Hey! How are you guys? A big part of a  non-native English speaker's accent is
  something that we will talk about today  that is called flapping, and another
  thing called glottal stops in American  English. Let's first talk about flapping.
  "Flap" first of all, the verb flap, is what  a bird does with their wings, right? A
  bird flaps their wings to fly. This verb  could also be used to talk about the
  action of the tongue when you go RRR to make  the sound of the R in Portuguese of
  caro, barato. That RRR of the R in those  words is "flapping." Well this sound
  happens in words in English. So let's  have an example here of flapping. First
  of all, let me start with two different  words: mad and mat. Notice how I'm
  almost saying this plosive at the end,  but I don't say it, right? Mad. Mat. Let's
  put ER at the end of both these words,  okay? To form two new words: madder and
  matter. Madder. Matter.  Did you hear a difference there? No!
  Because these two words are pronounced  exactly the same in American English. So
  when you have instances of two D's or two  T's surrounded by vowels in a word, in
  American English that receives a  flapping sound. Madder. Matter. But what I
  hear Brazilians doing a lot is,  especially beginners, trying to pronounce
  both of these D's or both of these T's  mad-der, mat-ter, which definitely is
  incorrect. Or they're putting way too  much emphasis, even more emphasis than a
  British person would; they say maDDer  maTTer but that even sounds like an
  accent in American English because we  flap. You'll hear the flapping everywhere
  if you start listening to American  English. Madder. Matter. Water. That's a big
  difference between British English and  American English. Water, in British
  English, and water: we do more of the  ER in water. So, make sure when you're
  thinking of the flapping sound as the R  in Portuguese, and when you're
  translating that over into English when  you're practicing this a lot, that you
  don't mess up how the other R's are  actually pronounced. The R here is
  actually gonna be a hard RR,  you know, from American English. So I... this
  phrase here is for you to just say over  and over and over in your head to make
  sure you can tell the difference between  this, what you could see as an R, that
  flap, pretty pretty, and the other R's,  which are hard R's in English. RRR,
  right? Interior de São Paulo! Pretty  regularly. Pretty regularly. Just say it
  over and over again to get the flapping  and to get the R's. Pretty regularly. Pretty
  regularly. I think it's a little bit of a  tongue twister too, huh?
  I already said that we can do this with  double T and double D. You can also do
  this with certain instances of single T  and single D surrounded by vowels. So
  let's take a look. We have, first of all  starting with double T, two words. Better.
  Little. Little. And note here that you can  actually do this with an L after the
  double T or the double D as well. Little.  Little. Moving on, we have wedding. Wedding.
  So again, Brazilians here, a lot of times  I will hear something like wed-ding'
  wed-ding' right? Or maybe even wedging... No,  this is.. this doesn't really sound like a
  T or a D. It's just a bland, generic flap.  Wedding. And here too: buddy. Buddy "What's
  up buddy?" It's pretty common for men my  age to call each other "buddy," like, "What's
  up buddy?" It's not as common for women to  call men that, and women definitely.. I mean,
  almost always don't call other women  "buddy." But just to let you know. So I already
  gave the example of "water" here for  single T, but another couple examples are
  data, data. And also pity, pity. And finally  single D examples: studies, studies, body
  body. That one's weird. I've always thought  that the O is strange in the word "body,"
  right? Like how.. why isn't it like boe-dy,  boe-dy, you know? It's BAH.. Definitely don't
  be afraid to open the mouth wide to say  this word: body. But then we have a word
  like mulheres, right? Women: where the O  turns into an IH. I can understand why
  English is hard. But one more time: body.  Now as is always the case with English,
  we have exceptions, okay? So I just  thought of an exception with every
  single one: the double T, double D, and  then single T, single D. So this is just
  to remind you that every time that you  see a double T or a double D doesn't
  necessarily mean  that it's flapped. So for example, mitt. A mitt..
  you can see I'm almost pronouncing the T:   mitt. A mitt is what you use to take
  something hot out of the oven. It's like  a glove for your hand, and also that's
  the word for the glove that they use in  the sport of baseball. And with an S at
  the end, mitts,  you don't flap that. That's like
  impossible. And that's probably because  it's not surrounded by vowels, right? Well
  here's an instance where it's surrounded  by vowel sounds, oddly, and also the L,
  which I said is possible; a word like  paddle, for example, could be flapped with
  DDL. But here, oddly, oddly, actually gets  the same thing with that plosive
  pronunciation that I talked about in the  last video, where the word odd, which
  means like "estranho," right? By itself  would just be odd, like the D almost gets
  pronounced, but it gets stuck there. And  then putting the -ly to make it an adverb,
  we still stay with the D getting stuck  here and not flapped: oddly. I don't know
  why; it's just what we do. And then two  other examples; obviously these aren't
  flapped because they're not in between  other vowels, so the first letter of each
  of these is pronounced hard, definitely  with a TT and a DD, and the last
  ones, plosives at the end of a word,  usually almost pronounced, but not. So tot,
  which is a little kid, tot. Dad. Dad.  Awesome.
