An American T-dropping conspiracy?!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 เม.ย. 2024
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T-glottaling (aka 'T dropping') has been spreading in American speech via a conspiracy of two different strategies.
0:00 Introduction
1:02 T flapping (tapping)
2:09 T glottaling
6:03 Conspiracy in linguistics
7:15 Ground News
8:55 Unpacking syllabic N
12:41 Hard attack
17:39 Summing up
18:35 Explaining the conspiracy
20:43 Covert prestige
22:32 Help!
23:09 My wrong prediction
Adele by Kristopher Harris Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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Thank you for sharing our mission Dr Geoff!
If anyone's interested in getting the full picture of issues like the one in this video, check out the link in the description and let us know if you have any questions.
@@ground_newsyour app seems based around the notion of {{citation needed}}, I think it'd be neat if you heavily encourage those you sponsor provide a list of sources in a reasonable format so that viewers can not only cross check claims but also further educate themselves.
All this talk of hard attack nearly gave me a heart attack!
I noticed something similar as you mention at 17:30 in the speech of @GlennKirschner2 especially when he says "Justice matters" / "Justice madders" His "t" and "d" are very similar.
This is fascinating stuff! Thank you for this well researched and presented video! I'm wondering whether there is such a thing as a "nasal stop" (as opposed to a recognized in linguistics, i.e. where one produces the syllabic n (in "important" ) using and "explosive" burst of air by closing the back nasal passage rather than a glottal stop -- or am I thinking of a secondary characteristic of producing a "t"? I find making a "nasal stop", if there is such a thing, at least in the word "important" also requires the tip of the toungue touching the roof of the mouth in order to make the subsequent "n" sound.
From history, you know how we Americans are about dropping 'T'.
Good one!
This should be the top comment 😂
This is notably an old Boston coastal regionalism.
It took me about 6 seconds - then it hit me. Good one.
James Hoffmann still has better coffee than you 😏☕
These videos always have me babbling to myself, hopelessly trying to figure out which way I “usually” say things.
I think in casual speech I use the flap, but if I were to narrate something or speak deliberately, I’d have more glottal stops
Yeah - there is a bias in recorded speech to people using "presentational" speech which tends towards over emphasis. There just aren't as many free and easy to find recordings of people talking like they're chatting over coffee - but this video does still show which way speech in general is trending, if people are getting broadly more comfortable with this variety of emphasis.
That's interesting, because I would say that I use the flap in casual speech, but that in formal speech I would be more likely to fully pronounce the "t" sound rather than using either flap or "glottal t".
Yeah, as someone who generally speaks fairly standard Southern British English but lives in an area with a lot of fairly strong Estuary accents that glottalise loads of things, I realise just how massively it varies how much I glottal stop things depending on how casually I'm talking, and who I'm talking to. It's impossible to gauge how much I do it "usually"!
@@maxtonuponrySame. I notice that I pronounce it as a flap, "t", and glottal stop with roughly the same frequency. If I'm feeling lazy or casual, I'll drop the flap. In most other cases, I'll go with the glottal stop. And if formality is a concern or I want to emphasise something, I'll go with the full "t". For reference, I'm a speaker of estuary English with some American and Russian influences.
Yeah, if I'm recording something, I'm gonna over pronounce the first and last letters more than I would when speaking in person
A good friend from Liverpool (I'm American) shared an anecdote about glottling:
Mum: "Pronounce your tees!!"
daughter: "wha[]evah"
I'm from the piney woods of East Texas, where we're likely to just get rid of Ts all together if they're not flapped, though they'll get a glottal stop occasionally. The best example I've got is from a story my dad's best friend was telling at the deer lease a few years ago. In the story, he had to "climb da wahr tahr fer sum'n.'" For those people who aren't from East Texas, that's, "climb the water tower for something," but the first T was tapped, second dropped entirely, third annunciated, and fourth stopped.
hilarious to hear Dr. Geoff pronouncing words in an American accent.
I don't know why he's rhoticizing like that in this video. He's using [quasi-]Irish sounds. I *know* Dr. Lindsey can pronounce "certain" in a perfect Standard American accent, but here he sounds like an actor from a cheesy Britcom!
Irish sounds? I'm from Ireland and he sounds American to me when he makes those sounds. Nothing like Irish. Maybe accent sounds are relative to the hearer.@@Vinemaple
@@electricrusselletteAccent sounds are definitely a bit relative. To me he sounds very lightly Texan. Like a newscaster from Dallas or something.
@@Vinemaple I'm American and it sounds like American to me.
@Vinemaple I'm Australian, and it's hard for those of us who don't habitually use a rhoticised 'r' to try and imitate it. As for Americans attempting an Aussie accent, don't get me started 😂😂😂
I live in the Midwest. I first noticed people online using this in “mountain” and “important,” and it really bothered me. I still don’t hear it much in person, except in younger children.
I found this video really informative - I realized I don’t bat an eye when older people say “moun-nn,” while I say “moun-tin,” but hearing “moun-in” was irritating. The more things change the more they stay the same 😂
I hear bu-in at work for button. yikes.
lol i'm 15 and i say mountain like "moun-in" 💀
I also live in the Midwest, and I have family a few hours away in a town called 'Morton'. My father always gets on my siblings and I because we pronounce it "Mor[ʔ]in", while he pronounces it "More-tin". This video sort of directly relates to that distinction, and now I can't stop hearing it everywhere else in my speech!
It’s the phonetic uncanny valley 😅.
I can deal with most of them, but kih-in gets me. (I pronounce it "kit'nn")
I’m American and I must admit I never noticed these differences were age associated. I guess I just assumed these were regional differences - they all sound Northern to me. I’ll be paying more attention in the future!
They sound urban to me.
I'm so glad you made this video. As an older American, I have been noticing the glottal t in younger people and my peers think I'm nuts when I mention it. Especially noticed in words like certain and important.
It's because they grew up watching that British show Peppa Pig. My cousin's kid would watch that show nonstop and now she sounds like an East End chimney sweep.
My grandmother is from the Bronx - she's 93 - she'll thro' 'le any "t" she can find. I grew up not 30 miles away but when I say a word like bottle it sounds more like boddle. When she says "pass me the boh' 'le" I think, "Nan, did you go to London for that word?"
I really have to say that I think your videos are the best thing on youtube. Not only are they well-edited, -presented etc., but above all they feel cutting-edge - the equivalent of reading a new article, not a reference handbook. Thank you.
Can I quote you? Too kind 🙏🙏🙏
I tend to agree! Seriously great content!
well put, OP, i feel the exact same way
@@DrGeoffLindsey certainly! as shnen or as shoni, classics phd student at cambridge if you prefer hahaha
@@shnen2go Shoni!
"Ride on time" was a 1990 dance music hit. It has that title because the Italian house musicians misheard "Right on time" in the hook that they sampled.
