English Pronunciation Made Easy: 3 Native Secrets to Understanding and Pronouncing the “T” Sound (with Audio)

Do you have problems understanding native speakers?

Could you use a little help from an experienced American teacher?

Give me 10 minutes and you will learn 3 simple rules that will drastically improve your ability to understand native speakers. Listening along will really help.

Listen and Follow Text Below

First, let’s test your listening with a short paragraph filled with variations of the “T” sound. I’m going to read through the words quickly at first, pronouncing the words naturally, and then a second time slower, with standard textbook pronunciation. There are 41 examples of these three T sounds in this paragraph. I want you to test your listening comprehension the first time we go through it (no text).

Test Your Listening- NO TEXT

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How did that go?  If you understood the entire paragraph the first time, congratulations! Maybe a different lesson on pronunciation would be a better use of your time (unless you’re curious about the rules behind it).  If you didn’t understand 100%, keep reading (and listening).  This is an important lesson, and your English will never be the same.

Now I’m going to read the same paragraph two times. First, my natural American pronunciation (again), and second with the “standard” textbook pronunciation. Please read and listen both times. Just so you know, this doesn’t feel natural, so forgive me if this doesn’t flow that well (*The Second Time).

Listen and Follow Text Below (Normal Speed)

Listen and Follow Text Below (Slow, Full T Sounds)

I thought it’d be better to write it out in a paragraph because we tend to not understand a lot of things listening to it. Before we talk about anything, we all know that it is fun learning Real Life English, on the internet with an international site and community that integrates English into your life and lets you learn interesting things along the way to inspire and motivate you to try your best. It’s a really interesting way to learn in today’s world, and if you want to get ahead with your English and make it a convenient part of your life, I can’t imagine a better way to learn.

Why People Don’t Understand the “T” Sound

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The “T” sound is everywhere in its many forms, and whether people know it or not, it’s one of the most common pronunciation and listening comprehension difficulties for English learners around the world.

As an American, non-natives generally don’t understand me when I speak at my normal speed (even a lot of advanced students). I normally have to slow down for people to understand me.

The 3 variations of the “T” sound that we’ll talk about today are a very important reason why. I’ve helped several of my students learn this lesson, and today I’m going to show you how it’s done.

I’m also including some important videos that can deepen your understaning. Let’s do this! Here are the “3 Most Confusing ‘T’ Sound Rules Explained.”

1. The Omission of the “T” sound in “INT” Words

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This rule is pretty simple once you understand it, and it will be a big help.

A lot of “INT” words in the English language totally omit the “T” sound. Some of the more common “INT” words that I pronounce with this sound are words that have INTER in them. For example, “internet” is pronounced “innernet,” and international “innernational.”

This is a particularly important sound because a lot of languages, especially romance languages have cognates that are hard to understand.

Internet = Innernet

 International = Innernational

Intermediate = Innermediate

Integrate = innegrate

Interesting = inneresting

Exceptions: Internal, Intensify, Integrity, interject, Intuitive

An extremely common (but more complicated) example of this is the words “want to,” which are pronounced “wanna.” This happens with “going to” as well, which becomes “gonna.” Both of these are often considered a colloquial contraction (or a sound morph).

Want to = Wanna

Going to = Gonna

Note: Native speakers often eat/omit the “G” in “going,” so when we run the words together in speech it becomes the same “goin’to,” and like “wanto,” the “nt” becomes a “nna” sound.

Let’s end by highlighting the rule in this paragraph (yes, we will read it again!)

Listen and Follow Text Below

We all know that it is fun learning Real Life English, on the internet with an international site and community that integrates English into your life and lets you learn interesting things along the way to inspire and motivate you to try your best. It’s a really interesting way to learn in today’s world, and if you want to get ahead with your English and make it a convenient part of your life, I can’t imagine a better way to learn.

Read more about colloquial contractions, “gonna and wanna.”

 2.    The “Stop T” Sound

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 When a word ends in “T,” the pronunciation of the final “T” sound is often inaudible, or cut off.  The back of the throat cuts it off with a slight glottal T.

Hat, What, Fat, Pete, that, feet 

Can’t, Doesn’t, Shouldn’t, Won’t (All “n’t” Contractions)

Let’s go through that paragraph again and illustrate the examples. I have to speak slower on this sound so I don’t make the American D sound (rule #3):

Listen and Follow Text Below

Before we talk about anything, we all know that it is fun learning Real Life English, on the internet with an international site and community that integrates English into your life and lets you learn interesting things along the way to inspire and motivate you to try your best. It’s a really interesting way to learn in today’s world, and if you want to get ahead with your English and make it a convenient part of your life, I can’t imagine a better way to learn.

