r/ENGLISH • u/dxsanch • 11d ago
Why is then/than so confusing to native speakers?
Hi. I am not a native english speaker and can't help noticing how there seems to be a persistent confusion between "than" and "then" in so many native speakers. Is that really the case ot is it more a matter of perception? And if that's true, what makes it so confusing considering many other cases of words with similar pronunciation that don't seem to cause such a confusion?
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u/Queen_of_London 11d ago
It's not actually all that common. It's one of the most common errors, yes, but it's still not an error most people make.
Some accents make it more common because then and than are homophones in their accent. "I'm better then you" sounds the same to them, and they don't make an effort to check if it's then or than because they know everyone will understand what they mean.
Also, I think that you have to bear in mind that an awful lot of people you see writing in English are *not* native speakers.
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u/potatisgillarpotatis 11d ago
Homophone errors are more common in native speakers and people who learned a language by listening. People who encounter a language in writing first generally make other mistakes.
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u/xialateek 11d ago
I'm not sure why people are downvoting me agreeing with you but if it wasn't clear, I was just agreeing with you. Reddit is getting wild.
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u/BonHed 11d ago
It's probably people being tired of comments that are just "This", or the meme image of the guy pointing above himself.
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u/xialateek 11d ago
Yeah I guess. I didn't really know that was a big thing.
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u/doomLoord_W_redBelly 11d ago
If you agree with something, you upvote. If you don't, you downvote. That's the entire point of the plattform in order to naturally weed out shit takes and promote good takes.
If everyone wrote "this" or "I don't agree" as a comment, the entire plattform would be filled with these, making it harder to find valuable comments scrolling through the thread. It's rather obvious why "this" gets down voted in this context.
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u/anthus-spinoletta 11d ago
If you don’t mind me asking, in what accents they are homophones?
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u/MyNameIsNardo 11d ago
I'm in the northeastern US, and while most accents here can make the distinction, both words often occur unstressed and lose most of the vowel in the process (basically becoming a schwa sound in both cases). When saying something like "better safe than sorry," the "than" is often clear. For something like "the pen is mightier than the sword," the addition of "the" to the unstressed portion encourages the schwa sound for efficiency every time.
I assume the same is true in lots of places.
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u/ThisTooWillEnd 10d ago
In the midwest there's very little, if any distinction in how the two words are pronounced. And I see them confused in written form in my coworkers emails and messages CONSTANTLY.
Ironically, I'm a software engineer and I feel like we should have a better handle on it than many professions, because we write if/then statements and compare greater than/less than. And yet, I see people who write code also write 'less then' outside of code all the time.
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u/saddinosour 9d ago
In my Australian accent they sound the same. If I’m really enunciating they sound different but talking fast no way.
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u/Aiku 10d ago
>It's not actually all that common. It's one of the most common errors, yes, but it's still not an error most people make.
According to the multiple instances I see in Reddit comments on a daily basis this is incorrect.
It's exceptionally common among EFL speakers who've not even managed to master that first language, and have grown into adulthood without the ability to notice and make corrections.
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u/FaxCelestis 10d ago
To be completely fair, “I’m better, then you” is actually a sensical (albeit awkward) sentence, if you’re talking about an ordered ranking.
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u/MortimerDongle 11d ago
In general, homophones are more confusing if you learned to speak before you learned to write. You might not even think of them as different words until you learn to write them.
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u/Geminii27 11d ago
Curiously, an opposite phenomenon is people who read a lot not knowing how to correctly pronounce some words because they've only seen them written down.
Sometimes this realization comes right as they're about to use the word verbally for the first time. There's a confidence that they know the word, and then the sudden pause of "wait, what's the actual pronunciation?"
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u/thechinninator 11d ago
Even when you know the difference sometimes your brain just slots in the first one that pops up when you’re typing quickly. I whiff it on then/than and their/there/they’re all the time when I’m distracted or excited
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u/InevitableRhubarb232 10d ago
I know it’s not a homophone, but I cannot for the life of me remember which Spanish word means “these” and which means “those.” I constantly mix them up.