Hello Dr Lindsey,
Recently I was watching a video with a Welshman speaking welsh English. He had an unusual way of connections within words that I have never seen before. You have spoken at length about dropping the T and replacing it with a glottal stop in some English accents (I.e. words like "Better" become (Beh'ah") but this fellow put an R in instead. In fact, just about every instance where there was a T in the middle or the end of the word, he replaced it with an R. So instead of saying "Forget about it" he said "Forge'r abour'it". I thought it was a conscious affectation at first but I listened to him speak for about 3 hours and he was consistent. It's like he had the London dropping-of-T-'s-and-putting-in-a-glottal-stop but took it a step further and hyper-intrusive-R'd all of those instances. Is this even a linguistic "Thing"? Thanks for all of the knowledge you've shared!
I’m so glad you made this video. I had noticed the recent tendency among young Americans to say, e.g., “impor’ent“ and was surprised to learn that my friends didn’t even know what I was talking about. Now I can send them this video, with its many examples.
My girlfriend has general American pronunciation and was surprised to learn that "kiddy pools" had nothing to do with small cats after hearing me say it with my British pronunciation and realising it wasn't with a T.
this is absolutely hilarious. Im just here imagining a bunch of kittens aimlessly swimming around in a pool
It's a pool so shallow you could wash kittens in it?
Yes; the perceived D sound makes comprehension much more difficult
Today I learned
Kiddy pool is for kids.
I'm a native German speaker, who's spent some time in Australia and went on to study English linguistics. In my seminar on accents during my studies, I analyzed my own accent as largely American with sprinkles of Australian. So, I was quite taken aback when I noticed that I've recently begun replacing the t in "that" by a glottal stop. It seems, I've also picked up on this trend. Thank you for this fascinating video!
Do you use glottal stops (hard attack) before vowels when you speak English?
I'm an Australian who spent a decade in Germany and the way German has affected my English is that, words like "open" sometimes come out of my mouth with a syllabic /m/ instead of a schwa then /n/: [ɐʉ̯p̚m̩] ... just like "haben" → "habm". I asked an Aussie friend of mine who said he's sure he's heard other anglophones do that, but I've never come across it. In any case, I'm sure I've picked it up from German rather than from other English speakers.
In Australia, the word "no" comes out as about five syllables. 🥴
@@Mark-pp7jy It's literally just a diphthong you're not used to. Chill.
That's funny because I'm an American who had lots of Aussie friends growing up and I definitely think I picked up parts of the accent. I would be very curious to hear yours.
I use a lot more glottal stops than the average American for sure. Even in two of the examples "cotton" and "biting."
@@demidron. It's humor Ben. Chill.
I’m 63, American, and grew up in Maryland, now live in Colorado. I say ‘button’ with what I guess is a tongue ‘tap’ for the ‘t’ but it’s not a tap and release. My tongue stays up and then I go straight to the ‘n’. My sons seem to do the same. My daughter, however, does a full glottal version of the t. She grew up here in Colorado. It’s so noticeable to me, and I do tend to notice that more in people her age (early 30s) and younger. She seems unaware of the difference. I might have her watch this episode.
I love these--fascinating. Not only the main content, but the way you slide into your adverts imperceptibly. This is both humorous and maddening.
another colorado immigrée here, originally from mississippi, and it's shudderingly clear how much the local accent involves glottalizing. it sounds _so_ ignorant and non-credible to my ear. for lack of a better term, ghetto.
I also grew up in MD, and am in my mid-40s. I do the same as you with button. It drives me mad to hear someone either do "buh-en" with the full glottal stop and vowel - which my sister does, and she grew up in the same places as me, just 7 years behind - *or* to flap the Ts really heavily and do the vowel to get all the way to "budden". Madness.
I’m from Colorado and yeah pretty much everyone my age (early 20s) does the full glottal stop for words like “button” or “mountain”, my mom is from Baltimore and she’s one of the few people I know who sometimes voices those “t” sounds
I'm 74 and have lived in Maryland since the age of four. I say it the same way you do: the tongue goes to the palate and stays there through the n. I pronounce almost all such words that way. I have noticed that people in the Carolinas use a d sound in many such words, like "buddon" or "impordant". And they pronounce "sentence" as "sennance".
I have always been fascinated with the very odd pronunciation which I call "Duntalk", since it seems that nearly everyone raised in Dundalk talks that way. Where else in the English-speaking world do people pronounce "water" as "wooder"? Or "hon" as "hoing"? Since you are a Marylander, I'm sure you've heard it many times. Hey, maybe you're a Duntalker, yourself!
Edit: Oh, another feature of this area is called the "dark L". With words that begin with L, people will pronounce the L almost like a W, with the tongue never reaching the palate. I remember one person who pronounced his own name, Larry, that way. In fact, he's the one who introduced me to the term, "dark L". He was a psychologist, and kept that pronunciation despite going to a fine prep school and having an Ivy League college education. LOL, I remember that the prep school was Loyola, which he pronounced "Woyowa" (approximately).
Edit AGAIN: Wow, I just remembered that the dark L is _very_ common in the Cockney accent!
Great to read these replies-thanks for sharing them. @Astrobrant2, I grew up in Manchester (northern Carroll County). I still catch myself saying certain phrases from there. My Merlin-ese was never pure, as my parents both grew up in Nebraska, so I was a linguistic mongrel, I guess. My peers would make fun of my NOT saying ‘wooter’ for water, etc. 😂
I'm a 33 year old American from Southern California and the phenomenon heard at 11:40 drives me CRAZY. I'm hearing it more and more. It is for some reason very common in the state of Utah I've noticed.
It sounds so nasal to me. Nails on a chalkboard anyway.
About 60 years ago I noticed that a friend of mine said "di-dint" rather than "didnt". I don't know where he got it from. I still hear it from various people occasionally.
It's a lazy way to speak. If you watch Hollywood movies from 1929 to 1960 you never hear lazy glottal stopping. All consonants are pronounced.
@@hewitc one thing I love about old films is their attention to proper speech.
The words Button and Curtain always drive me nuts when people drop the T, then I catch myself. But then, how do you actually pronounce it? It sounds so weird to me, then I am not sure either. LOL. These two words I deal with, but someone in the comments mentioned the contraction 'di-dint" rather than "didnt'. I do not like it when someone says 'di-int'. Drives me crazy. Sorry if you do, nothing personal.
While watching this video, i got an ad for chocolate, and the (seemingly American) speaker said "treat yourself" with a glottalized t! I love your videos, every time i watch i learn something new about the way i speak. Thank you for making this content! (Also, as a young American girl, i personally use glottal t all the time, i haven't noticed much of a gender bias around it in my personal life)
That one's pretty interesting because you'd expect the /t/ to be palatalized and affricated if it weren't glottalized - the whole yod-coalescence thing going on there. So maybe there's an avoidance of that?
I'd love to think that the TH-cam ads algorithm selected that ad for you while watching this video on the basis that you would probably be interested in that feature of their speech...! 😆
@@SNDKNG Yeah the person in the ad is probably trying to separate the words "treat yourself" for clarity instead of saying "treecherself"
@@SNDKNG hard attack can also occur before y, w, r, and l! they're glides, which are similar enough to vowels to get the same glottal stop sometimes
Why do you choose to watch ads? This is a question I’ve been curious about since I was a child. I’ve always chosen not to watch them, so I don’t understand why anyone would want to watch them.
