this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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xkcd

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xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

https://xkcd.com/2942

explainxkcd.com for #2942

Alt text:

Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I feel like it's the glottal T. I know for me, personally, my tongue doesn't touch my teeth, but there is still a T sound. I am not British, though I am from Jersey (New).

[–] GTG3000 1 points 5 months ago

My tongue definitely touches the teeth/roof of mouth there. I do swallow the vowels though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I am from Jersey (New) too, and we love our our glottal stops. Once I was telling someone from out-of-state that I was from Trenton, and even after I said it three times, they still said they'd never heard of it. And I realized it's because we pronounce it almost like "chre'in". I don't really pronounce the "nt" in the middle, it's just a gap.