Learn to Pronounce Your Ts and Ds Right
The Letter ‘T’
The letter ‘T’ is another example of a letter that will tell you if a person is from the States right away.
The first thing you have to remember about the letter ‘T’ is that, in the American accent, it sounds like something between a ‘D’ and an ‘R’ when it is between vowel sounds. Or, between a vowel and the letter l. (This is called t-flapping).
Try the following words:
- water
- computer
- matter
- cut it out
In the last example, notice how this still happens between words if the ‘T’ is between vowel sounds!
Another rule you need to remember about the American t is that if the ‘T’ is the last letter of a word and it is not followed by a vowel as we just saw, then the sound gets “cut” or “stopped.”
In other words, you get ready to pronounce it but stop the sound. Try some examples:
- hot dog
- cat
- abstract
Finally, when you get a ‘T’ sound before an ‘N’ sound, you stop or cut the sound as before and change it into a hard ‘N’:
- soda fountain
- button
- cotton
This rule can be more difficult to see because ‘T’ and n would not normally be together (for example, in the word fountain, you have ai between them).
I suggest practicing with the words above until you perfect it. Then, you can search for more words with the letter ‘T’ and practice those, too.
The Letter ‘D’
The letter ‘D’ can also be flapped, like ‘T’. The rules are the same, but we call this d-flapping instead.
Although d-flapping is less common than t-flapping, we can still find a lot of examples of this happening in American English:
- medal
- ladder (pronounced like letter)
- pudding (pronounced like putting)
- wedding (pronounced like wetting)