American here. When my Ukrainian aunt was first learning English, I was talking to her about something and said the number 20. She looked confused and asked me to repeat it. Speaking more slowly, I pronounced it as "twun-ty". But she shook her head and said that wasn't how I had said it originally. It turns out that I actually do completely drop the t in 20 in casual speech, pronouncing it like "twunny."
I pronounce it closer to 'twenny'.
Learning spoken language > learning written language. We were fluent in our first language before we learned to write it. And written English isn't an alphabet so much as a semi-etymologising logography based loosely on Latin.
This sounds like the /nt/ flapping mentioned briefly in the video. As Lindsey alludes to, this is somewhat complicated. This is very common in North American dialects especially in the north eastern US and Canada. (Note the stereotypical examples of internet and Toronto.) In addition to a difference in formal and informal speech, you may have some variation between pronunciation in the same register.
@@CuFhoirthe88 I would argue pseudo-etymologizing logography would be more appropriate given the amount of folk etymology and Latin dress-up going on.
Hello Dr. Lindsay - I'm a Lithuanian that's lived in the UK for 13 years and when I originally came to the UK to Sheffield I sounded Australian for no reason whatsoever (to the point where me and my friends convinced an Aussie exchange student that I was from Sydney and he demanded to see my passport when we finally broke the news to him a year later). Today my accent wanders and meanders in weird ways, making Europeans believe I'm British, and Brits to be very confused.
I think a key feature of my accent is genuine t-dropping (which is not at all a feature of Lithuanian, for example), rather than flapping or glottaling. Would you like to have a chat and see if you could make it into an interesting linguistics video?
In Spielberg's Lincoln, actor Jared Harris (as General Ulysses S Grant) does a near-perfect rural Northern Illinois accent until his final line where he pronounces the words January 18th and gives away some of his native accent by pronouncing them "Janury eighdeenth" instead of the full Illinois way of ""Jan-u-ary eighTeenth".
Showing so many examples of the hard attack in action could lead to a heart attack ❤
Yes Sir , I totally agree on that.
Really dangerous thing,this heart attack,I mean hard attack, or was it the other way round?So confusing those conspiracy theories…
I'm glad that I read down the comments, because I was just about to say something similar.
But only if you put stress on the heart.
@@MarkoMikulicic the /t/ in the word “attack “ is the stressed syllable
therefore can’t be a glottal stop 🛑
@@robertkohler3856 it was klingon
This video made me realize that I am no longer a "young speaker" of American English and I resent it! I am youthful and vibrant!
I was raised in Michigan, am older, and definitely heard people saying "bu'in" for button and "mi'in" for mitten even back then. I thought it was a Midwestern thing, but now I have a friend, same age as me, who was raised in Connecticut and also does this.
I do it in Utah, so yep, apparently its pretty widespread. A little sad cause i thought it was a kinda unique thing to utah accents but nah, guess not.
65 y.o. Ohioan, same. When formal, I use the t. Informal, I'll lapse into the glottal stop.
These hard attacks are prone to give me a heart attack.
The one dropped t sound that I can’t stand, for some reason, is in the word button, because it seems doubled up.
I tried to drop the t's in attack and my dog looked at me strange haha
We dropped tea a long time ago.
Boom roasted
Lmao at this. 😂😂 Best comment I’ve seen all year.
haha. fyi: i heard that tea wasn't the most abundant product in that party. but I haven't looked up whether that seems true or not based on the best evidence that I can find.
I don’t study language or anything like that, but I find these videos endlessly fascinating. I also typically feel extremely self conscious afterward, so thanks for that 😅
The word Internet is an example of t-dropping. Most North Americans don't pronounce the first t.
Yes, came here to say the same! I didn't really think about it until it was pointed out by EU/UK friends.
I usually say "Inter-Net" rather than "InnerNet" 🤓
Also most other "inter" words
I do. Interesting.
@@JuleesuzIntristing (sic)
That's a flap. He covered that.
Dr. Geoff, as a former linguistics grad student I am absolutely fascinated by your incredibly insightful videos! I am originally from the Midwest, am a practicing lawyer in Texas, and have also lived and practiced law in New Orleans. You did a video a while back on ask vs aks and the social constructs that go with it. In New Orleans there is a well-respected member of the judiciary who uses a very strong “aks” that would get a strong side-eye by the educated elite in Dallas but is perfectly acceptable in New Orleans. I’m wondering if you have ever studied the various accents in New Orleans. I find them fascinating and I would love to hear some of your analysis on any aspect of them. For example, a large sector of the population uses an accent that is very similar to a Boston accent.
I miss being at university. I love listening to an intelligent analysis and well thought out presentation of ideas that are new to me.
Houses of light.
"I miss being at university."
In my observation, almost no one at a university can speak a single sentence without inserting the word "LIKE".
@@menow. It wasn't like that when I was there. American have let standards slide in many areas, lignguistic sloppiness is now the order of the day. I hate the constant use of the word "literally".
Most ppl blindly follow their peers to gain their acceptance, & copying group speech is a type of following. Social acceptance is such a powerful need that you'll see it everywhere, all our lives. @@menow.
@@BermondseySteve Yes, that's true. It's just sad, what they are copying.
Early 20’s American guy. I definitely have a glottal stop in words like button, cotton, gotten, etc. This seems to work across word-boundaries for me, provided the following syllable is [weak vowel + n], as in “cat in the hat” or “caught in the rain” or “bat an eyelash”. I don’t think I do glottal stops across word boundaries when the following syllable isn’t [weak vowel + n], e.g., “one cat alone”, “caught off guard” or “bet on it”, where instead the Ts are tapped.
Yes, this seems exactly matching to my own accent.
I do the exact same thing! I’ve never realized it before now
Yeah, 21 general American accent (Midwest to be specific) and I definitely use glottal stops for button, Cotten, and gotten, and I don’t think this is a new thing either. If you listen to the Tennessee Ernie Ford song “Union Dixie” from 1961, he says “where cotton’s king and men are chattels” with a glottal stop I’m pretty sure. Maybe because he’s singing it isn’t a good example though?
Funny enough, it's the same for me with one exception.
If I say "leave that cat alone", I would say it with the tap. But if I say "one cat, alone", I do glottalize the 't' in 'cat', because I tend to insert hard attack a lot more where a natural pause (like at a comma) precedes it. I don't unpack syllabic 'n' as much as a lot of people my age do, though.
Mid-20s, general American (moved around a lot, but my high school and college years were in the mid-Atlantic), suburban/semi-rural.
Same thing for me. Late 20s male Long Islander. Seems a fairly regionally diverse trend!
Thank you very much for not judging the younger generation.
I study acting and everytime someone tells me young people's speech is bad because they are lazy and watch too much tv, a little bit of my inner linguist dies. You gave me an argument for the next time my patience inevitably runs out and I start explaining that no, that is not how any of this works 😁
You genuinly made my day ❤
I live in Connecticut (where we're known to drop the "t" (glottal stop) off the end of "connecticut"... as well as dropping the second "c", and flapping the following "t"), but we do say "cotton" here with a glottal "t", like you mentioned at 23:00. There's also a town called "Clinton" which we pronounce with a glottal "t" and without the "n" before it. But there's a town called "Canton", where we do pronounce it with the "n" and a regular "t".
