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Unvoiced alveolar stop
Voiceless alveolar plosive In Received Pronunciation and in General American, the IPA phonetic symbol /t/ corresponds to the initial consonant sound in words like "time", and "trap" and the final one in "hat" and "list.” /t/ may sound [ɾ] (alveolar flap) in General American or [ʔ] (glottal stop) in Cockney. Butter sounds (in broad notation) /ˈbʌtər/ in all accents but in General American it is [ˈbʌɾər] and in Cockney it is [ˈbʌʔə].
/t/ is an unvoiced consonant; its voiced counterpart is IPA phoneme /d/. Bettwen vowels /t/ and /d/ may get neutralized as [ɾ] (a voiced consonant). Then “butter" may be pronounced [ˈbʌɾər] and "ladder" may be pronounced [ˈlæɾər].
Common words[edit | edit source]
Some common words which practice the initial pronunciation of /t/ include the following:
- take - talk - team - technology - tell - time - today - together - town - train - travel - try - turn - type
Some common words which practice the mid-position pronunciation of /t/ include the following:
- between vowels: city - later - letter - matter - political - return - security - water
- other: between - country - its - little - stand - still - stop - story - study - system - understand
Some common words which practice the final position pronunciation of /t/ include the following:
- about - but - different - get - great - government - just - last - lot - meet - next - part - point - put - want - what - write
Past tense pronunciation: "ed" sounds /t/ after voiceless consonants
- asked - helped - laughed - passed - thanked - watched
"th" as /t/[edit | edit source]
- AnthonyBrE - Thailand /ˈtaɪlænd/ - Thames /temz/ - Thomas - thyme
Anticipated pronunciation difficulties depending on L1[edit | edit source]
Preconceived ideas and other interferences from L1 obviously interfere in many cases with how students perceive - and pronounce - sounds/words in English. The following section aims to point out some of the most typical difficulties teachers and students may encounter regarding pronunciation.
Spanish[edit | edit source]
Many Spanish speakers find hard to learn the past tense pronunciation of verbs. Passed may be pronounced *[ˈpɑːsɪd] instead of [pɑːst] but they are perfectly able to pronounce past.
