NPR and the Flap (2015)

> . No American English speaker in his or her right mind pronounces these words as though there's a "hard" t in them.

> This is one of the main things you should do if you're trying to sound like the British upper crust: aspirate your t's.

Oddly enough, I do this and I'm an American English speaker. This might be the reason people say I sound kind of pretentious if I'm not faking a regional accent.

> NPR is a hotbed of inconsistent nonflapping.

One thing I've noticed as a long-time NPR listener is that NPR is allowing and/or encouraging their normal reporters to use their native accents. In the past, this, I think, was more of a privilege granted to big names (Car Talk, Diane Rehm). But now a lot of reporter sound on air like they probably do IRL.

With regards to "not flapping" a "flappable" phoneme, I wonder if there is a connection between learning a word from hearing it used vs having learning by first encountering it in print. I find there are such outliers in my speech. I don't remember where I first encountered most words, but I did start reading young. (I often pronounce the T in "rocketed" or "rocketing" but never the one in "often" :))

I still have trouble reading about how to pronounce things. In this day and age, why would a post like this NOT have a recording?

This says iT was posTed in [twenny fifTeen], buD all the examples are from [Two thousand] and [Two thousand one]. Anyway, for such a deep technical analysis, the regional and demographic variations in pronunciation across 'American English' are conspicuously absenT.

This made no sense to me until I realized that I was taught the British way and use that when trying to be clear (e.g. in lecturing or speaking on the 'phone).

I've noticed this with native Californians.

stop and top sound the same to me, maybe in boston it's different?