pronunciation: with you | WordReference Forums
"With" pronunciation
fast speech rules - Pronunciation of "with" - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
American pronunciation of "with" - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
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I'm a native English speaker, but this seemed like the best place to ask this. Is it acceptable to pronounce with with the voiced th (wIð, in words like the) rather than the soft, unvoiced one (like in thought)?
I say it the soft way, but the voiced one doesn't sound wrong to me. I forget how it came up, but my friend was sure that the voiced one was objectively incorrect. Is it?
In "General American" the pronunciation varies depending on the letter that follows:
In front of consonants, it usually sounds like wɪθ: "go with (wɪθ) Nancy"
with the possible exception of "L", where it usually sounds closer to wɪð: "go with (wɪð) Linda"
In front of vowels, it's usually wɪð: "go with (wɪð) Adam"
I can't speak for any of the various regional accents or dialects, but where I live the regional speech patterns tend to emphasize consonants, so it frequently comes out as wɪð when speaking slowly. But if they're talking normal to fast, they still tend to revert to the above rules.
(i). This picture provides an answer for 4). AmE stands for General American, BrE for British RP.
Source: "J C Wells, Longman English Pronunciation Dictionary, New Edition"
(ii). For 1), let's consider a native speaker A chooses the voiced /ð/ instead of voiceless /θ/ for <with>, then A can also very likely to pronounce <with> using /θ/. Why is that? Because in English a voiced consonant (or lenis consonant to be more precise) is frequently devoiced (e.g. it sits right before a voiceless consonant (this phenomenon is called energy assimilation), or it's before a pause (if it's at end of sentence, for example), or it's after a pause (at the beginning of speech, for example)), except in some special environments (e.g. the sound is trapped between two voiced consonants or vowels or between a voiced consonant and vowel). On other hand, if a native speaker B chooses /θ/, he will definitely stick with it for the rest of his life (except some special "affected" occasions, for example, where B tries to be like A). Why is that? Because in English, energy assimilation doesn't apply for the case where a voiced consonant turns an adjacent voiceless consonant into voiced one.
(iii). 2) is answered by (ii) already.
(iv). 3) is answered by the combination of (i) and (ii).
Notes:
- I'm not American.
- Most of what I wrote here can be found in "B. Collins et al.,Practical English Phonetics and Phonology, Routledge" or "J C Wells, Longman English Pronunciation Dictionary, New Edition".