One of the things that make English difficult to understand is the different pronunciations of one of its most common consonants: / t /. This activity will help you to know more about the different sounds of the letter T. But first learn the theory and get some practice before doing this activity. Go to our video lesson about the pronunciations of T here:

Phonetics: Pronunciations of the letter T

You can also find detailed explanations further down the page.

PRACTICE

In this activity I'll try to make you aware of those differences. It's not very important if you can't get many answers right, the most important thing is that you understand the different possibilities of this letter (T) and notice that the pronunciation changes.

Now we're going to listen to a song with a lot of T's, so it is a good example of what may happen to this letter. The accent is AmE, so all the changes we've been talking about are more frequent that they would in BrE. The song is called "Beautiful Soul", and right there in the title we have a T with one of the commented pronunciations (/ D /)

1- Listen to the song. Don't worry if you don't understand anything, just enjoy it and listen for the sound / t / (the typical one, with the tip of the tongue and the explosion). You'll find out you don't hear it many times.

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2- Now open go to the video page Beautiful Soul and print the lyrics (click on the printer icon there). Listen to the video again while reading the lyrics (the text of the song). Just notice that most of the T's there are not pronounced with the regular tongue tip and explosion.

(watch the video and see the lyrics here Beautiful Soul)

3- Now you're going to listen to it a few times, trying to identify the pronunciation of every T in the song (or you can just work with one section of it).

The best way to do it is by choosing one of the varieties of the T (for instance, the sound / D /) and try to find how many times that sound appears in the lyrics instead of the exploding / t /. Then you can choose another variety and start again.

Use these symbols to mark the following sounds:

T /t/ (alveolar + explosion, the basic pronunciation everybody knows)

D quick /d/ (variety 1, like in Spanish "Mar�a")

| /ʔ/ (variety 4= in your throat)

CH /tʃ/ (variety 2, assimilation)

X // (variety 3= when it disappears)

superadvanced: you can also try these other two varieties of the sound /t/

d normal /d/ (variety 5= / t / without explosion)

1 /t/ (variety 6= simplification of two T's in one)

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KEY
Finished? well, now we come to the part where you can check the answers and see how good your ear is for English. You don't need to get all the answers right (you'd be close to a genius if you did), but you'll probably have some correct. The important thing about this activity is not to check how good your listening is, but to help you know that the letter T is pronounced in different ways, and if you completed all the steps in this activity now you know for sure, so congratulations!

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1- X X D

2- X X X d

3- X X d D d

4- X D

�

5- )(

6- T

7- X T� CH

8- D

�

9� - X X D

10- X X X d

11- X X d D d

12- X D

13- X X

14- X X

15- X D d� D d

16- X D

�

17-

18- d T T D

19- D X

20-

21-

22- T T

�

23- X

24- X T

25- 1T

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EXPLANATIONS

THEORY

The English letter T is supposed to be pronounced tapping the tip of your tongue tight against the alveolus (a bit behind your upper teeth). When we pronounce it there is an explosion.

Well, that's the theory, but in practice, most of the times the pronunciation is different. These are the other possibilities and when they usually take place:

1- v + T + v = /D/

�� when the T goes between vowels it is often pronounced like a quick /d/ (like in the Spanish "cara"). In BrE it happens often, in AmE it happens always.

�� e.g.� better, fighter, sitting, "but I ..."

2- T + / j / = ch

�� When T is followed by the sound / j /, both sounds mix together and make one new sound. The sound / j / is often written with the letter Y (as in "You" or "plaYer").

�� e.g. "but you..." (pronounced "buchoo"), question (= kweschon)

�� The sound / j / is ofen found in the pronounciation of the letter U. For instance, CUTE is pronounced /kju:t/ (= kyoot), so T+U often produces this result.

�� e.g. "future" (pronounced "fyoocha" /fju:tʃə/)

3- / n / + T = / n /

�� After the sound / n /, / t / may disappear. It happens a lot in AmE (especially in some areas), and it may happen sometimes in BrE (in grammatical words like "don't", "won't", etc). This happens sometimes after / s / too when -ST is a final cluster ("just", "first", "must").

�� e.g. interesting (pronounced "ineresting", only AmE)

�� This is what produces the colloquial expressions:� wanna (= want to / want a) and gonna (= going to), very common in colloquial speech (esp. in AmE)

4- T� at the end of a word is often pronounced closing your throat suddenly, instead of using the tip of your tongue, especially in BrE.

�� e.g. what?, cat, foot

(in Scottish, colloquial BrE and some dialects, you may find that sound in between vowels too!)

5- T = / d /
Sometimes it's pronounced with the tip of your tongue but there is not the expected explosion, so it sounds like a normal� / d /. That happens especially at the end of words and before some consonants.

6- T+T= T
This simplification always happens when we find T T inside a word, but it often happens when two words get together. Once we have just one T, its pronunciation may be any of the ones mentioned before.

�� e.g. better, sitting� / "but Tim", "it takes"