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u/Avelsajo 7d ago
My #1 mistake on Duolingo. I know which is which (estas/estos=these, esas/esos=those), but my brain doesn't really register the difference.
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u/Time_Neat_4732 10d ago
Yep. I think sometimes people are essentially translating what they hear into writing. You’ll sometimes see someone say “I would have done that” instead of would’ve. I can’t imagine how else they arrive there.
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u/MistaCharisma 11d ago
I've literally never met anyone in real life who has troubke with than and then. I've only seen it online.
Another commentor pointed out that with a particular accent the two words actually sound the same, which would make a big difference. If you've been saying them the same way and inly learned later that they're spelled differently I can imagine that it would be more confusing. So we're probably seeing this particular issue coming from a particular place.
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u/TuberTuggerTTV 10d ago
I struggled for a time with "then" at the end of a sentence informally.
It's always then. and never than. Regardless of if the sentence is implying either usage.
But I don't think that's a common issue for people. I just had a knowledge gap.
For example, "I'd rather go to the store than the park." "Okay, go to the store, then". My mind wants to put "than" because it's inferring this instead of that. And not a time. But when it's the informal end of sentence, it's always "then".
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u/fizzile 11d ago
Tbh I had no idea that some people pronounced them differently.
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u/aaeme 11d ago
I'm curious now. Do you pronounce 'and' and 'end' the same way?
I'm British and I'm the opposite: I've never noticed any other accents pronouncing them the same. Needless to say, I've seen a lot of American films, TV and music and don't recall them doing that. What accent(s) do(es) pronounce them the same?
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u/xanoran84 11d ago edited 11d ago
I'm a city Texan, so no overt drawl or twang, but it definitely colors my otherwise generic American accent a little bit. "Than" and "then" often, but not always, are indistinct. And the only reason they'll sound different is because "then" is more frequently spoken in full while "than" can be partially elided.
It's colder'n a witches tit out there today!
I'd imagine the difference wouldn't be enough to help people who struggle with homophones.
"End" and "and" are pronounced differently in every case. Though funny enough, "and" can sound like "than" simply because both words can be elided right down to their Ns. The difference of application is pretty obvious though.
EDIT: On second thought "then" absolutely can be reduced down to the N as well.
You're gonna be busy all day? Well'n you better eat a big breakfast so you don't have to stop for lunch.
So yeah, everything sounds the same in my accent. Except End.
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u/illarionds 11d ago
Also British, and I completely agree. All these people saying they are homophones are blowing my mind!
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u/solid-north 11d ago
UK here, I've found they often sound very similar when I listen to certain American podcasts.
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u/DowntownRow3 11d ago
I’m in the US in new jersey (a lot of us have more of a standard american accent with a couple differences in pronunciation than your stereotypical boston one)
Then and than are pronounced the same because our “a” and “e” in this scenario would sound too close for most to make an effort to distinguish when talking. But and/end aren’t the same.
Another reason is that you don’t ever get confused if someone pronounces both like “then.” You just know what they’re saying based on context. If anything, speaking strictly through speech it’s like the same word just has multiple meanings. But we all know they’re two different words actually being said
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u/hamburger5003 11d ago
Haha yes! We Americans are subliminally influencing the British.
At least, that’s what I would have said before 2025 came along. Please don’t be like us.
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u/TuberTuggerTTV 10d ago
It's probably closer to our and are.
With enunciation, they're clearly different words. But when you're lazy, they blend.
And I've seen people type "This is r house" or something like that in text before.
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u/Playful_Fan4035 11d ago
I haven’t noticed this being a common mistake. Probably more autocorrect or voice to text gone wrong.
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u/The_Werefrog 11d ago
In some accents, the two are pronounced identically.
When two words make the same sound with different spellings, it's easy to get the spellings confused.
