Is flapping rare in American English?

Flapping of /t/ and /d/ is a prominent feature of North American English. Some linguists consider it obligatory for most American dialects to flap /t/ between a stressed and an unstressed vowel. Flapping after /l/ is more common in Canadian English than in American English.

Is D voiced?

As you pronounce a letter, feel the vibration of your vocal cords. If you feel a vibration the consonant is a voiced one. These are the voiced consonants: B, D, G, J, L, M, N, Ng, R, Sz, Th (as in the word “then”), V, W, Y, and Z.

What is the flap rule?

The flapping rule Flapping is a rule stating that an intervocalic /t/ or /d/ surfaces as an alveolar flap [ɾ] before an unstressed vowel (Riehl, 2003).

Why do TS sound like DS?

All vowels are voiced sounds. T and D use the exact same mouth position, but T is unvoiced and D is voiced. When a T is between two vowels, it’s easier to just maintain the voicing, so it comes out sounding pretty close to a quick D sound.

What is flap linguistics?

flap, in phonetics, a consonant sound produced by a single quick flip of the tongue against the upper part of the mouth, often heard as a short r in Spanish (e.g., in pero, “but”) and similar to the pronunciation of the sound represented by the double letter in American English “Betty” and some forms of British English …

What is the flap ‘t’ for?

The flap ‘T’ is somewhere between the /t/ and the /d/ sounds. It’s basically the /t/ sound which is pronounced in a different way in certain positions in a word. The thing is, when the /t/ occurs between voiced sounds, it sounds more like a quick /d/: “water.”

When do you pronounce ‘t’ as a flap?

You generally pronounce “t” as a flap when it occurs after a vowel or a vowel+”r” and follows a preceding stressed syllable and occurs before another vowel Examples of the rule: Eating, meeting, Saturday, duty, creator, pity, rutty, pouty, Saturn, haughty,…

When is the letter t pronounced with the aspirated “t” sound?

When is the letter “t” pronounced with the aspirated “t” sound? The aspirated “t” sound appears: When the word starts with “t”. Examples: table, take, talk, tango, tap, tea, teach, tear, teeth, tell, ten, tie, time, tongue, too, took, top, touch, toy, traffic, train, tree, trend, triangle, trip, trouble, true, try, turn

Do all Americans use the T in front of a word?

Not all Americans do, and not consistently. Flap-t (/d/ instead of /t/) often happens between vowel sounds or after a vowel and before a liquid. The t in “-teen” is always pronounced as t. As Henry mentions the reason is that flap rarely happens in stressed positions.