تلفظ T در لهجه ی بریتیش

British Accent - The Glottal T

Hi.. A lot of people got quite angry about the glottal T episode. And said, a posh person would never use the glottal T. Actually this isn’t true. Let’s start with this word, absolutely. Notice I said absolutely, not absolutely. That would sound a bit strange. Why? Well, before the T, there’s a vowel sound. After the T, there’s a consonant sound, absolutely. So in this case, when there is a vowel sound before the T and a consonant sound after the T, then it’s perfectly acceptable to pronounce the T in a glottal form, absolutely.

Another rule is when a T finishes a word, for example in, not that cat; most commonly we would pronounce them with a glottal T, not that cat. The exception to that rule is when the sound just before that NT is an unvoiced sound. For example, Taylor Swift…is unvoiced, so Swift. We pronounce the true T. The same with Kanye West… is also unvoiced, so again, true T. When there is a T at the beginning of a word, for example two, terrible, twins; you would always pronounce the true T. This would never be a glottal T. This next word, better; we pronounce it better, not better, because the T separates two vowel sounds, a and a. When the T separates two vowel sounds, you pronounce it the The true T way. Better, not better.

Other examples of this are words like water, hotter and Twitter. We wouldn’t use a glottal T because the T separates two vowel sounds. Mountain, we say mountain, not mountain. Why do you think? Well, there’s a vowel this side and there’s a consonant sound this side, mountain. So in this case, when the consonant is before the T, we pronounce the T sound in its true form, mountain. And lastly, how about this one? Bottle. Well, we wouldn’t say bottle. That would sound a bit uneducated. Why? Before the T, there is a vowel sound, after there is a consonant L. If you listen to the word, bottle, there’s a schwa sound just before. So really the T separates two vowel sounds. For this reason, we would pronounce it bottle, not bottle. Now try these words, united States, motivate. Let’s make it more difficult. Let’s try these phrase. It’s a bit hot today. It’s not that hot. Not all the time.

So next time, if you’re worried about sounding natural in English but also, sounding formal, so long as you follow those rules, you’ll be fine. See you next time.