I think I have a new euphemism, to use during the holidays.... to 'Not Give a Flying Reindeer'. 🤣
As an older Maritimer (East Coast of Canada) I find that I actually pronounce my T's, in most of these words. But also being Canadian, the American and British pronunciations sound normal for American and British accents. We tend to be exposed to both, a lot. and just go with the flow. As always... a fascinating video Dr Lindsey.😊
I saw the Santa display at my department store and I could give a flying reindeer.
I live near the border and listen to a lot of CBC, and I've noticed Canadian radio presenters elide consonants and syllables in weird ways. I regularly hear "Cneenian" (Canadian), "Chronno" (Toronto), and "pleece" (police) on the CBC.
Thanks Doug
@@Vinemaple Wait i figure the second one is "tronno" like how we say toronto but what are those other ones?
@@NightmaresClanGaming i assume "canadian" and "police"
One thing I absolutely love about this channel is that it often helps me to better speak and understand languages other than English. Your explanation about hard attacks in German was such an ear-openner! On the course of following this channel, I've become a better speaker of English, French, and German. Three languages for the price of a single youtube subscription.
Thank you so much.
Let's all give a moment of silence for the dropped T.
This is so fascinating!! I used to speak a bit differently - I’m not sure why I changed certain pronunciations. I’m 40 and live in New England (NY-CT metro area). I used to use glottal stops/flaps for words like “mountain” and “counter” and have changed to pronounce those with sharp “t’s”. Most people in my region still use the stop or tap in those words. It might be because I used to work with toddlers and read them a LOT of books out loud - I wanted to speak very clearly for them and it seems to have changed my speech a lot. This is so so interesting! The hard attack seems to be dependent on what we’re talking about - we seem to use it a lot when we’re speaking in a lecture-type voice - and I’d actually wager that TH-cam has influenced it a lot because everyone tends to use the same exact delivery. Too be honest, most amateur people on TH-cam seem to speak in their videos like they’re eight year olds giving oral reports at school and it’s AWFUL lol it strikes me that hard attack stems from that place in people’s brains here in the states - people wanting to sound “professional” or “smart” and they revert to how they spoke in school. I’d also say that hard attack is IMMENSELY influenced by the Kardashians - their vocal fry and slower and more deliberate way of speaking (especially Kourtney) has both features.
About 17 or 18 years ago, I worked in Texas with a man from Pittsburgh who did this with “button”, pronouncing it something like “bu n”. It wasn’t sure what he had said until he repeated it a bit later.
Its interesting that all these ways of pronouncing T still register as being T, with the words still being completely understandable. It really speaks to how amazing the brain is.
It blew my mind to learn that American tapped t is identical to the Portuguese r sound.
Well they're all plosives, so there's certainly a similarity between all the different ways of saying it. I'd be interested to know why the brain feels that the glottal stop has more in common with the tongue tip 't' than another plosive like say "p". Is it just social conditioning or is it actually phonetically closer on some level? I can't immediately think of any examples in other languages which might give a clue as to which.
@@xergiok2322 I'd have to imagine it has to do with how our brain creates our perception of reality as much through predictions and past experiences, as through actual sensory input. That's why illusions can boggle us or we can hear words in white noise. It's fascinating that even though the brain can be pretty easily tricked, it still gets it right most of the time.
T-flapping is also common in some Australian accents. It's particularly noticeable in numbers like "thirty" and "forty," which combine British R-dropping and North American T-dropping in a single word!
They even do it in “thirteen” and “fourteen”!
As an Australian, I can’t stand it 😅 It’s a pet peeve of mine for people to change T to D without needing to.
It's almost the standard Australian pronunciation. Pronouncing the "t" in "water" or "butter," for example, rather than "wader", 'budder" would definitely make you stand out.
What I find interesting is how similar mutations in pronunciation arise independently, even in different languages. You see some of the same sorts of mutations happening in Portuguese that happen in English (the /z/ in Brazil turning into /ʒ/, the same way the /s/ in usual does in English). Or how certain /k/s in Russian, English and Italian mutated into /t͡ʃ/. Someone could write a linguistic law about it...
@BruceKvam, I don't think you can prove a law (in the scientific sense) for anything involving voluntary human action. Nevertheless, are academic terms for the shifts and mutations languages experience, and I'm sure many linguists have looked at how common they are.
Assibilation is the s->sh, s->z, k->ch, g->j, etc. softening, I think.
I find myself rewatching your videos time and time again-and it is always a delight to do so.
Please, never stop doing these.
you've made me realize that the glottal t before an inserted vowel from americans has been a pet peeve of mine for years even though i never identified it as such, i just knew it felt "off" to me
you've also made me realize that doing a hard attack is often a feature of the "robotic" sounding speech of vulcans in star trek
It’s Miley Cyrus’s dialect isn’t it?
I'm always so amazed by your videos... I'm Brazilian and I think that I learned my English 95% by myself. First I learned how to read and write, then listen, and the last thing was my pronunciation. The problem is that I love British series, movies (Harry Potter fan), audio books by BBC etc., but most of the material that I consume is in American English. So you can imagine that my pronunciation is all over the place. Watching your videos has been great to understand where I can improve. I love watching them and going back and forth trying to learn how to identify the "vocal phenomena" that you describe. You're truly amazing!
Lucky English is really flexible and doesn’t need to be spoken precisely
I remember hearing an Indian man speak at a conference, and he would pronounce certain words with a different accent than others. You could tell that he must have picked up certain words from someone in the American south, and then a few others would sound more British. It was fascinating.
I grew up in Glasgow(ish), with foreign parents, my accent is pretty strange
@@lucylane7397 Right. I find it fascinating that on TH-cam I encounter quite a few non-native English speakers who have 99% perfect American English, but after a few minutes I can tell that they are non-native. Typically it's not a question of "accent", but rather, that they speak more precisely than a native. A true native has more tendency to use sloppy speech, slurring words, etc.
@@bhami I work and teach English abroad and this is a common myth that English teachers put in their students' heads. "Wow! You speak better than native speakers!" In every language that you study, you'll find that native speakers do not speak or pronounce things precisely as they are "supposed to" due to something known as colloquial speech. I worked in Poland for some time. Polish tends to stick to the "rules". Despite my studying, I would still struggle to understand a colleague of mine when she was having casual chat with another colleague. The reason is because natural and colloquial speech don't follow textbook "rules." While there are cases of some people who may slur their speech, colloquial speech and dialect isn't "sloppy." Speaking in a manner that is hyper and excessively "proper" comes off as pompous and makes it difficult for language learners to have authentic conversations and connections with the people they wish to interact with. "How do you do?" vs "How's it goin'?" Both give off and invite different kinds of energy.
I just want to say that your videos always surprise me a lot. I couldn't even imagine that these bits specifically hide so much behind them. Thank you for fueling the linguistic curiosity with every episode!