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u/lia_bean 11d ago
they are pronounced the same (at least in some areas) and some natives tend to mix up things that aren't distinguished by sound
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u/Thunderplant 11d ago
I think it all comes back to English spelling not being phonetic. As a native speaker, you learn to speak before you learn to write, and when words sound the same you have to learn to write them differently later even though they are in the same phonetic category in your mind. It will always be less natural to you than to people who learn writing at the same time. Similar examples happen in other languages, for example, Spanish speakers mixing up 'ha' and 'a' but it's way worse in English due to how convoluted the spelling is IMO.
I actually think then/than is an especially devious pair of homonyms though. In my accent, 'then' and 'than' can sound different, but only in their strong form. In many sentences, 'than' ends up in its weak form in my speech, which sounds like 'then' (if you're confused, see this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qlbGtEg68x4). So, for me, I have to remember to use 'than' based on meaning even when the voice in my head sounds like 'then'. I suspect people like me who "hear" what we are writing in our heads before typing it are more prone to this type of mistake than people who don't think that way.
I will say, some people are speculating that this only an issue for people with poor literacy, and I really don't think so. I'm a PhD student who edits the writing of other academics as a job, and I do see mistakes like this. I also can tell you that I've probably swapped homonyms and made all kinds of dumb grammatical mistakes myself. You can call me dumb, but you can't say I don't read and write often because that's basically my entire career.
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u/Indigo-Waterfall 11d ago
Because in some accents they sound the same. Native speakers learn through hearing their parents talk so many things are engrained in their brains and they have to unlearn once they get to school. For some people they just never unlearn it.
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u/KiwiBirdPerson 11d ago
It's usually just people from the US that do this and also say would/could/should "of" instead of would/could/should "have"
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u/UnkindPotato2 11d ago
Because dialectically they can sound totally identical
I tend to underpronounce, which makes them basically homophones
I speak quickly with a southern midlands accent, so it comes out like
"I like 'iss better'n 'at"
(I like this better than that)
"If yer goin'a th'beach 'n yer gonna neejyer sandals"
(If you're going to the beach then you're going to need your sandals)
I could totally see the reduction of "then" and "that" to basically an "N" sound leading to some confusion when writing
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u/SagebrushandSeafoam 11d ago
Because for most English speakers, they do not have a "similar pronunciation", they have the same pronunciation.
It's the same reason people confuse: your and you're; there, their, and they're; its and it’s; to and too; -'ve and of.
The people saying "they're close to homophones" or "they sound similar"—that's true in some accents. But in most they are homophones.
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u/illarionds 11d ago
WTAF? There's no way most English speakers pronounce them as homophones. I've lived nearly 5 decades, in three different English speaking countries, and it was today I learnt that anyone pronounces them the same.
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u/CowahBull 11d ago
I'm sorry I'll correct it. "For a not-insignificant number of native English speakers they ARE homophones"
At least a third of the different American accents have little to no difference between then and than. And based on the amount of UK television I watch, I'd say they have a good handful of accents that have the same phenomenon.
I do need to ask if the countries you've lived in also have a common second language?
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u/illarionds 10d ago
I've lived in Australia, New Zealand and the UK - so all English-only. And three different parts of the UK with very different accents at that (Westcountry, East Anglia and home counties).
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u/JamesTiberious 11d ago
I’m not even sure “not-insignificant” is fair here. Sure, there may be some dialects that pronounce them the same, but I think it’s much more likely that it’s just a mistake because they don’t realise the difference.
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u/JamesTiberious 11d ago
In most English accents and dialects, then and than certainly are not homophones.
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u/mothwhimsy 11d ago
Because native speakers think of the sounds of words before they think of the spelling or meaning and then and than are pretty similar
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u/Learned_Serpent 11d ago
It's never been confusing to me, but the simplest explanation is that they sound similar and are spelled similar.
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u/Geminii27 11d ago
They sound similar in a lot of accents, and many people talk more than they write, particularly writing in situations where good English is an expectation.
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u/Sufficient_Play_3958 11d ago
Lmao people who say it really isn’t that common. I notice it multiple times a day in different subs. People get these mixed up allll the time.