  Well there is an accent in Great Britain  called Cockney. It's the same accent of
  the singer Adele.  Her name's Adele, not A-delly. Adele. And
  they actually remove this flap and this  sound completely. So they will say better,
  better. And also little, little. Okay Gavin,  well why are you teaching an accent
  that's only a small percentage of  English speakers? Well actually this
  complete removal of that sound is called  a glottal stop. Now the glottis is a
  part of the throat, and a glottal stop  means that your throat is actually.. or
  your mouth is actually like stopping  some of the air from moving, and creating
  that little, little, separating the sounds  in that, okay? Your glottis is doing that.
  And it's kind of funny that the word  "glottal" has a double T in there, because
  we as native American English speakers  would say glottal, but a cockney speaker
  might say glottal, glottal. To kind of  practice what this sounds like, because
  there are American English words where  this happens too,
  and I'll tell you about those in a  second, but you will need to practice
  this, try saying this Portuguese little  phrase-let here, right? Like, "Eu fui à aula."
  Right? I hear Brazilians sometimes saying  like, with the crase here, "Eu fui àaula."
  With just a very long "àaula." But, it's possible to  separate these too, and I've heard
  Brazilians say before, "Eu fui à-aula. À-aula."  Something like that. Obviously I'm not a
  native speaker, but I'm trying to  reproduce that. So try that there: when
  you actually have to create a space here,  a break here, that's a glottal stop
  happening in the back your throat. À-aula.  À-aula. And that is the feel
  that you need to remember when you start  to pronounce these words in American
  English.  So, yes, the glottal stop happens in
  American English too! It happens when we  have the T sound, either the double T or
  the single T, and on the next syllable  the word ends with an N, the letter N, okay?
  So, let me pronounce these words for you,  and listen for the glottal stop: button,
  kitten, gotten, eaten, mountain, Britain.  I'm not saying BriTTain, and I'm not
  saying Brit.. Brit-ain, like trying to flap  it. It's almost like impossible for me to
  feel what that feels like, to flap that,  because we simply don't do that in
  English. There's some people in American  English who like to try to speak
  "correctly" and will say, "Could you get me  a buTTon? A buTTon?" But that sounds really
  weird, and 95% of the time you will hear  words pronounced with a glottal stop
  like this, like "I've eaten at Outback  Steakhouse three times." I've eaten. Eaten.
  The T disappears completely! That is a  glottal stop. Remember again that this is
  not always going to be the case - there  are going to be exceptions. For example,
  we have a double T here, and oh, it ends with an  N and a G, should be okay, right? But we
  can't say like cuh-ing, cuh-ing. We don't  say that. We say cutting, cutting, once
  again with the flap because it doesn't  end with a perfect N right there.
  Also, obtain, obtain. Here we have a  single T; it has a consonant there, so that
  could be a problem, and also our emphasis  is on -tain here: obtain. Obter, right? Obtain.
  And same thing with all of our -tion  words. When you have -tion, that doesn't
  have anything to do with flapping or  glottal stops. That's a whole different
  phoneme there. Option. But, cockney  speakers of English like Adele, and also
  Americans, will say these words: button,  kitten, gotten, eaten. And mountain's always
  an interesting one too because it has NT. There is a consonant there but we
  still say mountain, mountain. I live near  the Rocky Mountains. Mountains. That T just
  disappears completely. Another word, the  word didn't: DIDN'T. This T
  disappears completely as well and you  get a glottal stop with nothing after it:
  didn't, didn't. It's not always the case,  but a lot of times when we have the NT
  in English, SmallAdvantages, it's not a  glottal stop but the T disappears, so this
  is kinda like halfway in between those  two rules. Don't worry about that too
  much. But I said this today and I was  thinking, "oh, there's a weird glottal
  stop at the end!" Didn't. Didn't. Didn't.  Right? And that is the correct
  pronunciation of didn't, exactly how a  native English - American English - speaker's
  gonna pronounce that. One other thing that I  wanted to teach you really quick that
  has a glottal stop in English is the  phrase uh-oh. "Uh-oh" is what a kid, like a
  little kid says, like they push all their  food off of their.. off of the table, and
  they look up and they created a mess, and  they say, "Uh-oh!" Right? It's like the
  "Oops! Whoop!" You know? Of, like, a mistake.  We even say that, just that, you know,
  adults will say this in English, like  "uh-oh..." like, you're in trouble...
  "Uh-oh! I'm gonna have a lot of stuff to  clean up," right? And we actually have a
  glottal stop - UH-OH - at the beginning of  each of these syllables! And that's how
  to pronounce that in English: just make  that same sound as the À-AULA, but do
  that little glottal stop before saying  each of these. And there you have the
  classic American uh-oh! Uh-oh! You can almost  hear and feel your throat clicking
  during that. It's fascinating. Anyway, try  to practice these words. You will start
  to notice it now that you know this rule.  So, say pretty regularly; practice the
  glottal stop; practice saying kitten, gotten eaten;  and practice listening for it. And that
  is your accent reduction tip. Hope you  enjoyed it!
     
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