Welcome back! in today's video I'm going to teach you an important pronunciation point that is
really great to know if you're learning American English it is how to pronounce the t in between
vowels or in the middle of words for example the word later why do we pronounce the t like a d
in that case there's an easy rule that you can learn to know how to pronounce t in these
cases so the rule is that when t is between two syllables and the second syllable is not stressed
the t changes to a fast d sound now in linguistics we call this sound a flap because the tongue comes
to the top of the mouth and just makes a very quick d sound sometimes when I teach people this
sound they say that it sounds like an r in their language and that's possible but because we don't
make the r in this way in English we describe it as a fast d for example in the word city
waiter later better we don't say city waiter later better now if you want to pronounce
it like that that's fine but Americans will always change that t to a fast d in that case
however not every t changes to a d sound so you kind of need to know the rule so that you can do
it correctly let's notice a couple of words to show you the difference between a clear
t and a t that changes to the fast d in the word Italy that's how we pronounce the country Italy
the t changes to a fast d because the stress is on that first syllable Italy and again the
second syllable the one that comes after the t is not stressed so we pronounce that t as a fast
d Italy but what about the word Italian in that case the t is clearly pronounced as a t Italian
why because the syllable that comes after the t is stressed Italian so we pronounce that t clearly
what about the word potato in this word potato we have three syllables and if you listen to the t
sound you'll notice that they are different potato what happens there in the first t we say the t
clearly why because the syllable that comes after the t is stressed pate and then the
next syllable is not stressed potato notice that the second t changes to that fast d and
one thing that you should know is that if you don't want to say the words like this that's
okay but that's the American pronunciation so if your goal is to sound more American that would be
something that you would want to learn and also if you want to just understand people well this is a
good rule to know because you should know that for example in the word later that that sound is a t
that when you write the word there should be a t there the other thing you want to
pay attention to is consonants so this rule does not apply when there is a consonant next to the t
except if it's an r before the t so I'll show you some examples for example in the word doctor
the t comes after a k sound doctor as a result the t does not change it's pronounced as a t doctor
what about waitress so there the t is next to an r and it's pronounced as a clear t waitress
sister that's another one the s and the t are next to each other so sister the t doesn't change
however if you look at a word like 30 there that's different and the reason for that is that if you
think about what comes before the t that r in English it kind of combines with the vowel thir er
and because of that um the t will change just like it would if it was just a vowel before it 30 40.
let's look at some common words with the t that changes and you can repeat after me city
later better
writer
writing
letter status
potato
tomato
30
40
80 utilize
monitor
electricity
complexity
complicated now the next ones I'm going to show you actually have a t and then an l sound
after and so you'll want to pay attention to how those sound a little bit different bottle bottle
little little battle
battle
cattle cattle so in all of those words if you want to pronounce the t clearly like
little or bottle that's fine but Americans will always pronounce it with that quick d sound
let me show you just a couple more words so that you can see how the t does not change
when it is before a stressed syllable or when there is a consonant right before it statistic
so in this word the second t is between two vowels statistics but because it is at the
beginning of a stressed syllable we pronounce it clearly the last t in this word is next to an
s and because of that it also does not change so in this word we have three clear t's statistics
another word is fatigue the second syllable teague is the syllable that is stressed so that t does
not change fatigue if you can think of more words with that have the t sound that changes to a fast
d go ahead and let me know in the comments below and when I think of more examples I'll share them
with you in the comments too I would love to hear your feedback so please let me know what topics
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