This post is to provide some extra exercises for students who have taken the class on the ‘glottal t’.
What is the glottal ‘t’?
If you’ve taken the glottal ‘t’ class, you will remember that the glottal stop is a common feature of Standard Southern British English. It is one possible pronunciation of the phoneme /t/, and can be represented as [ʔ]. It is an optional sound and will not help people understand you better, but it will make your speech sound more natural.
To make the glottal stop, we stop airflow in the glottis with our vocal cords for a very very short time. It’s like we are cutting the vowel sound. We can feel this sound if we say:
‘Uh-oh’
Or if we repeat and stop a vowel sound repeatedly, for example:
/i…i…i…i…/
When do we find it?
In more standard accents, the glottal ’t’ commonly occurs when a ‘t’ is at the end of a syllable, followed by a consonant sound. This can happen either within words, or across words.
Within words
Partner (t, n)
Network (t, w)
Batman (t, m)
Football (t, b)
Across words
Mastering the glottal stop across words is probably the most important for students working on sounding more British, as many words end in ’t’ in English!
Remember, a glottal stop happens before a consonant sound. However, a ‘true t’ will be more likely in very standard, careful speech (although not guaranteed) before a vowel. This will depend a lot on factors like speed of speech, formality, and who we are talking to. Compare the following:
Right now (t, n = glottal stop)
Right over (t, o letter, /əʊ/ sound= true t)
About that (t, th = glottal stop)
About it (t, i = true t)
At least (t, l = glottal stop)
At a party (t, a letter, /ə/ sound = glottal stop)
Key words
The following words ending in ’t’ are key to practise, as they very common, and will often be followed by words beginning with consonant sounds.
But
I like watching the film but reading the book is better.
That
I think that we need to try harder.
It
It was a great day.
What
What did she want?
About
I watched a documentary about micro plastics.
Not
That’s not fair.
A final note
There are other cases in which you might hear glottal stops amongst speakers of Standard Southern British English. However, these are slightly less ‘standard’ than the cases above. So, to start with, it’s worth focusing on producing the glottal stop before consonants.