s = th type sound

[heifeng]

Just curious if anyone else has also noticed this...

I realized that several of my guy friends out here add a "th" sound to words begining with an "s". i.e. san ends up soundling line "th"an and so forth.

At first I thought this was a dialect type issue when I noticed one friend pronouncing words like this, but then I also noticed my other friend, a local Beijing guy, doing this as well. I've never really heard girls speak like this, so I thought it was somewhat interesting and wondered if anyone else noticed...

[Yuchi]

Interestingly enough, a good amount of chinese non native english speakers I know substitute 's' for 'th' in words like "thank" (sank you) or "thing" (the tsing).

[selfconstruct]

Sometimes I have students who do this. As far as I can tell it's a lisp (chi lei gan in Cantonese). It's a boon as "th" comes naturally (but the "s" is a hard habit to break).

[heifeng]

hmm it doesn't really seem like a lisp. Also I've noticed that the more beers that go into these guys the more they like to over-emphasis this th, even branching off to words beginning with a "c"..somewhat interesting to witness...

[slimcat]

Beijing guys like to pronounce θ especially when they speak with fervor, but girls don't. For it is inelegant of she to talk like that. I believe it belongs to social dialect in Beijing.

[amego]

Interestingly enough, a good amount of chinese non native english speakers I know substitute 's' for 'th' in words like "thank" (sank you) or "thing" (the tsing).

Especially "Happy Burstday To You!!!!"