Learn to Pronounce the American English T Sound /t/ - Ultimate Pronunciation Challenge Master Class

Hey everybody, Jennifer Tarl from Tarl's Speech with your week three of the Ultimate Pronunciation Challenge. If you are new here, this is a 50-week course and each week I'm going to be publishing a lesson on how to pronounce a specific sound or sound combination in American English. I'm phonetic transcription of it, and then we're going to do a little bit of practicing. Then the rest of the week I will post follow-along practice so that you can practice every day with me. If you want to have these practice sets at your fingertips, they are available on the iTunes store. You do not have to buy those. It is exactly the videos that I am posting to YouTube, but you can purchase those if you just want to have them all together in one place. The links are in the description below. I also just have audio follow-along guides that have PDF as well. Those are available on the Google store and on Teachers Pay Teachers and iTunes as well. All right, without further ado, let's jump into the lesson. Today we are talking about the American T sound. All right, this is going to be a long one today. There are so many variations with the American T sound, and that being said, there are also variations within American English regionally, age-wise. There are so many different variations. I'm going to talk about a lot of them. Keep in mind, you do not have to use all of these variations. You can just say a plain old T sound. All of this is about being clear and effective in your communication. You don't have to talk like I do. You just need to be clear and really just getting out there and communicating. That's what it is all about, but I'm going to try to help you learn the different variations in case you want to use them. It's also very, very helpful when you are listening. This will help your listening a lot. All right, so for today, again, we have the T sound, the phonetic transcription, easy breezy. It's just the small lowercase letter T. How do we spell the sound? So many ways to spell the T sound. You can use one letter T like we see in the word two. You can also use the word, the letters T-W that we see in the word two. Yes, two and two are pronounced exactly the same. If you are new to my channel, you may want to check out my playlist and a video that I post every Tuesday on Omiphone. These are words that are pronounced exactly the same. They just had different spellings and different meanings. Two, two, and two, the word T-O-O, those words are all pronounced exactly the same way. We can also spell the T sound with two T's like we see in the word but. We can also use a D like in the word iced. You're confused about that E-D ending. I also have a lesson for the E-D suffix. There's a tutorial posted on that. So you can search for that. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll send you the link. Then we have T-H. Yes, T-H is usually the T-H sound, the sound, you know, everyone's favorite. But in this case, and in the word Thomas and time, this word here, we are just going to say the letter sound T. Time and Thomas is spelled with the T-H letter combination. And then this is a very uncommon one but I decided to add it. Pterodactyl, that's a dinosaur that flies and we spell that with a P-T, the P is sight. Okay, how do we make this sound? The lips are open. Nice and easy breezy. I also tell my students to think about smiling for this sound because your lips are more relaxed, they are a little more pulled back, they are not rounded. The tip of the tongue is going to touch the alveolar ridge. That is the spot where the teeth and the skin on the roof of your mouth meet. The T sound in English is a little more forward and the air puffs out and it's like the air is kind of touching the person who is listening. So my air is puffing out, the air is coming out, the tip of my tongue is forward, touching the back of my top front teeth where the skin meets the roof of the mouth. Voice is off. The voice box is in your throat, it is just relaxed, it is not on, it is not vibrating. If the voice turns on, we are going to make a D sound. The lip, the tongue, and the airflow are the same for the T and the D sound. The only difference is the voice being off for the T and on for the D. Okay, the D sound is up next week, so if you are interested in the D sound and you need a little more practice, come back for that. All right, let's get into all of the variations. Just a reminder, friendly reminder, you don't have to use these variations, but if you want to know them, here they are. These do help with listening, so I do think that it is valuable from a listening standpoint to understand these. You don't have to remember all of the rules, it's just you'll realize that sometimes the T's are pronounced differently. One more thing to add, I'm going to talk about a regular T and an aspirated T. Most of my students, these T's are the same. I will agree, I think these sounds can be thought of as being the same, these variations. Slight difference, a regular T has a little puff of air and an aspirated T has a little stronger puff of air. With that being said, when I'm speaking in conversational speech, these sounds are the same. So when do we use a regular T? We are going to use that before an S sound and after an S sound. So we would hear this in cat and meets, Mr. Steam. So again, we're going to use a regular T before or after an S sound, cat meets Mr. Steam. And we are going to use that after an N sound, entrance into, entrance into. Now, onto the aspirated T, which is almost the same as a regular T, it has a little bit of a stronger puff of air. We are going to hear this at the beginning of a word, take to. We are going to hear this at the beginning of a stressed syllable, between, 19, take to between 19. And we are going to hear this after a consonant sound. So we are going to