticed how much trouble a lot of non-native speakers have with "TH" sounds so I assumed it was that. Very informative! I really like these videos.

I remember, when I was working in Germany many years back, having a conversation about this "important consonant" with my German boss. How, as she drove us to a meeting, I was repeating words like "house" and "house", or "use" and "use", in both their noun and verb forms, giving example that we might "house the homeless" with a Z, but we "live in a house" with an S. And, nope, she just couldn't hear it. So I had to keep repeating it, slower and slower, in the hopes that she could distinguish the "Z" sound from the "S" sound, and understand that, no, we English speakers really are indicating the noun from the verb, if only you can quickly pick up that subtle distinction in sound as it zooms past you. And you can express the difference, if you can wrap your tongue around the variants of the "S" family. And, yes, it's not like German education of the English language is lacking. Only second to the Russians, they arguably do it vastly better than we actual native English speakers ever did. Sadly. But it was still a sticking point... which felt very Python-esque, as there I was saying "house, house, house" or "use, use, use" over and over in this car, in the hopes that my German boss might just catch the distinction, if I could only say it slowly and exaggerate it enough to be heard clearly. Never really happened. We reached the destination and the topic changed.

I'm a native of California living in Chicago for the past 35 years. The first difference I noticed in the common Chicago accent is the "th" sound being completely left out of all speech, often replaced by a "d" sound, or when that's impractical, with a plain "t" sound, and in "going to da te-ater". The second remarkable feature of a Chicago accent is the final-s sound being lengthened, sometimes to a ridiculous degree--"dat's jusst how it issss"--and sometimes without an "s" being at the end of a word at all. For instance, there's a well-known chain of grocery stores here called Jewel. Chicago speakers often call it Jewelss or even Jewelsess.

Germans often struggle massively with this soft th to s transition. I sometimes recommend them to practice saying the word myths, with the suggestion of starting with the tongue tip between the teeth and pulling it back to form the s. The other major confusion in this area comes between sh and j. I once went to a meeting in Germany about shop jobs and literally could not tell the difference between the words, having to rely exclusively on the context for understanding. No doubt Dr Lindsey can easily explain that one too. Finally, on the s formation, I also had issues with this sound and even speech therapy as a child. In watching this video I realised that I form the s using the teeth and tongue as the constriction with no idea that this might be unusual. I can pull both lips away with no change in sound for the th, s and sh and simply move the tongue in and out to transition between them. I wonder how many others do the same thing.

The amount of enjoyment I get from your videos is truly abnormal. Keep going! I find this particular topic fascinating in relation to the pronunciation of Hebrew: comparing modern (always T and D), litvish (T or S, always D), galitzianer, and Yemenite (T,S,D, Th, and Dh) pronunciations, as well as the old Ashkenazi pronunciation which preserved the "th" for the unpointed thuff consonant

Hello, wonderful video. I am currently learning Portuguese and when I speak to any Brazilian they always ask me how to pronounce the TH I always assumed that would mean that would be the harder or more important sound to learn but they have very similar pronunciation to English with many consonants. Thank you for reminding us that the foreign will always be influenced by the native language.

I am one of those people who doesn't close their teeth. I always just thought my problem was that my tongue was a little too far forward, but putting it back only ever served to make my s's sound more like sh. Thank you for going so in detail about what's going on in my mouth! I was finally able to make a normal s sound!

Woah I've always wondered why my S's whistle. When you showed the diagram at 16:45, I realized that I've always pronounced my S's with my lower jaw relaxed and my tongue resting right beneath my top row of teeth. Lo and behold, when I closed my teeth and made an S sound, the whistle disappeared.

I now understand how my overbite has affected my pronunciation of S. The tip of my tongue is often firmly against my lower teeth, while blowing air over the lower teeth and onto the back of my front teeth. It can often sound like a very slight lisp. It’s almost the opposite of the ‘bottom lip’ S.

fascinating as always! i'm a native speaker of brazilian portuguese and for the first seconds of this video i thought for sure it would be a th! we also use -s for plurals and though brazilian speakers often struggle with words ending in consonants (often pronouncing "it" as "itty" or "lab" as "labby" for instance), s is not one of them. but the th seems to be a bigger struggle - so much so that i find myself willfully mispronouncing it in certain instances to avoid seeming pretentious 😅

Ah, that explains why the manga/anime/film "Death Note" is written in Japanese as "Desu Nōto" (デスノート).

the smoothest sponsor segue I've ever seen

I remember asking a Spanish speaking person what English sounded like as a "tune" and they made a droning sound. This made sense in comparison to their own roller coaster language sound. But now i am hearing the impact of the consonants at the end of so many words creating little halts all through the sentences. Especially listening to your British delivery.

Seriously, this is an absolutely smashing and thoughtful discourse on such a crucial sound.

twelfths is a fun one to pronounce

Churchill certainly didn't try to avoid "s" in his speeches, did he? - "From Shtettin in the Baltic to Trieshte in the Adriatic", "Shome chicken, shome neck", "THISH wash their finesht hour!"

