Hey! How are you guys? A big part of a non-native English speaker's accent is
something that we will talk about today that is called flapping, and another
thing called glottal stops in American English. Let's first talk about flapping.
"Flap" first of all, the verb flap, is what a bird does with their wings, right? A
bird flaps their wings to fly. This verb could also be used to talk about the
action of the tongue when you go RRR to make the sound of the R in Portuguese of
caro, barato. That RRR of the R in those words is "flapping." Well this sound
happens in words in English. So let's have an example here of flapping. First
of all, let me start with two different words: mad and mat. Notice how I'm
almost saying this plosive at the end, but I don't say it, right? Mad. Mat. Let's
put ER at the end of both these words, okay? To form two new words: madder and
matter. Madder. Matter. Did you hear a difference there? No!
Because these two words are pronounced exactly the same in American English. So
when you have instances of two D's or two T's surrounded by vowels in a word, in
American English that receives a flapping sound. Madder. Matter. But what I
hear Brazilians doing a lot is, especially beginners, trying to pronounce
both of these D's or both of these T's mad-der, mat-ter, which definitely is
incorrect. Or they're putting way too much emphasis, even more emphasis than a
British person would; they say maDDer maTTer but that even sounds like an
accent in American English because we flap. You'll hear the flapping everywhere
if you start listening to American English. Madder. Matter. Water. That's a big
difference between British English and American English. Water, in British
English, and water: we do more of the ER in water. So, make sure when you're
thinking of the flapping sound as the R in Portuguese, and when you're
translating that over into English when you're practicing this a lot, that you
don't mess up how the other R's are actually pronounced. The R here is
actually gonna be a hard RR, you know, from American English. So I... this
phrase here is for you to just say over and over and over in your head to make
sure you can tell the difference between this, what you could see as an R, that
flap, pretty pretty, and the other R's, which are hard R's in English. RRR,
right? Interior de São Paulo! Pretty regularly. Pretty regularly. Just say it
over and over again to get the flapping and to get the R's. Pretty regularly. Pretty
regularly. I think it's a little bit of a tongue twister too, huh?
I already said that we can do this with double T and double D. You can also do
this with certain instances of single T and single D surrounded by vowels. So
let's take a look. We have, first of all starting with double T, two words. Better.
Little. Little. And note here that you can actually do this with an L after the
double T or the double D as well. Little. Little. Moving on, we have wedding. Wedding.
So again, Brazilians here, a lot of times I will hear something like wed-ding'
wed-ding' right? Or maybe even wedging... No, this is.. this doesn't really sound like a
T or a D. It's just a bland, generic flap. Wedding. And here too: buddy. Buddy "What's
up buddy?" It's pretty common for men my age to call each other "buddy," like, "What's
up buddy?" It's not as common for women to call men that, and women definitely.. I mean,
almost always don't call other women "buddy." But just to let you know. So I already
gave the example of "water" here for single T, but another couple examples are
data, data. And also pity, pity. And finally single D examples: studies, studies, body
body. That one's weird. I've always thought that the O is strange in the word "body,"
right? Like how.. why isn't it like boe-dy, boe-dy, you know? It's BAH.. Definitely don't
be afraid to open the mouth wide to say this word: body. But then we have a word
like mulheres, right? Women: where the O turns into an IH. I can understand why
English is hard. But one more time: body. Now as is always the case with English,
we have exceptions, okay? So I just thought of an exception with every
single one: the double T, double D, and then single T, single D. So this is just
to remind you that every time that you see a double T or a double D doesn't
necessarily mean that it's flapped. So for example, mitt. A mitt..
you can see I'm almost pronouncing the T: mitt. A mitt is what you use to take
something hot out of the oven. It's like a glove for your hand, and also that's
the word for the glove that they use in the sport of baseball. And with an S at
the end, mitts, you don't flap that. That's like
impossible. And that's probably because it's not surrounded by vowels, right? Well
here's an instance where it's surrounded by vowel sounds, oddly, and also the L,
which I said is possible; a word like paddle, for example, could be flapped with
DDL. But here, oddly, oddly, actually gets the same thing with that plosive
pronunciation that I talked about in the last video, where the word odd, which
means like "estranho," right? By itself would just be odd, like the D almost gets
pronounced, but it gets stuck there. And then putting the -ly to make it an adverb,
we still stay with the D getting stuck here and not flapped: oddly. I don't know
why; it's just what we do. And then two other examples; obviously these aren't
flapped because they're not in between other vowels, so the first letter of each
of these is pronounced hard, definitely with a TT and a DD, and the last
ones, plosives at the end of a word, usually almost pronounced, but not. So tot,
which is a little kid, tot. Dad. Dad. Awesome.