Fascinating. Yes, as an American, I've definitely noticed these trends in younger speakers. And I do seem to notice them more in female speakers (things like bu-in for button, for example). I've also noticed the loss of the T at the ends of sentences, where there is no following sound. "Did you understand that part? becomes "Did you understand that par?"-so there seems to be an attack on the T all the way round. 🙂 On another subject, I also hear some (again mostly female) young speakers placing a glide in words. "I do, too" becomes "I dyoo tyoo."
Dyoo tyoo is such a fascinating one. Noticed it too.
I cracked up when you mentioned words with centered “N” being more complicated and not being addressed in this video. I live in NA where I am absolutely certain my neighbors do not know that the word “mountain” has a T.
Hi Geoff, great video! I would purport that maybe your sample data could be skewed by the "TH-cam accent" that a lot of content creators use, which can be quite different than the way that people talk normally in the US. With that said, I do notice the younger generation adopting some of this "TH-cam dialect" and delivering their words as if they were presenting information on TH-cam.
This is to say nothing of your evidence and conclusions in the video! I just wanted to mention something I am aware of as a GenZ/Millenial cusper from the US Northeast
The TH-cam instructional video pronunciation of "the" before a consonant sound is epidemic, eg "thee computer." Professional speakers do NOT do this. I think they do it to sound more precise or exact. And they don't do it all the time.
I agree, but as children become more and more raised on said "youtube accent" there becomes more and more younger speakers whose accents are molded by it.
I agree that hard attack is much less common in normal American speech. It's really mostly used as a "stage accent" practice.
@@WGGplant 100%! Tangentially: I would be curious to hear if the Mid-Atlantic accent had an influence of accents in the Anglosphere. That seems to be a somewhat analogous cultural phenomenon.
I noticed this too! Especially the unpacked syllabic-n version immediately clicked for me as "youtuber and/or teen accent" (which I definitely did not realize was a distinct thing in my mind until watching this!)
Eh, I doubt -- yes, alot of you tubers may try to slow down and be a bit more precise, but a lot of that was pretty unselfconscious, fluid, natural speach. Sound pretty natural and normal to me.
I'm curious if a lot of the American hard attack pronunciations are occurring when the younger generation is speaking in "presentation mode." Given that I'm sure they've consumed online content in a larger portion of their lives than the older generations, they probably picked up that presentational speech pattern in their produced content.
I sort of hypothesis that these same people use more t flapping and "relaxed" speech patterns when not in "presentation/formal mode."
Also, I bet if you go into an American TH-camr's years old content, they probably have more relaxed speech. Their current speech patterns are probably far more formal.
I think I make that exact distinction in my own speech. Somewhere up there Dr. Lindsey says he brings this exact thing up in his video about hard attack too.
This video has illuminated so much about my own speech patterns, it's just astounding to me.
I am an American (Southern Californian) and I hard attack, and I am not even really "young" (mid-40s).
I assume everyone younger than me and also from my region do so also (upon reflection I am certain all my local peers do).
The hard attack does probably get more pronounced when I am speaking with emotion or with animation (i.e., excitement), or trying to speak persuasively (to convince or otherwise make a point), but, no, it is not merely "presentational", it just *is*, and if Dr G is to be believed, and I think he most certainly should be, the hard attack is almost assuredly why I glottal-T so many words that I, by conventional wisdom, shouldn't.
It is the missing piece of the puzzle I've been looking for for a long time now.
I agree. My son has completely different speech patterns when talking at woror with me than when he speaks with his friends.
yes, it reminds me of the way news reporters and news anchors speak.
I agree. I'm not a native English speaker, but we do this in German too. When I speak casually, I often omit glottal stops. "Hier hast du einen..." turns into "hier hasdn...", with three words melting into one. But I have a presentation mode too: when I care about getting a point across, being clear etc, I speak "more clearly" as I was taught, which means not ommiting glottal stops, vowels and so on.
I'm an American in my 50s and only discovered recently as a result of a language survey here that I drop my Ts occasionally. I don't do it much, only in very specific situations, but I hadn't realized I was doing it at all and it came as a bit of a shock. I'm quite gratified to learn more about some of the reasons for it in this video!
I’m from Essex, UK and my SO is from New England. I’m an accent chameleon, shifting as the situation requires for understanding. She’s a singing teacher studying Estil. Love your videos!
Of course we all know what Americans did with their Ts. Chucked it in Boston harbour 😂
Merry Christmas!🎄
I'm a vocal music teacher, and I love your videos! They help SO MUCH with helping students sing sounds they CAN do but often don't think they can! Many Rs should be flipped in sung English but are not flipped in standard American English, but this has been so helpful!
As a corollary, an English speaker who is diligent about fluency in a language unrelated, e.g. Athabascan (Native American), Xhosa, etc. may find being a proficient musician can be helpful. Phrasing, meter, structure, pitch, tonality, expression, attack, retardation, diminution, and the capability of the instrument itself are part of the "language" of music. So it is with the comprehension of sound produced by one who is speaking.
Just experimented with a friend, I found that not only did they freely use regular t, flapping, and glottal stop + hard vowel attack, in some cases they even dropped the t completely and relied on the listener being able to hear differences between two vowels to recognize the t
For example, in "legitimately", I noticed they dropped the first t (the second one was glottal) and pronounced the two i's as the "ih" in "kit" becoming a schwa (I'm not very good with IPA). I think some people could chalk up this sort of t-pronunciation as being lazy, but I do it too, so something else to think about...
"Legimately" sounds like a rapid speech pronunciation. We pretty much all do this. It's amazing how our brain reconstructs words that we only partially say.
I s'pose@@DrGeoffLindsey
I (from Michigan) would tap the first t in “legitimately” and glottalize the second t.
@@Ravie3yeah, I'm from Iowa and the first T goes more into that T/D crossover sound with a touch more T on the second, the first one just feels like a weak letter
Thanks for the video, I have been bothered by how many times I hear the first T dropped in the word “important “ now I know that it is a glottal T. It drives me nuts (lol) I’ll be checking out your channel more! Greetings from Seattle 😊
As a Canadian from Ontario, when I lived in California the glottal in "bitten" and "mitten" stood out to me a lot. Also the name "Martin", which always made me think of the theme song to the Martin TV show in the 90s (starring Martin Lawrence), where it was a very prominent element of the music. Your video has been interesting in helping me identify the more consistent places where it might occur.
I am so glad to see you address this. I first started hearing it back in the late 80s, in central NY state, and thought it was regional and socioeconomic. Since then, of course, it has come to be everywhere. The surprising thing is that many people seem not to be able to hear it. When I point out how we used to say a word, compared to how it's now said, look blank and say they never noticed.
I am always surprised that so many people are such poor listeners.
Welcome to the world of English pronunciation!
That’s wild asf. That’s j how language changes goes ig. Nb speaking it realizes it’s changing until it’s completely unrecognizable centuries later. Ship of Theseus type shii
I moved to Ithaca in the mid 1990s and I noticed that too.
Most people, in general, are not good at noticing small, gradual changes.
I don't know why the phrase "American flapping" has me giggling so much
Yes, after I'd said it so many times it started sounding crazy to me.
As soon as I read your comment he said "American flaps" and I just.... 🤣
A throwback to the roaring '20s!
