hello and welcome to speak American English with Lyman Holton my name is
Lyman Holton in this lesson we're going to talk about American English
pronunciation are you ready let's begin silent consonants were on segment five
of seven videos dedicated to silent consonants in this lesson we're talking
about the silent T sometimes I want to emphasize emphasize sometimes sometimes
not always sometimes T is silent when it comes after S or M sometimes right so
that's going to make that make the English a little more confusing for you
right here we have often the word often this word is frequently mispronounced
many people will say auf ten often often and generally we consider it to be
pronounced correctly as a silent with a silent E as often often so off F and
often really this one can go either way there's there was a period of time where
it was pronounced originally as often it came back you know years later it was a
ten and it's changed somewhat over the years but now it's accepted as a silent
T often often you'll hear people say often you'll come across it we have the
word soften soften Oh what does often mean well it means
something that happens a lot it happens regularly like perhaps you
have newspaper delivered to your home and
what happens the delivery boy throws the paper into your bushes you can't find it
it happens often right could be often I often have to stop on the way home from
work to pick up some milk some eggs something like that often not every day
but often frequently soften okay now you know what the word soft is right
soft is the opposite apart maybe you have nice soft skin oh it's so nice or
you have a nice soft pillow that you sleep on at night something that's saw
something that's hard would be like the the top of your table it's hard right
this board is hard my shirt the song so soften soften to make something softer
we need to soften it leather from an animal that you make shoes out of or a
belt a jacket that leather is very stiff as part of the process but it has to be
softened up softened up kind of beat up to become nice and soft
right so they soften it we never say soft can sock 10 we don't but if there's
no en on the end we're going to say soft we make that T sound soft let's look at
this now we talked about ft ft let's look at st st Christmas Christmas we say
Chris like a man's name Chris and we have mus Christmas it's a holiday for
Christians right Christmas the T is silent we have the word whistle whistle
maybe you can whistle let's see if I can whistle
hmm I think missile whistle perhaps you have a whistle which would be a noun a
little metal device you blow on it and it made some kind of a whistle sound
commonly used in sports the coach will blow a whistle and the basketball game
something like that whistle but we don't say whist old list
oh no no not whistle are not wisdom another word could be missile this old
th missile it's a weed a weed us prickly Stickley weed thistles and I'm pleasant
we do encounter here we go we have fastened now we have ste em if we took
off if we took off the en we'd have fast fast and we pronounce the T fast now we
have fast sin to fasten something is like you secure it to hold it so it
can't go anywhere like my watch is fastened to my wrist by this little
device right here this little buckle right little catch fasten you may have
to fasten your dog to a leash right okay fasten now if you see words that end
with ften it is likely like we see in soften and fat not often it's a very
good chance that the T is going to be silent if you see a word that ends STL E
it's very likely that the T will be silent ste in with the en it's very
likely that the T will be silent it isn't always the case it isn't always
the case there are other words out there like the word
most full someone who brains a lot talks about the great things they do they
boast about what they've done we call that boastful and it's got the s
T where you can hear the T in it so it's s least it's the most full boastful most
less they do not boast most less how about the word mostly mostly well I I
like of oh all the foods in the world I like fried chicken the most mo st with a
t sound now if we say most ly ly at the end it still has their Tisa most leave
just leave just leave right in other words something happened that should
have happened it was the correct thing to happen it just leave happened if we
take off the ly we have the word just like he just didn't want to go with you
just just leave you have the T cell so it can make it it makes a difference
it's not a lot fast rule but we must be aware that sometimes T is silent when it
comes after s or that and that is the end of this lesson
thank you for watching this video and I look forward to seeing you at our next
lesson good bye for now