Name: Day 17 - Dropping the T - Understanding Fast Speech in English
Uploaded: 2018-09-23T07:45:47.000Z
Duration: 5 min 52 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of frequency

"Often" could be said with or without the T:

Without the T is probably more common in American English,

And you'll hear the T dropped between words, for example:  just thinking.

Now in the case of "often," we did have a schwa sound in there,

but basically you have the F, T, and N sounds

and I think that's why we tend to drop the T and say "often."

It's also correct to use the T: /ˈɔf tən/

However, there are some words in which the T sound is always dropped:

Also, we often drop the T after an N, as in...

It's N-T and then a following vowel sound.

And that vowel sound is unstressed, as in TWENty.

That's why it's also common to drop the T

in words that use the prefix "inter-." You'll hear:

But remember it's perfectly fine to say the T.

But usually in relaxed speech, Americans drop the T.

You're probably familiar with these reduced forms.

Just remember these are spoken forms, and they really shouldn't be written.

We have N-T followed by an unstressed vowel sound,

I'll say a sentence. You try to understand.

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Day 17 - Dropping the T - Understanding Fast Speech in English

pattern

basically

native

tend