Thank you so much for your research and videos! They are so interesting and fun to watch! I can't believe this one was 25' long, it felt like less than 10'. 💜
The glottal stop that is becoming more common in american english for me is reminiscent of the "valley" accent popularized in the 1980's and 1990's. A prime example would be the phrase "oh no you didn't" pronounced as (oh no you di unt) a la the main character from the movie Clueless. I am in the american south/southwest in Oklahoma City, and I was born in the mid 1970's.
I was a bit sad that the "center"/"international" example didnt get more time, as someone with the winter-winner merger. But there is another complicated example that might deserve more exploration, which is T-flapping after L (e.g. "alter", "falter") where us Americans tend to disagree. Notably, if you watch NFL games, you will notice a lot of variation in how the commentators and referees pronounce "Baltimore" and "penalty".
Is it a pure merger though? To me 'winter' does trigger the (intent of) a flap that can't be fully produced because of / n / and is absorbed by it. I feel a tiny difference but maybe it's just me.
The phonology section of the wikipedia page for American English says that intervocalic /nt/ can be reduced to a nasalized flap [ɾ̃] or just completely merge with /n/. Some people pronounce winner and winter both as [ˈwɪnɚ], some distinguish both as [ˈwɪnɚ] and [wɪɾ̃ɚ], and some maintain the original distinction between [ˈwɪnɚ] and [ˈwɪntɚ].
@@LavenderRaine thanks
I was disappointed by this too, since it's a big topic of discussion in my city, Toronto.
Greg Olsen is the poster boy for this phenomenon... to took a "shah" downfield. hahahaha
Dr Geoff, I started watching your videos out of sheer curiousity, kept watching because of how well you break everything down and make it understandable to people with no background in linguistics - but what I have learned from your videos helps me in my work! I'm a musician and I love using speech synthesis, which requires me to transcribe vocals into phonemes. I realised quite quickly that the "correct" phonemes makes synthesised speech/singing sound very strange and awkward, and your videos have helped me move past the trial and error method of getting natural sounding vocals!
I’m so glad to hear this strange new insertion described because I certainly have noticed it!
as a 30s californian who glottalizes before vowels and even before some syllabic Ls, ive always wondered how late down the line intervocalic t glottaling was in britain, or if it ever happened in nyc. i imagine the stigmatization alone would either prevent it or leave the environnement as the last to be affected here in north america
I first became aware of this trend 20 years ago, when the American rock band The White Stripes released the song, "The Hardest Button to Button." It was a glottal orgy! I found the sound quite grating, but of course this kind of pronunciation has proliferated in the U.S. since then.
The White Stripes are from Detroit and speak Inland North, specifically the Michiganese variant. There are a lot of glottal stops in Michiganese, and a number of them are carryovers from their German and Dutch ancestors. You can probably hear it in Kid Rock and Bob Seger songs as well.
It still doesn't excuse people for saying "buh-in" nowadays.
That song was the first thing that came to my mind, as an example of glottal T.
@@brandongorte4746I've spent all my life in northern IL, and it's pretty common here, as well. I think it's a little softer, and more "buh•n."
There's a trend I've noticed in younger Americans where they do the stereotypical British working class glottal T to such a degree that it actually sounds like two separate words.
For example, the word "certain". Instead of just replacing the T with a glottal stop, it's spoken as if it were two words, with the first word being pronounced fully rather than as a shortened weak form, and a hard attack on the second word. So instead of "certain", it sounds like "sir N". They almost pause and go completely silent between the two syllables.
The first time I heard it was in a Collegehumor sketch called "Gluten free duck", which portrays a duck complaining about the bread it's being fed, saying things like "Does that bread have glue N? Because I can't eat glue N."
It was exaggerated for the sketch, but after that I started hearing it everywhere.
I do the same thing with the word "button". To my parents, it sounds like I'm saying "Bu N", and they joke around about it a lot. I don't even notice I do it until someone points it out.
i've heard a lot of people 30-under do this quite a bit in the last decade? I wonder if it's Harry Potter?
@@pauladuncanadams1750 I doubt it. It doesn't sound very Bri'ish the way they do it, and most of the accents in Harry Potter were very BriTTish.
I can't hear any difference between that and what was discussed in this video.
@@woodfur00 my thoughts too.
I love these videos. I only understand a fraction of what you talk about, but i appreciate your brilliance an' energy!
What a fun video! I have no idea why it came up in my stream, but I hovered and got hooked immediately. Your video answered a question that I'd thought about often when listening to young youtubers: Where did that first 't' go in important?
I live near Canton, Ohio (named after Canton, China) and we can always spot a local versus an outsider by how they pronounce the city name. We use the glottal T and syllabic N to make it "Can'n" like "Moun'n" for "Mountain" versus an outsider's more complete "Can-ton."
Cant'n or Canttun 😅
As a Cleveland, Ohio person I guess I’ve always pronounced it Cantin😂
T-flapping is actually possible between two vowels AND two liquids. For example, the flap in 'chortle' is preceded by the retroflex liquid and followed by the lateral liquid.
We dropped the T in Boston and never looked back
I have long been fascinated with the topics that you discuss. It's nice to know that I have noticed many of the things you analyze. Regarding this "T-dropping", I once had an unpleasant experience with a student regarding this. On the first day of class, I was calling students' names when I got to a "Brittiany". Yes, that's the way her parents decided to spell it. I pronounced the name with that joined t and n, as you mentioned with "Britain", but still with a weak syllabic break, which distinguishes it from "Britney". She smiled, raised her index finger, and said, "No, no, it's ...," separating her tongue from the palate between the t and n. I replied, "Yes, that's what I said." She answered, "No, you said ..." pronouncing it the way I did and then proceeded to demonstrate her name again, this time emphasizing the hard t. I resented that. It was clear that her parents wanted to give her the authority to manipulate everyone she ever meets. And she reveled in it.
Also, I thought you might mention how so many supposed legal experts pronounce the t like a d in "affidavit" and don't pronounce the last t in "statute" at all. Now sure, there are lots of words where we pronounce a t as a d, but "affidavit" and "statute" should have at least a glottal stop at the end.
FYI, I have noticed that in the US Carolinas, people pronounce "sentence" as "sennance" and "important" as "impordant". I'm not sure how geographically far this trait extends.
I’m convinced Dr. Geoff Lindsey is a genius. These videos are truly incredible. Thank you for opening my eyes to the peculiarities and nuance of language!
I find myself doing hard attack on vowels at the start of words when I am intentionally trying to enunciate or speak clearly, like in a presentation or when talking to a foreign English speaker
Exactly, I call it 'presentational' speech. In my hard attack video I show how much less of it one TH-camr uses when she's chatting on the phone.
I (Irish) find that I do it when I'm placing emphasis on the word, whereas I do it less on unemphasised vowel words
Yes! When people use a long A for "a", which they otherwise always pronounce as "uh" and "thee" for "the", otherwise always pronounced as "thuh".
I need to say something about the wonderfully quietly amusing humor in these videos. Absolutely charming!
I have just discovered your channel and I love it.