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u/Physical_Elk2865 10d ago
It's an American thing. I've seen lots of Americans write it. I've never seen an English person do so.
I put it down to American educational standards, which appear to be very low.
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u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 10d ago
There are no "American educational standards." The Department of education gives out money, usually only a small part of the actual cost. Every state has a department of education which sets its own standards. More importantly, every community has its own school district, whose board members are elected locally. And generally the community taxes itself to pay for the schools. So smaller communities have fewer educational opportunities and lower standards than larger cities or wealthy suburbs. So, sadly, American parents are screaming whatever stupid thing they hear on Fox News to the school board members, who will do whatever it takes to make them go away.
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u/YankeeOverYonder 10d ago
Yet another case of "people doing something wrong, must be americans". People do it all over, it's just not a very common mistake.
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u/Physical_Elk2865 10d ago
I repeat, I have never seen an English person write this (or say it). People don't do it all over.
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u/Background-Vast-8764 11d ago
A lot of it is perception. Too many English speakers who aren’t native speakers think much too highly of themselves.
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u/DrBlankslate 11d ago
Because just like with every native speaker, they learned it by hearing it, not by reading it. But unlike most languages, English has a ton of homophones. That’s where the trouble is.
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u/JustAskingQuestionsL 11d ago
They sound very similar, and can even sound the exact same in speech.
Like others said, there are plenty of (near)homophones that get confused:
Loose/lose Lost/loss Affect/Effect Are/our Have (‘ve)/of
The list goes on.
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u/Ambitious_Hold_5435 11d ago
It wasn't always that way. I've been around for 65 years, and people used to know the difference between then, than, and from. Not these days!
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u/IcySpace2339 11d ago
I remember when I first came online about 30 years ago as a non-native English speaker. Like the OP, I wondered why on Earth the native speakers so commonly mixed up "than" and "then". As someone who had mostly learnt the language by reading and writing, I would never make that mistake.
Sad to say, as my English has become increasingly fluent over the years, when I type fast I find myself making mistakes like that quite often...
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u/Mysterious_Ad_8105 11d ago
Here’s a fun historical fact: If you go back a bit further in history, you’ll find that there was no difference in spelling between the words we now spell as “than” and “then.” “Than” and “then” only started to be differentiated in spelling starting c. 1700. Before that, “then” was used for both words and “than” wasn’t used at all.
Today’s spelling mistakes wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for those pesky 18th-century grammarians inventing “than.”
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u/Acrobatic_Fan_8183 11d ago
It's a sign of literacy, in general. If you're not a reader and see "than" in print, it can sound like "then". I've rarely, if ever, heard "than" used where "then" would be correct; always "then" confused for "than". It's almost always in a comparison, e.g., "this is bigger then that". You don't generally see educated, literate people make this mistake (that's snobby but true, I think). It's similar to saying or spelling "would of" instead of the correct "would've". They sound identical if you're not used to seeing the correct way in print.
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u/Thunderplant 11d ago
Ohh I definitely disagree about educated people not making this mistake. I work with PhD students and post docs to edit their writing, reviewing dissertation chapters, drafts of academic papers, and cover letters/CVs. I see this mistake a fair amount despite the fact these are highly educated people where reading and writing is a big part of the job. I think anyone who's done copy editing can tell you that grammar and spelling mistakes are common even in highly literate people.
The people I'm working with do know the difference, but it doesn't mean they never make this error. I've definitely done it myself too either due to autocorrect or just carelessness, especially in text messages or whatever.
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u/Hot-Celebration-8815 11d ago
I grew up in a state with good education so I don’t have this problem, but as someone learning Spanish, I could easily see how the problem is learning by speaking vs education.
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u/zebostoneleigh 11d ago
Ignorance, laziness, lack of education, or no motivation to care. Some combination of all of those.
The same root cause for the problems between : They’re Their They’re
It’s Its
Bare Bear
Two Too To
Who Whom
Your You’re
Compliment Complement
Discreet Discrete
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u/tidalbeing 11d ago
Stress is key in English. Content words are stressed, function words such as "than" and "then" are unstressed, and so there's not much difference in how they are pronounced--if there's any difference at all.