Well there is an accent in Great Britain called Cockney. It's the same accent of
the singer Adele. Her name's Adele, not A-delly. Adele. And
they actually remove this flap and this sound completely. So they will say better,
better. And also little, little. Okay Gavin, well why are you teaching an accent
that's only a small percentage of English speakers? Well actually this
complete removal of that sound is called a glottal stop. Now the glottis is a
part of the throat, and a glottal stop means that your throat is actually.. or
your mouth is actually like stopping some of the air from moving, and creating
that little, little, separating the sounds in that, okay? Your glottis is doing that.
And it's kind of funny that the word "glottal" has a double T in there, because
we as native American English speakers would say glottal, but a cockney speaker
might say glottal, glottal. To kind of practice what this sounds like, because
there are American English words where this happens too,
and I'll tell you about those in a second, but you will need to practice
this, try saying this Portuguese little phrase-let here, right? Like, "Eu fui à aula."
Right? I hear Brazilians sometimes saying like, with the crase here, "Eu fui àaula."
With just a very long "àaula." But, it's possible to separate these too, and I've heard
Brazilians say before, "Eu fui à-aula. À-aula." Something like that. Obviously I'm not a
native speaker, but I'm trying to reproduce that. So try that there: when
you actually have to create a space here, a break here, that's a glottal stop
happening in the back your throat. À-aula. À-aula. And that is the feel
that you need to remember when you start to pronounce these words in American
English. So, yes, the glottal stop happens in
American English too! It happens when we have the T sound, either the double T or
the single T, and on the next syllable the word ends with an N, the letter N, okay?
So, let me pronounce these words for you, and listen for the glottal stop: button,
kitten, gotten, eaten, mountain, Britain. I'm not saying BriTTain, and I'm not
saying Brit.. Brit-ain, like trying to flap it. It's almost like impossible for me to
feel what that feels like, to flap that, because we simply don't do that in
English. There's some people in American English who like to try to speak
"correctly" and will say, "Could you get me a buTTon? A buTTon?" But that sounds really
weird, and 95% of the time you will hear words pronounced with a glottal stop
like this, like "I've eaten at Outback Steakhouse three times." I've eaten. Eaten.
The T disappears completely! That is a glottal stop. Remember again that this is
not always going to be the case - there are going to be exceptions. For example,
we have a double T here, and oh, it ends with an N and a G, should be okay, right? But we
can't say like cuh-ing, cuh-ing. We don't say that. We say cutting, cutting, once
again with the flap because it doesn't end with a perfect N right there.
Also, obtain, obtain. Here we have a single T; it has a consonant there, so that
could be a problem, and also our emphasis is on -tain here: obtain. Obter, right? Obtain.
And same thing with all of our -tion words. When you have -tion, that doesn't
have anything to do with flapping or glottal stops. That's a whole different
phoneme there. Option. But, cockney speakers of English like Adele, and also
Americans, will say these words: button, kitten, gotten, eaten. And mountain's always
an interesting one too because it has NT. There is a consonant there but we
still say mountain, mountain. I live near the Rocky Mountains. Mountains. That T just
disappears completely. Another word, the word didn't: DIDN'T. This T
disappears completely as well and you get a glottal stop with nothing after it:
didn't, didn't. It's not always the case, but a lot of times when we have the NT
in English, SmallAdvantages, it's not a glottal stop but the T disappears, so this
is kinda like halfway in between those two rules. Don't worry about that too
much. But I said this today and I was thinking, "oh, there's a weird glottal
stop at the end!" Didn't. Didn't. Didn't. Right? And that is the correct
pronunciation of didn't, exactly how a native English - American English - speaker's
gonna pronounce that. One other thing that I wanted to teach you really quick that
has a glottal stop in English is the phrase uh-oh. "Uh-oh" is what a kid, like a
little kid says, like they push all their food off of their.. off of the table, and
they look up and they created a mess, and they say, "Uh-oh!" Right? It's like the
"Oops! Whoop!" You know? Of, like, a mistake. We even say that, just that, you know,
adults will say this in English, like "uh-oh..." like, you're in trouble...
"Uh-oh! I'm gonna have a lot of stuff to clean up," right? And we actually have a
glottal stop - UH-OH - at the beginning of each of these syllables! And that's how
to pronounce that in English: just make that same sound as the À-AULA, but do
that little glottal stop before saying each of these. And there you have the
classic American uh-oh! Uh-oh! You can almost hear and feel your throat clicking
during that. It's fascinating. Anyway, try to practice these words. You will start
to notice it now that you know this rule. So, say pretty regularly; practice the
glottal stop; practice saying kitten, gotten eaten; and practice listening for it. And that
is your accent reduction tip. Hope you enjoyed it!