Interestingly, I say "so" in different ways, depending on where and how the word is being used. If in the middle or end of a sentence, my tongue is well back, narrowing the passage between it and the hard palate, with the lips close together. If a word begins with "so," - no glide into the following word, the tip of my tongue is either on top of or in front of my lower teeth; if there is no pause, the tongue is behind my lower teeth. I am a speaker of fairly standard American English (except when my exposure to Canadian (Ontario) English pops up) and I did have speech therapy for lisping when I was a child, which may have influenced how I make "s" and "th" sounds.

AAVE generally omits the possessive S.

If you've ever since the movie "My Cousin Vinny" (which if you haven't, you should, because it's one of the funniest movies every made) the Brooklyn-born Vincent "Vinny" Gambini (who took 6 tries to pass the bar) is defending his young cousin in a murder case in Alabama. The cousin and a friend are driving out to California to start college and are accused of shooting a clerk in a convenience store where they stopped. (Actually two other kids in an identical car did it right after the cousin and his friend left.) On cross, Vinny asks a witness if he saw "these two youths leaving the store" only Vinny pronounces the word "yoots." The judge stops him to ask "what's a "yoot"?" Eventually Vinny figures out that the judge can't understand his pronunciation and says sarcastically "Oh excuse me your honor!" and then hyper-over-pronounces each sound "these two you-th-ss."

If I might make a correction, in the examples you chose for Japanese です (desu) and ます(masu), the speakers had strong lisps and wouldn't be considered exactly standard pronunciation. Although the sound is indeed somewhere in between the American English 'mass' and 'math' as you have indicated.

This is very interesting to me! I'm a native English speaker who happened to have had many ear infections when I was learning to speak and therefore heard incorrectly and pronounced "W" "S" and "R" incorrectly. I was taught to bring the to of my tongue near the pallet of my front teeth. It's fun experimenting with so many other options!

My mind is blown. Thank you for the great lesson, Dr. Lindsay!!

eeh??? 1 minute ago??? my phonetics professor would be amazed to see me get somewhere on time

What’s really interesting is that Old Spanish developed both forms of “s” Classical Latin didn’t distinguish s [s] from sh [ʃ] so it only had an intermediate s [s̠]. But by 200AD, people begin palatalizing ce and ci, making a soft C sound. West of Italy, this happens [kʲ] > [c] > [ts] > [s]. In this same region, clusters like [ks̠], [kt] get a palatal squeezed out [js̠], [jt] > [ʃ], [tʃ] So you suddenly have [s] vs [s̠] vs [ʃ] out of thin air. *captiat (“he hunts”), casa (“house”), capsa (“box”) becoming caça [kasa], casa [kas̠a], caxa [kaʃa]. This system collapsed because the sounds are too close in the mouth. Most of Spanish history has been spent trying to move them as far away from each other as possible. This sent [ʃ] even further back, all the way into the throat [x]- ahora escrito como jota. Then in the North of Spain [s] was pushed forward even further until it was [θ] but in the South [s̠] is pushed forward until it’s just [s]

Fascinating topic. The varied uses of the 's' in English to convey so much additional information means that for those who find it difficult to produce, it can do much more than give them a 'lisp' or make certain words difficult to pronounce. (I was fascinated to discover as a child that my mother wasn't able to pronounce the word anaesthetist. She can produce both sounds separately, but not together. ) If producing the sound (or certain combinations like sth) is so difficult that you mispronounce some words, they're often still recognisable, especially when it's a frequent or common usage. However, I'd never previously stopped to consider that *dropping* them because they're tricky and you think they're not important, can cause you to omit a lot of information, and even alter a communication enough to cause frustration and misunderstanding.

I come to pronunciation via singing, and s is a fascinating sound. It is such a piercing sound that in choir, we sometimes joke that if there is a final s (especially after a prolonged vowel), only one singer needs to pronounce the s and it will sound like we all are. (This also avoids the complication of all of our loud “s”s coming in at a slightly different time 😂)

what are you þinking about

7 minutes in and I'm glad to see even university research guys are just using Audacity, same as me 😂

I had speech therapy classes as a young child to improve a lisp I have, and I remember being incredibly frustrated at the ways the sounds were being described to me versus what I could and couldn’t pronounce. I remember being advised to move my tongue tip back so far there was nothing in my own mouth to obstruct the air, and being absolutely bewildered that my teacher could hiss just fine “like that”. I eventually improved just by practice, playing a card game where you had to hiss like a snake to score points. Regardless, I feel a lot more vindicated for how I felt during that class after this video - it certainly had a Lot to do with my front teeth, which were nowhere to be found at the time. Ha!

Also, as a person who uses hearing aids, this video is interesting because it adds more insight into how it is that our ability to distinguish between crucially important consonants is compromised.