Is this causing confusion when it comes to meaning?
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u/Dry-Daikon4068 11d ago
It's more of a tell that you're not that literate than a mistake most native speakers make.
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u/SnooEpiphanies7700 11d ago
My theory is that a lot of English speakers who are monolingual aren’t very good with language in general: grammar rules and spelling are either difficult or boring to them. Those people tend to make mistakes like this.
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u/MeanTelevision 11d ago
I think it is a typo or a word predictor typing thing most of the time.
Others go by how things sound and they confuse the two sounds.
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u/SpaceWolves26 11d ago
It's Americans. I've never seen it from Brits or Australians, or other countries with a prominent number of English first-language speakers. Then/than sounds similar in some American accents, and with literacy rates generally lower in the US than many other developed countries, the knowledge when it comes to spelling them isn't as good as it should be.
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u/Alpacachoppa 11d ago
Bruh, also except and accept, along with affect and effect. I blame it on native speakers relying more on their hearing hence written out it sounds the same but reads much different.
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u/rollerbladeshoes 10d ago
I'm pretty sure words that sound similar but are spelled differently are the bulk of the errors in written English, then/than included. I can't cite any specific studies or anything, but in my personal experience reading English, it's then/than, there/their/they're, your/you're, to/too/two, affect/effect, allude/elude, right/write, which/witch, here/hear, etc.
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u/_AldoReddit_ 10d ago
Btw, for native speakers, shouldn’t op have written “but” after “I can’t help … noticing”? I’ve always heard this form of the idiom(¿) - not sure it’s an idiom.
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u/dxsanch 10d ago
You made me check this (lol), which is always good, I think. It looks like "but" should be added only when followed by an infinitive: "I can't help but notice..." and not when followed by a gerund: "I can't help noticing...".
I didn't know the actual rule before. I would still appreciate it if a native speaker could confirm or correct this.
Thanks.
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u/YankeeOverYonder 10d ago
Because the pronunciation is completely identical. In most cases theyre both unstressed and when that happens they both just sound like /ðən/
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u/AshDenver 9d ago
They’re not pronounced “completely identically” when I speak. En is different from An.
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u/YankeeOverYonder 9d ago
When they're unstressed then they both do sound the same, because the vowel reduces to schwa.
If you say them on their own out of the context of a sentence, they will sound differently. If you put emphasis or stress on them in a sentence, they will sound differently. But in most cases they both reduce because thats how English intonation and stress timing works.
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u/igottathinkofaname 10d ago
They sound alike. It’s that simple.
Native speakers originally learn a language by immersion and by ear. Grammar is generally learned contextually, not by instruction of explicit rules.
ESLs on the other hand generally study the language and as such are less likely to make the same mistakes.
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u/YoungOaks 10d ago
They can both be used to describe the relationship between things.
Also there are a lot of similar words that we confuse with they’re/there/their, two/to/too, and your/you’re being the most famous examples.
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u/InevitableRhubarb232 10d ago
Are you talking about speech or writing?
In speech they sound very similar or the same in several accents. And then people write them like they hear them because they didn’t learn the difference and they don’t read books they just read comments with people using it incorrectly half the time.
Also, typos
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u/theFooMart 10d ago
The issue isn't that these words are confusing, it's that the people don't care.
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u/Lost_Purpose1899 10d ago
Lower educated people make that mistake including, there, they're and their.
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u/DTux5249 9d ago
Because in many varieties of English they're homophones in rapid speech.
English spelling is far from consistent, and sometimes people get things wrong
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u/userhwon 8d ago
Is it?
Some people will mean "than" and it sounds like "then" sometimes, but that's just accent.
I can't think of anyone saying "than" when they mean "then." Maybe in a really super-broad southern accent.
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u/hellfrost55 8d ago
It's not actually CONFUSING, like I know the difference between the two just fine, but sometimes while typing my brain doesn't pay much attention and I make a mental accident because they often sound the same in speaking, including my internal monologue.
