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British English has a great many variations within, as well. ...Variants of speech connected to regionalism and social class are rampant within British English (a la Eliza Doolittle), just as they are with American English. Given the small size of the country, its actually enormously varied.
Are they ever!
I am American who as lived near enclaves of British expats for the past sixteen years or on one occasion surrounded by Brits who built around me, and the range of accents is incredible to my ears. At first some of them were so unusual that I had difficulty having a conversation with some people....and "divided by a common language" used to come to mind.
If you stop and think about it, we all do it, and it's always been present in at least one word in American English.
Say the word "Continental". Do you actually prounounce it "ConTinenTal"? Or do you nasalize the "o", dropping the "n", then use a stop in place of the first "T", skip the "I" and sort of grunt through it (lol), and half swallow the final "T"?
Pay attention now, and no cheating.
Some will say it's quite continental to pronounce one's "t"s.
Continental may be a bad example of what you are saying...one that at least half the country moans about for at least 4 months a year is "Winter".
I confess to calling it "wiNNer", Not "WinTER".
Then there is the "dirty ThirDY" instead of "ThirTY".
See where you actually DO fall on your 't"s. I know many around here glottal-stop it, myself included.
ANother to watch is how people pronounce the sport "Wrestling"...do they "T" it or not? is it really "wressling" instead?
SOme people on TV, thought to be british, are actually Aussie, where they don't apparently have a "t" in their language..it is thirDEEN not "thirTEEN".
I have lived in NY, NE, Mass, FL and the mid-west.
ALL sections are guilty of pleasurable-distortions of our fairly difficult language!
In NE and Mass, they MAY pronounce their "T" in "winter", but the "-er"s become "-a"s, and the "-a"s become "-er"s {IE: "Pasta is called "pastER", and "winter" is called "winta"...... I had a hard time with a young lady with deep Boston accent who brought back a chair in pieces {put together yourself}. SHe told me it had "no POTS to it"...I was bewildered...and could NOT for the life of me figure out why a CHAIR had to have POTS {and pans} to go with it..I mean POTS...it WAS a chair after all...then I realized she was telling me.....it had no pARts {hardware- aka screws and nuts and bolts}} to it!!!
My father, deeply engrained in his mid-west accent calls it "waRsh" for "wash", "Rassels" instead of Wrestling {T or not to T}. Here we call it "soda", but he insists it is a "pop".
To further complicate MY language learnin', My grandmother was southeastern Appalachian! Try THAT with a NY with NE accent infiltration!
I am told I have "no accent". But I know I do, when in other parts of the country.
SO, let this be a LESSEN to us all [you didn't really think I'd call it a "LesSON" did you?} to watch our "P"s and "Q"s....and they are a whole 'nuther' matter!!!!
You're talking about substituting a glottal stop for a "T". It's been apart of certain dialects in England for IDK, hundreds of years. And yes, I've noticed it in the US the last decade or so. Even on TV. Annoying. I first noticed it among Native Americans whose Native language have the glottal stop. But only relatively recently have I noticed it among mainstream Americans, and only among people under about 30.
Many young people talk like they have a mouth full of oatmeal. I think it's related to their hearing - they can hear consonants that are imperceptible to people with older ears. Their diction does improve with age.
I've noticed people in their twenties and younger always say words like getting as ge'ing and putting as pu'ing where the ' ( apostrophe ) is a sort of guttural sound that you make if you leave you mouth open and let out a pulse of air. Get it becomes Ge' it and put it becomes pu' it.
I don't notice any different when the 'T' is at the beginning of a word or at the end of a sentence, so "Take it away." and "That's all you get" is the same ( "Tha's all you get. )"
I hear this with phone operators, cashiers, and even TV meteorologists to name some people I've noticed doing this.
It appears to me that that language is morphing and this sound is going away.
It's sort of like listening to people talk in movies made in the 1930's and early 1940's. You can understand the English language just fine, but the way of speaking would really stick out as odd today.
Am I the only person noticing this?
The glottal stop ("Maha*an" for "Manhattan") is some kind of regional African-American dialect thing, possibly with roots in the South. I've noticed it for all the 30 years I've been in New York.
I am American who as lived near enclaves of British expats for the past sixteen years or on one occasion surrounded by Brits who built around me, and the range of accents is incredible to my ears. At first some of them were so unusual that I had difficulty having a conversation with some people....and "divided by a common language" used to come to mind.
Agreed! I started watching a bunch of British TV shows and I couldn't believe how many "accents" I was hearing. I found I had to adjust my ear to each one to understand what the person was saying, and even then it was difficult.
I think here though, people are confusing a few thing. For instance, there's a difference between taking a word like 'winter' and pronouncing it 'WIN-Ter', winnter, and win - ner. It's like 'd' in 'didn't'. You can pronounce it DI -dint, or di (soft d) int, or di-int. (even di-nint or dint). I don't pronounce my t distinctly in mountain, but nobody is going to confuse the soft t of how I say 'mountain' as opposed to my saying 'mou-un. So I say people use either a pronounced t, a sort of soft t, or no t at all.
I worked in a town called Los Gatos and you could always tell a newcomer by how he pronounce that. If you were new, you pronounced it like they do in Spanish: lohs GAH-tos. If you were familiar with the town, you called it: loss GAH (making the a sound like a in hat) ddus, using the same soft t you use in little.
Then there's the aspirated words like 'when' and 'where' as opposed to 'went' and 'warrior'. I'm not sure I'd hear it if someone said 'where' as an unaspirated word, but I can definitely tell the difference between a hard d and a soft d. Booth as opposed to Boodthe (usually an English pronunciation). But we use it in dthen and dthere, as opposed to 'thin'. Try saying thin as dthin and it will sound as though you're saying 'then' with a short i sound.
I always thought that doubling letters in the middle, whether it was a t or a d, made those letters 'soft'. And again, I see 3 ways to pronounce 'little'. You can say LIH-til, or, liddle, or lih-il. I've heard it all three ways.
I'm not saying any of these are wrong or right. It's just what I've heard.
By the way, I'm from the Midwest and I'm trying like the devil to stop myself from saying git for 'get' all the time.
And as for that Mid Atlantic accent? Listen to Tippi Hedren in The Birds. She does a good example of it and I find it interesting that movie was made in the 60s yet.
The glottal stop ("Maha*an" for "Manhattan") is some kind of regional African-American dialect thing, possibly with roots in the South. I've noticed it for all the 30 years I've been in New York.
It's common in the Midwest, too. When I say Manhattan, I do not pronounce the T. The transition is so fast that it's mostly overlooked, but there is no T. When I slow the pronunciation down, it becomes very obviously Man-ha-n with the emphasis on the second syllable, and I'm an upper middle class white woman who was raised and educated in Ohio. Compared to other Americans, Midwesterners are known for having a very flat dialect. I think some of you are not really hearing yourselves. The missing T is not unusual at all.
Last edited by randomparent; 01-16-2016 at 04:24 PM..
How would we say the words utter, otter or atta (as in atta boy) without the letter T?
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