Hi, students. Hope you are well. In this video, I'm going to
talk to you about the accent training work that I do, and
how I've come to a decision that, as much as possible
in my normal speaking, I'm going to give
up training myself to pronounce T all
the time, because it is more natural for
me, a lot easier, to just pronounce a
glottal stop in most cases. If you don't know what
a glottal stop is, it's that sound that's made
down here in the glottis instead of
pronouncing a T. Now I haven't got anything
against the T sound. In fact, I think
it sounds elegant. I love the sound of classically
trained actors and people who speak posh English,
who seemingly effortlessly pronounce their Ts in all words. But I'm not a classically
trained actor, although I am a speech coach,
I really have to focus on it to make sure that
I'm pronouncing T in every single word. And it never reached the
point of being natural for me like other sounds
that I worked on. So I think you've got
to bear that in mind, like how much work should
you put into something and how much should you
eventually accept it. If I had a different
kind of social status, if I was from a
different class, I would have learned how
to pronounce T properly in the right places
when I was growing up. But I was not of that
kind of social class. I didn't have that
kind of background. And also I grew up in London
where not that many people pronounce their T.
Well, only if you're of a higher social class. For most of my life I
wasn't pronouncing a T. And it has been a bit
of an uphill battle to put those Ts in my speech. And I noticed when I
re-watch my videos, as soon as I start
speaking naturally, as soon as I'm more relaxed,
out come the glottal stops. And it's not every single
word but there are some words that it's really,
really hard for me to pronounce with
T. This is usually a T in the middle of a word. Or if I'm speaking
in connected speech, sometimes the small words like
it, I'll say like i-- i-- i-- I'll give you another word. Every time I seem to say the
word C-A-T in a video, cat, I'm always saying ca-- And it must be because
I'm always saying ca-- at home, a-- home, when I'm
talking about my own ca--. If I could press the magic
button, yeah for sure, I would speak that
elegant English where all the Ts are pronounced. I do think it sounds the best. So if you're learning
English, I advise you to learn to pronounce those TS. However like I said, I'm
not of that social class. I've already put the
effort in for a long time and it's not really happening. And my other observation
was that for women in a similar situation to me
in terms of social status, the amount of glottal stops I
use is very similar to them. So in that sense it
is natural for me to use these glottal
stops as much as I do. Judging myself by my
peers, it's natural and it's OK not to pronounce the
T. But you can pronounce the T and you can sound as nice as
a classically trained actor. Thank you for
watching this video and hope you come back again
soon for a future lesson. Bye.
