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Comment by xen0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm a little surprised at the notion that British English is more likely to preserve full pronunciation of 'T's.

In my experience, and in my own speech, it is quite common for British accents to completely replace a T with a glottal stop, unless one is being very deliberate with their speech, especially amongst younger speakers.

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(Brit here) I found that when I asked for a glass of water in a US restaurant that they didn't understand me. I had to use a 'D' sound instead of a 'T' and then things were fine. This is different again from the glottal stop version (wa'er) which would be universally understood (if not liked) in the UK.

On that note, I'm reminded of the George Bernard Shaw quote " it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him."

Were you by any chance near Philadelphia? The native pronunciation is weird for other Americans: something like "wooder".

Possibly Washington DC? Can't remember now.

That's very much an artifact of parts of the east coast. My sister (like, totally a native English speaker from California) had the same issue.

The story seems to assume that there is one “British” English and one “American” English. There are indeed many British accents where Ts are unstressed or replaced by either something that sounds like Ds or glottal stops.

Same with the Rs, there are many variations across different British accents.

Many British and North American dialects both reduce /t/ and /d/ in spots, just differently:

> In North American English, the cluster /nt/ (but not /nd/) in the same environment as flapped /t/ may be realized as a nasal flap [ɾ̃]. Intervocalic /n/ is also often realized as a nasal flap, so words like winter and winner can become homophonous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping

The glottal stop is very common in British English varieties, but the extent to which it occurs is pretty variable, and it's still perceived as somewhat sub-standard (depending on where the T it replaces occurs; replacing Ts between vowels is more sub-standard than replacing Ts at the end of a word, which is more sub-standard than replacing Ts before a consonant [in fact even Americans frequently replace Ts at the end of a word]).

On the other hand, in American English, flapping happens pretty reliably in the appropriate environment, and it's absolutely standard and expected---any failure to flap where required will probably lead to your speech being perceived as having a British twang.

There's also a phonemic vs. phonetic thing here. In British English, a T turned into a glottal stop can still be distinguished from any other consonant, so it's still a T phonemically even though the phonetic realization has changed. In American English, flapping applies to both T and D and the result is usually indistinguishable with respect to having been originally a T or a D. In that sense American is going a step further.

The "Bri'ish" way of replacing it with a glottal stop is definitely more noticeable, but if you really listen to American English, they are more likely to completely drop the sound, or replace it with a d.

> if you really listen to American English, they are more likely to completely drop the sound, or replace it with a d.

Not at all. Americans reduce many /d/s and /t/s to a flap, which is much weaker than a [d]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_and_flap_consonants

Dropping a /d/ or /t/ is not common at all, except in the sense that an /nt/ cluster may be replaced by a nasal flap.

> Not at all. Americans reduce many /d/s and /t/s to a flap, which is much weaker than a [d].

Fair enough.

When most American pronounce "city", I hear "siddie". What's going on there? Is that a flap?

There are American accents that have glottal stops too. I always notice it when I hear some Americans pronounce “button” as “bu’inn”. It’s really common in “mountain” too - “mowwn’nn”

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that not glottalizing the /t/ in such words (preceding unstressed syllabic /n/) could sound somewhat odd or affected in American English.

"Important" is an interesting word in American English. I think for many speakers including me the first /t/ is glottalized (following the general rule noted above) but for me at least there's a sound preceding the glottal sound which I don't know how to describe other than "t realization sound".

I feel like I've noticed younger (than me) American speakers omitting that first sound and just using the second (normal /n/-preceding) glottal sound. I think I've only noticed this in the Boston area where I currently live but it may be more widespread. To me it makes the pronunciation of "important" sound slightly more like how I'd expect a stereotypical southern England pronunciation to sound, except for the /r/. I have also heard Americans pronounce "important" with the /t/ realized as (I think) a flap and no glottalization, which sounds sort of affected to me, as though the speaker is trying to avoid the glottal sound.

"Bri'ish" is the pronunciation by those living east of London of the word those just west of that city who use RP pronounce as "Bwwwitish".

Came here to say exactly this. Pronouncing 't' is the main distinction I've noticed in my own speech between speaking normally and self-consciously attempting to "speak properly". It's not natural for me to pronounce 'T' without trying. The glottal stop is natural.

Agree. T pronunciation is very “received pronunciation”

Which (speaking as a southern-accented Brit in the US) has hilarious results when you’re trying to order in a US restaurant and you try to clarify by pronouncing ‘properly’.

Brit: “I’d like some uo-uh please”

American Server: “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

Brit: “Sorry. Uo-tuh please.”

Server: blank face

Helpful nearby American: “WADDER”

Most of the time the southern British accent is pretty comprehensible to Americans (we have more distinct vowels, the missing ‘r’s just make us sound like we’re from Boston and the glottal stops aren’t too important), but the word ‘water’ when you drop the t and the r and aspirate the w basically turns into a mush of unfamiliar diphthongs to an American ear.

I heard "pretty" pronounced with a glottal stop in Cambridge and with a hard T elsewhere (London or around). It probably depends on the location or what surrounds the word?

See my other comment. I'm originally from London and it's very unnatural to pronounce 't' in my normal speech.

Around London that would be “pre’y” (most of the time; you can hear just about any accent in London). From my experience, Ts are harder in Yorkshire, for example.

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