Listen and Follow Text Below

This one is a surprise to most people, and although it’s simple to understand and listen for, it may be the most difficult of all of these to pronounce. Most English learners actually have to learn to make a new sound in their throat.

One thing to keep in mind, as we’ll talk about below (in #3, the “American ‘T’” Sound) is that when this word is followed by another word that ends with a vowel (i.e. Cat and Dog), then the “T” of cat becomes a “D” (“Cad an’ Dog”).

 3.    The American “T” sound (also known as “Tap” or “Flap T”)

Listen and Follow Text Below

Let’s start with a little text to illustrate this point:

I thought it’d be better to write it out in a paragraph because we tend to not understand a lot of things listening to it. Before we talk about anything, we all know that it is fun learning Real Life English on the internet with an international site and community that integrates English into your life and lets you learn interesting things along the way to inspire and motivate you to try your best. It’s a really interesting way to learn in today’s world, and if you want to get ahead with your English and make it a convenient part of your life, I can’t imagine a better way to learn.

In American English (as well as Canadian, and lot of other accents) whenever you have a “t” sound in between two vowel sounds, the T becomes a soft “d.” Observe the following words.  Lets look at a few examples. Vowels sounds in red, the “Flap T” sound is underlined.

Better, Later, Auto, Peter, Totally, British

The first important thing to keep in mind is that the letter doesn’t necessarily need to be a vowel. Here are a few words that employ the the same rule as above, but while they aren’t spelled with vowels on both sides, they employ the vowel sound on both sides.

Daughter, Seattle, Beatles

Even though the “T” in daughter isn’t surrounded by vowel letters (A,E,I,O,U), it employs the American D/Flap T sound (and sometimes British). Because the “gh” is silent,  the “t” is still the “au” for a vowel sound,(“dah-der”). The same is true for “Seattle” and “Beatle,” as the  “L” in many “le” words oftentimes carries the “ul.”

Remember, it’s not the spelling the determines the pronunciation, but the sound. The word “Pete”, for example, has a hard “T” sound, but if you add an “r” to say “Peter,” the “T” becomes an American “D.”

The second important thing to note is that this same rule applies with words we run together. The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

If I say the word cat alone, the “T” does not acquire a “D” sound, but if I say “Cat AND Dog,” the pronunciation becomes “Cad-an-dog.” This happens all the time.

Cat and Dog = “Cad-an-dog”

Fat and Tall = “Fad-an-tall”

The final variation of the “flap T” sound is that the above tendency (with separate words like “cad-an-dog”) also happens with words that end with an “n” sound.  As mentioned above, Americans regularly eat/omit the final “G” on “ing” ending words, and with a lot of other words that end with an “n.”

For example “I’m working tomorrow” is often pronounced “I’m workin’ domorrow” in American English.

I’m working Tomorrow = “I’m workin’ da-morrow”

I’m going to college next year = “I’m goin’ da college next year”

Variations: Neglect our, R Sound (better to), “Inda-the Wild”

How to Make These Sounds a Permanent Part of Your English

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Even though the great majority of English schools don’t teach this, it’s very clear that these sounds permeate the English language, and even more in American English.

A lot of grammarticians say that some of these sounds are not correct English, but that’s complete nonsense. Well, if that’s true, then almost everything you hear in songs, movies, and TV is incorrect English.

So, how much of this should you learn? If you’re serious about your English fluency, it is absolutely essential for you to listen and understand.

First of all, learning to understand these sounds will make a huge impact on your listening comprehension.

Do you need to pronounce these sounds in English? Not exactly, but it would definitely help your fluency.

To pronounce the “T” sound phonetically with these words is correct, and people will understand.  I tell my students that the first and most important thing is to listen and understand.  When you open your ears to these sounds, you will start to understand a lot more, and this tends to naturally influence your pronunciation.

But, if you want to play around with pronunciation and learn to imitate native speakers, this will probably facilitate a higher level of fluency and even impress native speakers.

If you want to learn more about Powerful Native Pronunciation Secrets, we have a few simple and easy to understand videos that condense the very best of Real Life English’s methodology into a simple and easy to digest format.

More Texts on Pronunciation:

• 7 Tips to Drastically Improve Your Pronunciation
• How to Reduce Your Accent in English
• Improve Your English with Tongue Twisters
• Top 5 Mispronunciations Made by Brazilians

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