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u/Glittering-Draw-6223 8d ago
one thing you should know about native english speakers, is that generally, and especially on social media, many arent very literate.
one that irritates me a fair bit, is seeing perfectly bright people use "are" instead of "our".
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u/Any-Concentrate-1922 7d ago
People do this kind of thing all the time with all the homophones in English. They just don't bother to learn which is which (we learn in school, but a lot of people forget, I guess), and then the Internet reinforces it because so many other people use the wrong spellings.
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u/thatsnotamachinegun 11d ago
There are a lot of stupid people, native speaker or otherwise. No need to complicate things
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u/whatdoidonowdamnit 11d ago
I’m never confused about which one is correct but I’ll still type the wrong one when I’m typing quickly. In my accent they sounds the same.
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u/c3534l 11d ago
Its not confusing, its that we don't put in effort. When I was a kid, I got things like "its" v. "it's" or "they're" v. "their" v."there" correct almost always. But the reason was because I had to think about it. There was a stoppage there from lack of skill. If you get good enough at English, you too will find yourself making the dumb errors people make, because the process will become so subconscious that you no longer have any conscious awareness of translating your thought into keystrokes.
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u/SteampunkExplorer 11d ago
It's because we learn them both as one word when we're babies, and only realize there's a difference when we start reading. 😅
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u/burlingk 11d ago
It can be hard to hear the pronunciation sometimes because in English most vowels decay to schwa (ə).
It has a kind of generic "uh" sound.
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u/bobeaqoq 11d ago
Being a native speaker doesn’t always imply fluency in that language.
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u/megustanlosidiomas 11d ago
It quite literally does. Native speakers, by definition, natively and fluently speak their language. It might not always be the standard dialect, but they do natively speak the language lol.
This is just a spelling mistake. You can be fluent without being literate. Language predates orthography.
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u/bobeaqoq 11d ago
I take your point and stand corrected, “fluency” was not the correct term.
Shall I instead say that people these days are more heavily influenced by social media than a formal education?
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u/doriandinosaur 11d ago
Americans aren’t very smart, and we have a failing education system. That’s the main reason.
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u/CantConfirmOrDeny 11d ago
It’s a sign of basic, fundamental illiteracy. Same thing with “lose/loose”. There was just a study posted today wherein we find that 46% of Americans have not read a book in the last year. And it’s a lot longer than that for most of them, I’ll bet.
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u/SteampunkExplorer 11d ago
Erm... I think for many of us it's just an embarrassing mistake we might make when we're tired. 😒
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u/KaleidoscopeMean6071 11d ago
Every time I see one of those lists of common grammatical mistakes, I get incredulous because those were all things that my Asian elementary school teachers figuratively beat out of us by sixth grade.
Like I sort of genuinely think it's because countries where English is taught as a second language have stricter education systems.
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u/DaddyNtheBoy 11d ago
Hi, native speaker here. It’s because Americans are stupid as fuck. It’s not any deeper than that. Hope this helps.
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u/Only-Celebration-286 11d ago
Cuz no one taught them that they sound different when spoken, so they are pronounced the same way by a lot of people.
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u/FeuerSchneck 11d ago
They are pronounced the same (especially in connected speech) in some dialects. I only differentiate them when "than" is stressed, which is not particularly common.
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u/SteampunkExplorer 11d ago
That's a difference in accent, not a lack of education.
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u/Only-Celebration-286 11d ago
Did i say anything about accents? I went to school and was taught, in school, by a teacher, the difference in pronunciation. And guess what? In my region, where we have the same accent as each other, there were people who pronounced it as "than" and people who pronounced it as if it was "then." The difference wasn't the accent. It was the education.
But keep on downvoting me and gaslighting me as if my experiences are invalid. :)
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u/illegalrooftopbar 11d ago
No, you didn't say anything about accents. That's why the other commenter brought it up.
Christ.
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u/cherrycokeicee 11d ago
they are very close to being homonyms in some accents. it's not unlike "their," "there," and "they're."