My own insights as a Gen-X flat/standard midwest american english speaker (originally from Ohio, a state with a large German and English historical ancestry, and where major cities had german language public schools well into the early 20th century), my spontaneous reaction is that the hard attack vs the flap pronunciation between words has a lot to do with emphasis and urgency tone. When generic middle-Americans try to sound angry or intense, we also try to sound stereotypically German, and this is tied to popular culture in late 20th century media depictions of angry/intense German accents in film and television. So I think the flap sounds more "calm" (NOT "carm" ;) and the glottal stop sounds more "urgent".
You (Dr Lindsey) pointed out when it appeared idiosyncratically in one of the videos of a You Tuber talking about the columbian exchange of eurasian crowd diseases in Hispanola, and I think you might be able to hear the contextual difference of the two pronunciations of the same phrase. In the first case he was emphatically / intensely introducing the fact, and in the second case he had relaxed his tone and was mentioning it in passing, as a mere matter of fact rather than a matter of intruigue. So as the intensity of speech declined, the flap replaced the stop.
As an example in my American speech, I pronounce the words "mitten", "smitten", "written", etc. with a glottal stop in place of T. Same thing before suffixes in "flightless", "fitness", "witness", "shirtless", "fitful". Also "heightened, brightened, fateful"
This is what I have noticed a pretty dramatic change in. The way words are pronounced with a double t in the middle of the word. I’m 59 and I use a glottal stop when I say mitten but it’s like mi-in and the second syllable has less emphasis. When I hear younger Americans saying the word it sounds like mi-en with a hard pronunciation of the second syllable and it fascinated me that I was actually seeing a shift in the language. Unfortunately when I tried to point this out to my niece she thought I was criticizing her when that wasn’t it at all. It’s also funny that while typing this in my head every “t” in every word was pronounced completely not at all the way I actually speak
Me too. Also I say cotton with a glottal stop, and I'm a 44 year old male. I don't think this is a new phenomenon at all.
I'm pretty sure I've heard all of these before but I'm having trouble imagining "fitful" or "fateful" with a glottal stop while still sounding American
How do you pronounce 'important'? I've noticed quite a lot of Americans use a glottal stop (e.g. 'impor[ʔ]an') and wondered whether it's more common in a specific region of the USA.
@@jamesnite2157 I honestly think almost all Americans use the glottal stop to say important. I can't think of any other way we'd say it. Unless you're enunciating for effect.
One of the most famous scenes from Xenoblade 3 gave us "wotah" poking fun at one of the characters' Welsh accent, especially since it's juxtaposed with another character's tapping American accent. Less well famous is a scene with the same word from two other characters, including a glotalizing Cockney accent. So there are at least 3 different pronunciations of "water" within one game. I'll also mention that all 4 of these characters are main party members and no one in-game points out the different accents.
"Wotah"
"Wawder"
and "Wo'ah"
I didn't expect Xeno 3, but it actually is a pretty interesting mix of accents to examine isn't it
@@isharpu1977Xenoblade 2 was much easier to distinguish since the accents were based more on where the characters were from, whereas Xenoblade 3 has less consistency to how they're distributed, causing more ambiguity as to which accent a character has.
Absolutely wonderful video! I love linguistics, and you explained things wonderfully
Thank you so much!
Dude always brings to my attention something about my language that I’ve never even noticed or thought about. Awesome
As a Geordie speaker, I have noticed people saying that we do not pronounce 't' in the middle of a word. Admittedly it is soft and sometimes pronounced as a 'd". I once heard a dialect coach teaching actors to speak in a Geordie accent by dropping ALL midword 't' s. The first time I heard someone try this in TV drama, I thought they must be portraying someone with a severe speech impediment.😂
Fellow Geordie - Don't think I've ever heard it pronounced as a D? What words were you thinking of? The glottalling of the t is common, but don't think it turns into a D sound?
Young American speech tends more and more to be influenced by African American speech, both in lexicon and accent. I've always assumed the increase in hard attack is related to that. I also notice that especially with articles, where 'a' and 'the' sometimes only appear in their schwa form, without variation before vowels. This is accomplished by treating hard attack almost like a consonant
Yes, hard attack is quite consonantal. In my original blog, I suggested that if hard attack is a consonant, then /t/ before it could become a glottal stop anyway, so like doʔ com we get doʔ ʔorg. Then maybe the two glottal stops merge?
Great video! The glottal T in front of the syllabic n is a long-time feature of the western Massachusetts accent (well, I first encountered it personally 45 years ago). I work in the town of Dalton, which regional natives universally pronounce "Dal - n", the hyphen standing for the glottal stop. I've also heard "di - nt" for "didn't" and a number of similar examples, suggesting a broader glottal dental. I'll see if I can get some examples.
Great video!!! I love your work, it’s really interesting and I find it great that you’re focus is to describe what you hear without judging. Kudos!
I don’t know whether it helps you with your research, but, as a third-gen American abroad (my grandfather was from the US and my mother only lived there until the age of 10), it surprises me how well you described my accent (20, male). I suppose it’s how connected we are nowadays that isolated as I am, I still speak with a General American accent (my opinion but also what natives have told me).
In my case, I do use the glottal stop in "bitten", “brighten” and “cotton”, but never “proud of” or “city”, where I still tap the “t”.
Thanks for the fantastic content! 😁
I always hear the KIT vowel you describe in Americans as more central and mid, like /ɘ/ (or, call it a fronted schwa). I know it's probably late to add my take on hard attack, but: I used to record acting students talking freely, reading aloud and then speaking lines, and confirmed my belief that in free speech, the hard attack was never as predominant as when they read, or (thence) when they spoke learnt lines; the feeling was strongly that it arose from an impulse to be exact or precise, rather than to be "connected to text" (ie to speak as though their lines arose spontaneously from thought and feeling). Many of your examples of hard attack are clearly people reading from text.
You briefly touched on AAVE, but I would also say recent hard attack in UK speech owes much to so-called MLE, ie the influence not just of West Indian immigrants but also its prevalence in dub poetry (ie performance) and thence to grime, the popularity of which meant that such usage has jumped beyond ethnocultural boundaries.
I really think you’re on to something! I can tell someone’s reading something even when they’re doing a really good job. Listening to podcasts, I can tell the difference between a podcaster’s reading advertisement voice and their conversational tone, but even when they’re reading a scripted podcast! It comes in handy when skipping 30 seconds ahead, and I don’t have to hear that many words to know if I should keep skipping or not.
Hello Dr. Lindsay, excellent video! I believe an aspect of this trend worth considering is the realities of a society that communicates more and more via microphone! A glottal stop has a much lower chance of creating a nasty plosive in your recording than a softened /t/ sound.
To my American ears, a lot of the glottal stops seem to be replacing /t/ sounds that are more often hardened than say, in “city.” The examples you gave also only occur in places where the glottal stop doesn’t introduce any additional speaking time, preventing their adoption from interfering with the traditional rhythm of Standard American speech (stopping during “ci-iy” would introduce a surprising pause).
One has to wonder if the trend has an origin in people cutting nasty plosives out of their recordings online (manually or by a de-essing program), eventually becoming adopted to avoid the need in the first place, and ultimately finding place in day-to-day speech!