listen for the consonant sound. So in this case, M-T, doctor, M-T, doctor, M-T, doctor. So when I pronounced empty, I did not pronounce the P there. I do hear people pronounce the P sometimes and say M-T, M-T. That's fine. Those are variations there. I just wanted to point that out in case any of you were confused or curious about that. So let's listen to these aspirated T sounds one more time. Take to between 19, M-T, doctor. Okay. Now moving on to the unreleased T. Think of that as just no puff of air. So I have a little how-to tip at the bottom of the slide. So think about just touching the tongue to the alveolar ridge where the teeth and the skin meet on the roof of the mouth, and then just to hold it there. Okay. That's it. We use this at the end of a word a lot of the time. So I would say it, cat, rent. It, cat, rent. Of course, you can say it, cat, and rent. Totally fine. But many times, native speakers will unrelease that and they will just hold that air and there will be no puff of air. It's just as if they've decided, okay, I kind of made the T, I'm done. I'm not going to let this air puff out. Going to get a little lazy here. So I'm going to say those words again so you can hear the unreleased T that we use at the end of a word. It, cat, rent. All right. I get so many questions on this concept, a flap T. In most of my lessons, I teach this as a fast D sound. If you just think about that, it's so much easier. I have so many breakthroughs with my students who I see individually when I just tell them, just say a D sound for the flap T and then you'll get it. And then you can work on speed and all of those things. Just think about saying a D sound. This is also really, really helpful for listening. We love a flap T in American English. Love, love, love it. And we use this really consistently. And if you think about a few things, this sometimes helps people really make sense of it. So a T sound has no voicing. A D sound has voicing. Again, voicing is your voice box. Your larynx is on and vibrating and moving. All right. Speech is so fast. Talking is so fast. So to make things easier for our mouth, what we do in American English is we say, okay, my voice is on for this vowel or this R or this L. I'm going to keep it on. Instead of turning it off to say a T, I'm going to be kind of lazy. I'm going to keep my voice on. And then I'm just going to say a D sound and then keep going on. Okay. So again, think about if our voice is on for a vowel, an R and an L sound. All vowels are voiced. R is voiced. L is voiced. Okay. So we have A, E, I, O, U. Put your hand on your throat and you feel that. A, E, I, O, U. L for the L. R for the R. Your voice is on. Okay. So think about that. Kind of marinate in that where voice is on. So if we have a T between two voice sounds, then we're going to say a flap T. We are going to have that voice box on and we're just going to say that quickly. Okay. Now, technically, the tongue is usually further back in the mouth for this sound. That being said, for most of my students, if they just think about saying this sound quickly, let me remove my face so you can see the whole thing here. If you just think about saying a quick, fast D, you're going to be good. Okay. All right. So we are going to use the flap T, a fast D sound between two vowel sounds. Noted. City. Noted. City. You may be seeing a pattern here. This E-D ending. Yes. We oftentimes, most of the time, say did at the end of words when we have this T-E-D ending or the D-E-D ending. So you want to learn more about that. Again, I have a tutorial on the suffix E-D, so search for that and you can do a little more practice. Okay. So flap T between two vowels. Noted. City. We are also going to use a flap T between a vowel and an L. Little. Settle. We are going to use it between a vowel and an R. Water. Pattern. And we are going to use it after an R vowel. Dirty. Porter. Okay. Another thing to keep in mind, and we will learn more about this as the year progresses, R and L have vowel-like qualities. So we actually call the R and the L in English a semi-vowel because it's kind of a consonant. It's kind of a vowel. So keep that in mind as well. When we have the T sound with vowels R and L, most of the time we are going to make that T a fast D or a flap T. Let's listen to those one more time. Noted. City. Little. Settle. Water. Pattern. Dirty. Porter. Okay. Moving on. Glottal stop. Oh, this is a tricky one. Okay. So again, you don't have to use this. And I do think that sometimes avoiding the glottal stop T is helpful because sometimes it makes even a native speaker very difficult to understand. But if you want to use this sound, and a lot of people do use it, I use it as well, just a little more sparingly. Think about this as the uh sound and uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. If you say uh-oh, you can kind of feel that in your throat and in your chest, you're kind of stopping the air there. Okay. Some of the time what I will do is I will touch the tip of my tongue to the back of my top front teeth and hold it there. And I stop the air in my throat. Sometimes I do both. Sometimes I just stop the air in my throat. It kind of depends on how fast and how connected I'm making things. And if I'm speaking sort of a little more casually. When do we use this sound? We are going to use it before an unsyllable. So for all of those out there who ask me, how do Americans say the word button and mountain? This is it. So if you think about saying button, mountain, it kind of gets in there. Okay. But do say more of that glottal stop where I actually touch my teeth. And then I kind of end with that on. So button, mountain. To get a little more technical, if you're struggling with that, I almost think about this as an unreleased teeth with a glottal stop added. That's kind of more what I do. Again, I don't want to get stuck in the weeds here, but I get a lot of questions