Question for native speakers of American English

[Miss Peregrine]

 

I admit I fail to understand what a teenybopper movie has to do with correct pronunciation - or a british actor commenting upon american english.

I answered the question about how *I* pronounce it. I got it from Goonies.  :laugh:

[Word Nerd]

You think pronouncing the T in often sounds proper? Huh. That is a big cultural shift from when I grew up.

 

Lots of words have a silent T in the middle. Google gave me this list: apostle, bristle, bustle, castle, fasten, glisten, hustle, jostle, listen, moisten, mortgage, often*, nestle, rustle, soften*, thistle, trestle, whistle, wrestle.

 

 

According to that website, the * indicates that CAN be pronounced with the T. So apparently, some people do pronounce the T in soften??

This reminded me there's a boy in DD's class named Dayton. The kids call him DAY-n. You can kind of hear the -t but they say the second syllable so quickly that it all blends together.

[Janeway]

Years of Star Trek and I am incapable of saying it has dah-tuh...I can only say it as Day-tuh

[Guest]

This reminded me there's a boy in DD's class named Dayton. The kids call him DAY-n. You can kind of hear the -t but they say the second syllable so quickly that it all blends together.

I know when my SIL was considering naming a baby Eden, this was the flaw I mentioned as possible in the name. It is pretty, but it is sort of a swallowed pronunciation. Nobody is going to say "E-den". They will say something like, "E-n."

[Butter]

This reminded me there's a boy in DD's class named Dayton. The kids call him DAY-n. You can kind of hear the -t but they say the second syllable so quickly that it all blends together.

 

I think that's called a glottal stop.  I've heard people (particularly in Utah) pronounce mountain mou'in or Layton (which is a town in UT) Lay'on for example.

Edited May 21, 2017 by Butter

[Tanaqui]

There are many possibilities for what sound they're using there, including none at all. A glottal stop is a "stop" made with the "glottis".

 

A stop is a consonant where we stop the airflow completely. In English, the voiceless stops are /p/, /t/, /k/. The voiced stops are /b/, /d/, /g/.

 

Each of those stops has a different place of articulation (place where you stop or slow the airflow), and I wrote them in order from the front of the lips to the back of the throat. In English, we don't consider the glottal stop to be a separate phoneme. However, you can hear it in the middle of words like "uh-oh" or, in some dialects, in the place of a medial /t/. But in other dialects, medial /t/ is formed in some other way. (When a phoneme, such as /t/, is articulated in different ways depending on where it is in a word, we say that the two or more ways of saying it ("phones") are allophones of the phoneme.)

 

As for um, while in speech it's usually used to gather ones thoughts, it can also be used - especially on the Internet - to say "wow, you're really stupid and wrong here" without actually saying that. In some online communities, it's actually a banning offense. They had an interesting sub-discussion of it over on LanguageLog or maybe LanguageHat recently.

Edited May 21, 2017 by Tanaqui

[staceyobu]

I say day-ta, but I think either is acceptable. Or would it be i-ther is acceptable?

[La Condessa]

But the singular is datum!

 

OK, I've only ever actually used that in reference to the reference point for a site grid on an archaeological excavation.

 

I don't use it that way intentionally because I thought it was right; I just realized I used both and looking for a pattern, I realized there was one.

[sassenach]

I also have an aunt that rhymes with ant, and an aunt that rhymes with haunt.

Me, too! Aunt (Ant) Nancy and aunt (ahnt) Karen. I think it's because the short a in Nancy flows with using a short a in aunt. Aunt Pam is also ant. Come to think of it, aunt Elaine is ahnt, so the short a thing has to be it.

 

Funny.

[sassenach]

You think pronouncing the T in often sounds proper?  Huh.  That is a big cultural shift from when I grew up. 

 

Lots of words have a silent T in the middle.    Google gave me this list: apostle, bristle, bustle, castle, fasten, glisten, hustle, jostle, listen,  moisten, mortgage, often*, nestle, rustle, soften*, thistle, trestle, whistle, wrestle.

 

 

According to that website, the * indicates that CAN be pronounced with the T.  So apparently, some people do pronounce the T in soften??

Often is the only word on that list that I do pronounce the t. 

[maize]

You think pronouncing the T in often sounds proper?  Huh.  That is a big cultural shift from when I grew up. 

 

Lots of words have a silent T in the middle.    Google gave me this list: apostle, bristle, bustle, castle, fasten, glisten, hustle, jostle, listen,  moisten, mortgage, often*, nestle, rustle, soften*, thistle, trestle, whistle, wrestle.

 

 

According to that website, the * indicates that CAN be pronounced with the T.  So apparently, some people do pronounce the T in soften??

 

I bet people wouldn't have made a big deal out of the t in often being silent when/where you grew up if there weren't people pronouncing the t--which is its own evidence that the t was not in fact always silent! Language is much more fluid, varied, and changeable than folks who want everything to fit into boxes and follow rules like to admit.

[Mama Geek]

I use both but more naturally that sound