Additionally, I believe this could also provide a basis for the reintroduction of vowels after preexisting glottal stops before /n/. When recording my voice, I find a mostly nasal sound like /n/ is captured disproportionately quietly. This effect is amplified as microphone quality decreases, and further still when introducing VoIP compression and basic noise gating found in most software like Teams, Zoom, Discord, etc.
Perhaps this is overselling the impact of digital communication, but I’m curious if this aspect has been considered in the wider literature.
Cheers!
You really made me think about the class judgments I make when I hear both the reinsertion of a kind of epinthetic vowel in cases of syllabic /n/ and also glottal stop for /t/ in American English. Both I relate to less educated speech or English in certain immigrant communities.
Brilliant linguistic analysis. Amazing talent. Amazing ear you've got, Dr. Lindsey.
Thanks for another great video! I've been noticing the t-glottalization before the syllabic n, while inserting a vowel, getting much more prominent in American English over the last five or so years, and it's been particularly striking how much more you've been hearing it in media, particularly podcasts,. A few observations to add, 1) the inserted vowel is often heavily nasalized, and in some speakers the n is actually getting quite week, and 2) I seem to notice it more in the speakers on the East Coast more than the West Coast (I live in California, admittedly this observation is anecdotal).
Thanks. It's also true that the glottal stop can be weakened practically to nothing, e.g. imporant, which I think bothers a lot of older folks! Re East/West, I definitely hear the opposite claim. I heard it in NM and James Orgill is a Utahn. According to the 2009 paper I showed in the video, "(1) glottal stops were favored by following front vowels; (2) younger female speakers were most likely to use glottal stops, which may indicate a change in progress; and (3) speakers from the Western United States glottalized more than speakers from other parts of the country." I'm skeptical about (2) and don't know about (3).
That nasalness makes the speaker sound like they've got a cold.
Utah makes sense. When I lived in Seattle about 10 years ago I had a coworker from Utah and we teased him for saying "bu[ʔ]in" (button) because it sounded like a toddler, we didn't know it was so common.
I wonder if this is a West-sans-California thing because I agree I don't hear the inserted vowel much in my own speech as a Californian or those of my peers there, but do in the speeches of people here in the Pacific Northwest where I live now.
Since I was about 5, I've wondered why people (in south-west England) pronounce my name, Jordan, with some sort of back-of-the-throat /d/ that isn't quite a /d/ sound. Now I realise it's a result of the glottal stop + syllabic N together (I think). Thanks!
Oh no sir! Hi, middle-aged general american here, in response to 23:00, cotton, button, and mountain, have always contained glottal stops, for me and most everone else I know. (Well, possibly a glottal stop along with an unreleased T closure, but certainly a glottal stop.) Your other three examples; "biting", "proud of", and "city" - yes, those are flaps. -- Your stuff is excellent! Thank you so much for doing this!
Thank you for this academic level content. What a treat. 👍🏼
I actually noticed this t glottalisation in American speech in songs some time ago. Great video, as always
big fan of your channel. so glad you brought up New Mexico here! (i would love to hear more of your linguistic experience in the region) ... having moved here as an adult, i am *still* taken back by the glottal stop (and more??) that happens on, for example, the word "mountain". my children now say this, and it is quite funny to be distracted by it in our own house. perhaps i will go post on the blog about this.
Magnificent, fascinating part of the world. My young speaker was the guide on a Breaking Bad-Saul tour! With those shows and the studios there, it feels cutting-edge but more light-hearted than the coasts. But I can't claim to have deeply analysed the state, I'm afraid.
I absolutely love your videos and I am fascinated by this subject matter. Thank you for making this video.
You would have loved listening to my little nephew when he was a toddler. He pronounced words like "butter, water, banana" as "buh-er, wah-er, m'naah."
The last one, "m'naah," was especially amusing because he would sort of flick his tongue out on the " 'naah " part so it sounded like Count Dracula.
Absolutely the best segue into a Ground News spot that i’ve heard - and, hoo boy, i’ve heard a lot of ‘em.
I worked at a theatre in Kansas where--dividing the backstage and the house--was a little black curtain. Throughout the rehearsal process, anytime anyone was coming in and out, they'd have to say, "curtain" to avoid running into someone coming the opposite way. I picked up on the variable 'glottal t' and 'syllabic n' because we had a wide age range of people from all over the US. I wish I knew about this then so I could've seen any correlation between region, age, and pronunciation of "curtain"!
In Calfornia, we definitely drop Ts, especially after Rs. ex. fort, part, spat, etc.
I think I've definitely felt certain gut-reactions to people that have appeared in the clips you use. But when that happens, I remind myself that who they are isn't what's important, but rather how they're saying what they're saying. I think you use an excellent variety of sources, and I think it's quite good you sometimes use clips of very recognizable figures, as even if there isn't a pleasant association with their voice-there is still an association-and that can help us pick out the features of speech you're trying to describe.
Hard attack is very interesting to me because I was convinced I don’t have it until I started learning Circassian from a native-speaker. Circassian contrasts plain (slightly breathy) onsets from glottal onsets, and my teacher at the beginning could tell I was hard-attacking where I should not be. E.g., for адыгабзэ [ä̤d̻ɘɣäbzɜ] ‘Circassian language’ I was saying Ӏадыгабзэ [ʔäd̻ɘɣäbzɜ], which wouldn’t be acceptable. Now, I’ve gotten much better at controlling my initial glottals, but don’t think I could have without learning Circassian (or some other language with the same contrast).
My take on this is that it's a combination of two things: one, younger people are, I feel, more likely to put emphasis on speaking clearly, especially with the rise of social media. It's much easier for others to understand you when you're posting videos of yourself speaking if you are using hard attack to separate the words out more. Also, with the constant possibility of having your voice caught on video, I think you just become much more aware of how you speak.
Two, it could be that because of the internet, we're exposed so frequently to such a broad range of accents, including UK ones, that our speech begins to unconsciously mirror the speech of those we constantly hear day-to-day. I can say that for me personally, I probably watch at least one video with a British person speaking at least once a day- not because I'm particularly an Anglophile, but because there just happens to be a lot of British people out there making videos.
Regarding younger people I think it's the opposite, they could care less about speaking clearly they'll just spit whatever they have to say.
In that case you'd better not start listening frequently to Davie504.
I agree that young people posting videos may be trying to consciously enunciate so their viewers understand them, and the examples here were pretty much TH-cam and the like. But as a middle-aged American I found the two young women shown in the most examples to have affected pronunciations and sounded obnoxious - I'd click them off fairly quickly. And that guy, The Action Lab, he could be Californian by his harder Rs with some nasal twang thrown in that hurt my ears, certainly not Eastern or Mid-Western. Thankfully, the young people I'm around don't sound like these samples.
@Baard5Szomoru This has not been my observation. I have worked with students in the Midwest and Northeast, poor and wealthy ... and generally I'm surprised by their clearer enunciation. I recall headier times, especially when I watch shows from my childhood in the '90's. Young people are definitely interacting with a wider base of accents and English familiarity and are adapting to be better understood.
Your videos are fascinating. Thank you.