Haruo, one of the things Penny is talking about here is people's inability to differentiate between the "f/v" sounds and the "th" sound, not between "f" and "v". The writing of "could of" in place of "could've" is a totally separate issue.

Penny says: "The children cannot hear differences such as those between f or v and th" - and I agree. Depending on the local accent that they have grown up with (and have hence filtered out certain differentiations between sounds), some people really do find it absolutely impossible to hear any difference between, for instance, the word "fought" and the word "thought". It's a case of the good old "faw ee faazend fevvers on a fwushes fwo" !!!

There are so many examples of this kind of thing. For instance, I've come across people who, because of the local accent they grew up with, cannot hear any difference between the short "i" sound and the long "ee" sound, with the result that the word "mill" and the word "meal" are both pronounced as "mill" - and try as you and they might, they just cannot hear the difference.

Somebody once confused me greatly by telling me about people who had been "stealing pillars from the hospital".


- jeanie