difficulties with th-sound and the english R?

do you have difficulties with th-sound and the english R?
I have never had, but I still remember my teacher in school saying "th-ing, not ting" and "the, not deh"

And what about the English R (you shall not touch the tongue)
Do non-native speakers have problems with the two things?

yes sure every non native speaker commits these sorta mistakes and face difficulty in pronouncing them well.
Its difficult but its still possible.

Regarding this... In Australia, when children are learning to speak, they say [f, v] for /θ, ð/. In America, there's apparently regions where adults use [t, d] for standard /θ, ð/.

More generally then, do children in America as they're learning to speak use [t, d] rather than [f, v] as a substitute? (not counting children growing up in areas which predominately use [t, d] anyway).

De fing is right, some people can't talk proper english type of fing innit!

>>Regarding this... In Australia, when children are learning to speak, they say [f, v] for /θ, ð/. In America, there's apparently regions where adults use [t, d] for standard /θ, ð/.

More generally then, do children in America as they're learning to speak use [t, d] rather than [f, v] as a substitute? (not counting children growing up in areas which predominately use [t, d] anyway).<<

There is AAVE, where both [t, d] and [f, v] are used for /T, D/, and also [t, d] is used in some areas with very heavy North Germanic and or German influence in the Upper Midwest. My own dialect (that of the Milwaukee, WI area) does not have either of such in its full expression *but* word-initial /D/ and to a far lesser extent word-initial /T/ are "unstable" in it, due to [D] and less commonly [T] (except [D] assimilating to a preceding unvoiced consonant as [T]) being generally avoided in word-initial position in it.

In more detail, my dialect does have a tendency to, in particular in informal speech, stop /D/ word-initially as [d] or [t] (*not* [t_h], with which it contrasts),, to affricate /T/ word-initially as [tT], and to generally aggressively assimilate /D/, with respect to voicing (NOT lenis/fortis-ness, as it will never be aspirated even when stopped), manner of articulation, point of articulation (except labial or velar), and nasality, to any non-approximant consonant which may precede it, whether or not it is also stopped or not. However, manner of articulation assimilation is weakened when the consonant in question is labial or velar, whereas it is practically mandatory outside of very "careful" speech with alveolar stops. Also, sometimes /T/ will also stop word-finally, but this is usually only when it is assimilating to a /t/ or stopped /D/ at the start of a following word; however, for example, "with the" (/"wIT.D@/) in my dialect can be pronounced both as ["wI.T:@] and ["wI.t:@], where the former is more frequent than the latter. One note is that one should not consider my dialect to be representative at all of North American English dialects here, as in particular, stopping of word-initial /D/ is in no fashion typical of NAE dialects at all.

Hopeful asks: 1) "do you have difficulties with th-sound and the english R?" and " 2) Do non-native speakers have problems with the two things?."

My answer to the first question is NO; To the second question, SOMETIMES.

For example, the English th sound would not give speakers of languages that already have a th sound (Greek, Icelandic, Welsh etc) any problems but would for speakers of languages that don't. Many Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Thais) pronounce English th like an s, Japanese uses the word "Sankyoo" from English as a very formal way of saying "Thank you."

English r seems to be a problem only for peoples whose language has an uvular r like French and some dialects of German or no r at all like Cantonese (Southern China).

Although /T/ and /r/ don't usually are a problem for me, they are in certain situations. For example in fast speech, I can't pronounce /@`T/; "other thing" comes out as [VD@TI~N] or even as [VD@4TI~N]. /@`w/ and /@`D/ are also difficult, but not as bad as /@`T/.

I'm also wondering about assimilations involving /T/. For example, when I hear native speakers say "both sides", it sounds like [boUsAIdz], but maybe I'm just not hearing it correctly and they actually put their tongues behind their teeth in the first part of what I perceive as [s]. The m-w sound samples actually have [Ts] in those rare cases that contain /Ts/ (such as "soothsayer"), does that sound like they're trying too hard?

Another thing is a repeated /T/ as in "both things". I really have no clue how to pronounce that, both pronouncing it with one [T] and saying the two words seperately sounds weird to me.

<<I'm also wondering about assimilations involving /T/. For example, when I hear native speakers say "both sides", it sounds like [boUsAIdz], but maybe I'm just not hearing it correctly and they actually put their tongues behind their teeth in the first part of what I perceive as [s]. The m-w sound samples actually have [Ts] in those rare cases that contain /Ts/ (such as "soothsayer"), does that sound like they're trying too hard?>>

I think I would always pronounce a phrase like "both sides" as [boUTsaIdz], with a [Ts] sequence. The [T] may be rather soft in this situation, but it's definitely there for me. Saying [boUsaIdz] actually sounds a bit weird to me.

<<Another thing is a repeated /T/ as in "both things". I really have no clue how to pronounce that, both pronouncing it with one [T] and saying the two words seperately sounds weird to me.>>

There normally wouldn't be a pause between those words, but the [T] is pronounced doubled (ie, held for longer than a single [T]), sort of like a geminated [ss] or [SS] in Italian.

>><<Another thing is a repeated /T/ as in "both things". I really have no clue how to pronounce that, both pronouncing it with one [T] and saying the two words seperately sounds weird to me.>>

There normally wouldn't be a pause between those words, but the [T] is pronounced doubled (ie, held for longer than a single [T]), sort of like a geminated [ss] or [SS] in Italian.<<

I myself would use a [T:] here, as I'd pronounce "both things" most likely as /"boT "TINz/ -> ["bo."T:I~:Nz] or ["bo."T:I~:Nz_0]. In general, if one has what would otherwise be two identical phones on adjacent to each other, whether within a word or across word boundaries, in English (well, at least the English here), they are to be realized as a single geminate phone.

One note: such a geminate is to always end up following, rather than preceding, any syllable, morpheme, or word boundary that might be present.

Thanks, that helped me a lot. It's strange how you don't notice these things when listening to people talk until someone explains them to you.

But "does that" -> [dVz{?] is quite common, or are my ears deceiving me again?

>>But "does that" -> [dVz{?] is quite common, or are my ears deceiving me again?<<

To be pedantic, you probably mean ["dV."z:{?], as the assimilation of /z D/ results in the geminate [z:] rather than just [z]. And no, your ears aren't deceiving you; it appears to me at least that assimilation of word-final /D/ is actually very common in informal NAE, even if *stopping* of it alone is not. The thing that complicates things is that I often notice that people speaking other NAE dialects *will* stop their word-initial /D/s if they are preceded by a stop in a preceding word, even if they themselves would normally claim that they don't stop their /D/s (that is, in isolation), even in environments that I am not extremely likely to do so in, such as with preceding /k/ or /p/. At the same time, I myself am rather sure that /D/s are stopped outside of such environments in my dialect (hence why pronunciations like ["wI.t:@] for "with the" are even possible in the first place), even though their stopping is far more frequent (read: practically mandatory) in such environments.

Neither 'r' (/ɹ/) nor 'th' (/&theta;/ and /&#eth;/) are particularly difficult to pronounce in themselves, but many languages don't include these sounds, and for the speakers of those who don't, they seem hard.

Okay, let me try that again: /ɹ/, /θ/ and /ð/.