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  • In this American English pronunciation video, we're going to go over how to pronounce the

  • word AT in a sentence.

  • I love reductions.

  • As you probably know, there are lots of words in American English that will sound different

  • in the context of a sentence then they do on their own. AT is one of these words. On

  • its own, it has the AA as in BAT vowel and the true T. At, at. But in a sentence, it

  • will often reduce to the schwa vowel. The final T will either be a stop T or a flap

  • T depending on the next sound. If the next sound is a consonant, then it will be a stop

  • T. If the next sound is a vowel or a diphthong, then it will be a flap T. Let's take a look

  • at some sentence fragments. First, at my, at my. The word after the 'at' begins with

  • the M consonant. So the T here is a stop T. At, at, at, at, at my, at my. At a, at a.

  • The sound after the word 'at' here is the schwa sound, a vowel. So the ending T will

  • be a flap T. At a, at a, at a.

  • Now let's look at some full sentences. I'll be at school. At, at, the word after the word

  • 'at' here is 'school', beginning with a consonant, so the T will be a stop T. At school, at school.

  • I'll be at school.

  • Also, are you noticing how fast the word is? As a function word, as a reduced word, it's

  • very fast: at, at, at. This provides nice rhythmic contrast in the sentence to the stressed

  • syllables. For example, at school, at school, at school. They're both one syllable, but

  • the word 'at', much quicker than the word 'school'. At school.

  • I'll be at her house. The next word, after the word at, is the word 'her'. But I'm dropping

  • the H to reduce that word, so the next sound is actually the schwa sound. That means the

  • T will be a flap T. At her, at her, at her, I'll be at her house, I'll be at her house.

  • I got it at the corner store. At the, at the. So the word after the word 'at' begins with

  • a consonant, therefore the T is a stop T. At the, at the. I got it at the corner store.

  • I'm going to be at Anna's until 6. At Anna's, at Anna's. The next word begins with a vowel

  • sound, so the T is a flap T. At Anna's. I'm going to be at Anna's until 6. I'm busy at

  • the moment. At the, at the. Again, the next word, 'the', begins with a consonant, so it's

  • a stop T. At the, at the, I'm busy at the moment.

  • I hope you'll notice when native speakers do this and start doing it yourself. Integrating

  • the reduced 'at' into your speech will help smooth out the line, and also add some nice rhythmic

  • contrast to the longer, stressed syllables in a sentence.

  • That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.

In this American English pronunciation video, we're going to go over how to pronounce the

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