pronunciation - th followed by an s sound



What is the correct way to pronounce such complicated combination of sounds when not pausing for breath? As an example, how would one pronounce something like "The Eighteenth century"?



Answer



In normal speech, consonant clusters are generally simplified, because, as you point out, they're complicated and difficult to pronounce.


For instance, the pronunciation of the fractional plural sixths, as in five-sixths '5/6', is sposta be /sɪksθs/, ending in a godawful cluster of four voiceless (i.e, whispered) consonants. But nobody ever says /sɪksθs/. The /θ/ between the /s/s is simply deleted, leaving a long /s/ at the end to mark the difference between '5/6' /fayv.sɪkss/ and '5, 6' /'fayv.'sɪks/.


This is why there are contractions; the faster you talk, the more stuff you drop, not only because of pronunciation difficulties like this, but also because English is a stress-timed language, which means that there is usually the same amount of time spent between each major stress in a sentence, no matter how many unstressed syllables there are between them. In fast speech, multiple unstressed syllables are usually only a lick and a promise, if they're there at all.


In particular, the Eighteenth Century is pronounced /ðiyetinsɛnʃri/. Nobody ever notices because that's what's expected. One more reason why the article is there -- the Eighteenth Century is not 18 centuries, so we can tell the difference if they're pronounced the same.


To Repeat: English spelling does not represent English pronunciation.


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