about this. So just know that we tend to use the glottal stop before that unsyllable. We also use the glottal stop before a consonant sound. Oftentimes in compound nouns, when the first word ends in a T, foot, ball, seat, belt. I kind of just drop that T and use that instead. You don't have to do that. I also do say foot, ball, and seat, belt. So you can see, I say those a little differently. Foot, ball, and seat, belt. Again, you can technically use the glottal stop for both of these. I'm kind of all over the place with the glottal stop. I'm going to own that and just say that again, you don't have to use this, but if you want to, this is how you do it. Leave me questions in the comments below. Do you find the glottal stop very difficult to teach? And I do think that people can overuse it and then it becomes a little difficult to understand people. So use it with caution. All right. And the last thing that I wanted to talk about in terms of variations is when to not use a T sound. We drop the T sound a lot in American English. Again, these are all just suggestions. You can use the T sound. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It really depends, but here are some times that we don't use it. Okay. NT clusters. Ooh, these are really difficult. When we have an NT together, like in the word internet, winter, one, two, wanted. Sometimes I drop that T and I say internet, winter, one, two, and wanted. You can drop it. You don't have to. A lot of Americans will drop that N sound. There are many times in English where we have a letter T in the word, but we no longer pronounce it. This happens in the word soften, tassel, wrestle. We just no longer say that T sound. It's as if it's just a silent letter there. One word that I want to mention often or often. I hear both pronunciations. Sometimes it's silent. Sometimes it isn't. You choose. You do whichever you want. We also often omit the T sound. We just don't use it when we're linking. We see this and hear this a lot when we have two T's together or a T and a D together. We're only going to say that once, and so we're going to delete or omit or not use one T sound. So instead of saying just do it, I might say just do it, just do it. Instead of saying last time, I might say last time, and I will just say one T sound. This is a general rule that we use almost all of the time when a word ends in a sound, and the next word begins with the same sound or with a related sound. We're just going to say that sound once. And sometimes we just start talking so quickly, and the T is kind of a soft sound, and so oftentimes these stronger sounds will kind of be swallowed by the soft T sound will be swallowed by the harder sounds around it. So then we just won't say it, and we hear this, and instead of saying can't go, we might say can't go. Or instead of saying want it, we might say want it. So again, it's just sometimes that T goes away because it's softer, and the other sounds are a little stronger, and then that sound will go away. Again, so many variations. If you have questions, leave them in the comments, and I will do my best to answer them. All right, let's do a little practice. All right, so I'm going to say these words. I want you to just listen, and then we will go through them a few times, and I'll have you repeat after me. Okay, just listen. To take talk tattle toast. To take talk tattle toast. Sixteen steam misstep start mistake. Sixteen steam misstep start mistake. Rent it won't chat spat. Now I'm going to do these a little more naturally with more of an unreleased T. Rent it won't chat fat. Okay, now repeat after me. To sat. Okay, now let's go across a little bit faster. I'm going to say three words, and then you repeat after me. To sixteen rent. To sixteen rent. And yes, I did say rent differently. The first time I used an unreleased T, rent, and now the released T, rent. Okay, let's move on. Take steam it. Take steam it. Talk misstep won't. Talk misstep won't. how did you do? This is tricky, because I even find myself pronouncing the T sound differently just when I'm reading words. So, you can just see variations abound with the T sound. Do what works for you, and just think about being clear, not about being perfect, because really, there is no perfect with this sound. There are so many variations. Okay, let's try some sentences. Okay, Tina will take a time out. Tina will take a time out. Tina will take a time out. Trudy traded tickets with Ted two times last Tuesday. Trudy traded tickets with Ted two times last Tuesday. Trudy traded tickets with Ted two times last Tuesday. Trudy traded tickets with Ted two times last Tuesday. Okay, how did you do? I hope you found all of that practice helpful. If you want to practice the T sound more this week, here is the practice schedule. Beginning of words on Thursday, middle of words on Friday, end of words on Saturday, and sentences on Sunday. Okay, everybody, that was a lot. That was a long one. So many variations, so many things to think about. I just want to say one more time, go for clarity. It's about being clear. There really is no perfect with the T sound. I use the variations, but sometimes I don't. It really just depends on my audience, if I'm teaching, if I'm speaking casually, the words around the T. So again, do what works for you, and I hope to see you all tomorrow for practice. And you can watch those videos as many times as you want. They're going to be posted forever on YouTube. I will post a link to the playlist for the T sound below in the description, and I will also post the playlist for all of the master class. Check that out as well. I will have links to the books if you want those on iTunes and Google in the description. And as always, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments, and I will answer those. So thanks, everyone, for being here. I'm having so much fun with these, and I hope to see you tomorrow for practice.