I enjoy socialising with people!
How do you pronounce “th” in “with”? It’s too confusing for me. When I looked it up in a dictionary, it was with a voiced sound like in "brother or the," but it sounds difficult when the word “with” is followed by consonants, such as “with people.” In such cases, how should pronounce "th"? Should I pronounce it with unvoiced sound as in "think"?
I don’t have problems while saying the word "with" alone or followed by vowels, such as, in "with you"; It should be voiced like in "the," but the problem is when followed with consonants I heard natives pronounce "th" in "with" as you would in "think and thing."
Best Answer
The phonemic, i.e. prototypical, pronunciation of the word with in British Received Pronunciation is /wɪð/, with a voiced /ð/, as in the.
However, in contexts like "with people", with may be pronounced with a voiceless [θ], as in think, even in RP. This is because the word people starts with a voiceless consonant, /p/. Unless followed by a voiced sound such as a vowel, the voiced obstruent phonemes of English /b, d, ɡ, dʒ, v, ð, z, ʒ/ at the end of syllables are partially or wholly voiceless, which are then distinguished from the voiceless phonemes /p, t, k, tʃ, f, θ, s, ʃ/ only by when the preceding vowel ends. (See this blog post and the answers to The pronunciation of ending "s" and Are "whores" and "horse" homophones?.)
So if you want to speak RP, it wouldn't be incorrect to use a voiceless [θ] in with before words which start with a voiceless consonant, like people. Strictly speaking, since it ends phonemically with /ð/, the vowel /ɪ/ in with must be slightly longer than that in e.g. myth, which ends in a voiceless /θ/, but since with is a function word, which is most often unstressed and pronounced very quickly anyway, the distinction in vowels is most likely irrelevant in this particular case.
Meanwhile, many American and Scottish speakers pronounce with consistently with a voiceless /θ/, even when followed by a voiced sound. From Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by John Wells (source):