Can native speakers tell the s and th sound apart?

Question

I wonder if native speakers can tell the s and th sound apart by listening.
For example, if someone says the word thick, is there any possibility that a native speaker might mistake it for "sick"?
(sin and thin, sink and think, etc)
Last time I attended a spelling contest, in which students had to spell the words that were broadcast. There was a word "truce" but at that time I wrote down "truth". Now in retrospect, I still don't think I can get the two words right. I told my Canadian teacher about this, and he had an incredulous look on his face.
In my language, there isn't the th sound, so it troubles people a lot. However, I am at the opposite end of the spectrum, as I pronounce both s and th as th. Will it sound strange to native speakers? I've spoken to many foreigners and they didn't point out this mispronunciation. I know the different tongue positions between s and th but my s just sounds awkward.

KrisBlueNZ · Accepted Answer

That's an interesting question.
To my ear, there IS a clear distinction between "sss" and "th".
They can become hard to distinguish when the high-frequency part of the sound is not available, for example in a telephone connection. When the sound is muddied by lack of high frequencies, both can sound like "th". Perhaps your mis-hearing in the spelling contest was due to poor frequency response of the loudspeaker used.
I think that because of the forward tongue position for "th", the sound of the next part of the word is affected slightly as well, so it's not just the "sss"/"th" that is different. The effect on the following sound is only very slight, I think. And I have no training in this field so it's just my gut feeling.
If you pronounce "sss" and "th" both as "th", yes this will sound strange to native speakers. The reason no one has pointed it out might just be that if you clearly have a "foreign accent" and/or you "look foreign", native speakers will assume you're doing your best and it's unkind to be critical.
Some native English speakers pronounce "sss" as "th"; this is called a LISP. (It's ironic that people with a lisp can't pronounce the word properly; they pronounce it "lithhp".) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp

Perhaps there is a physiological issue with your mouth that makes you unable to make the "sss" sound? Do your front teeth line up normally? In other words, when you close your mouth fully or almost fully, do your top front teeth naturally fall slightly forwards of your bottom front teeth? You probably need that to make the "sss" sound properly. Close your mouth almost fully, breathe out steadily, and move your tongue forwards and backwards, with the part just behind the tip touching both the top and bottom of your mouth, and try to get the sound right.
If you have a lisp, don't worry! I knew a girl back in high school who had a lisp and I thought it was totally adorable! And a friend of mine has a lisp and he's the frontman/singer in a popular band. It's a well-recognised speech defect and people are accustomed to hearing it.

CalifJim · Answer

gary17I wonder if native speakers can tell the s and th sound apart by listening.

I guarantee you that they can hear the difference!

CJ

Raindoctor · Answer

1. There are people who can produce sounds, but can't perceive the difference. This happens with those who took some accent reduction courses. There are folks who can produce /?/ and /w/, yet can't perceive the difference between /?/ and /w/. This is also case with /v/ and /?/: people can produce the latter two sounds, yet can't distinguish them. More knowledge and more training is required of L2 speakers to fix these issues. A mere drilling doesn't fix.

2. Lets distinguish phone (a sound in a language) and sound (as in physical sense). A range of sounds are mapped to one phone in a language. A set of phones (allophones) are mapped to a phoneme. In some languages, where a set of sounds (physical sense again) are not discriminated, those sounds are mapped to a phone (sound in a language).

Here, I am distinguishing between sounds, phones (allophones) and phonemes.

3. The only class of sounds that contains more sounds in world languages is sibilants. So, figure out what kind of sibilant you are articulating, even though native speakers don't point out. And correct it. Since English has two voiceless sibilants (s and sh), they can figure out what you are saying even though you are mispronouncing s. Find someone who specialized in your L1 phonetics and English phonetics, he/she can help you correct that.

Can native speakers tell the s and th sound apart?

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