Let's talk about Language

[Kyle]

Okay. I started a new thread.

Is it me or are young people dropping the hard "t" sound in the middle of words at a quickly accelerating rate? How do I describe it? Instead of saying cotton as "Cot-ton" they say "Ca-un".

To be clear, I'm not complaining and it doesn't bother me because I still completely understand what they are trying to communicate- so it's all good. But I notice it every time, and it seems to be getting more and more prevalent. Is this a function of youtube/tiktok/social media videos? Wasn't this originally some kind of midwest affect that now seems to be everywhere? I find it fascinating.

[Akiva]

I had a college roommate from Connecticut who pronounced "Martin" like that. Not sure if that's a regional thing in CT.

[Mike]

If it's something that "all the kids" are doing now, then it probably started as a black thing 25 years ago where it was mocked for sounding "uneducated" until the day it suddenly seems mainstream. Or potentially it started with teen girls and was mocked as sounding shallow and vapid, until... you get the idea.

But in this particular case, I suspect it's that the hard 't' is more difficult to pronounce than whatever nearly (but not quite) silent consonant I'm throwing in the middle of 'cotton.' Because I'm certainly not pronouncing a full T sound. What you and I are hearing in kids now is just a step beyond that. I think.

But yes, I ALWAYS notice it, and it will seemingly never not be jarring for me

[Tahlvin]

Okay, what are y'all doing that you're going around saying "cotton" so often during regular conversations?! I'm lucky if I say or hear that word once a month.

[Mike]

Kitten
Mitten
Cotton
Button

[Kyle]

Yeah- it's just the first example I could think of.

"Written" is the one I now remember hearing most often.

[Kyle]

Other ones I heard in my audiobook this morning:

gotten
forgotten
smitten
important

And now that I think about it, this is the same narrator that's read three books this year that I've listened to on audible. That might be influencing my perception of its prevalence.

[Kyle]

Also- all of my kids say "clothes" with a very audible "th" sound, and I pronounce it "close" (as in "close the door"). We constantly argue about who sounds stupider.

[Mike]

With my kids, especially Aidan, it's any word with "eng" in the middle of it. Length, strength, penguin... it's most noticable with penguin. I pronounce these with a classic short e sound, as in pen or step. My kids shift that over towards a long a: strangth, langth, and painguin. It's a bit between us now. I point it out everytime Aidan says painguin. And we both keep repeating our own "correct" pronunciation until Aidan says "We're saying the same thing." Which he is mostly sincere about. Most of the time, he can't tell the difference if I say first one and then the other.

And the truth is that because of the 'ng' in that words, my short e isn't 100% pure. It leans a tiny bit towards that long a. And Aidan's painguin isn't 100% long A either, but it's really close. On this sliding spectrum of vowel, the difference to me is glaring. To Aidan, not so much. It's not valuable to his language processing to be able to distinguish those, so without practice he doesn't notice. Much the same way tonal values of a language like Mandarin are lost on most Americans, who have no need to make those discriminations.

And before you can ask, Tahlvin, apparently we mention penguins A LOT, because we have this back and forth at least twice a month.

[Kyle]

Yeah- we have an ongoing bit in our house where my kids insist that "tailor" and "Taylor" (as in Swift) are pronounced completely differently. I can't hear it. But they are adamant.

[Eliahad]

Is one Tay-lur, and one Tay-lore?

[Kyle]

Is one Tay-lur, and one Tay-lore?

No- they insist that one is Tay-eh-lore and the other is Tay-lore. Honestly, at this point I just say it the same way twice (Tay-lore) just to fuck with them, and then they go bat shit convinced I said it two ways.

Edit: Now that I think about it, with my Texas accent, I think I pronounce both words Tay-luhr.

[Kyle]

Interesting side note, I was watching a youtube video earlier this week that talked about weird Texas accents and one of the accents was the "Hill Country" accent (I live in the Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin). It pointed out that these weirdos pronounce the end of days as "dees": Mon-dee; Tues-dee; Whens-dee; etc.

I'm one of those weirdos. I feel triggered.

[Mike]

Tay-luhr.

TAY-ler

[Kyle]

TAY-Luhr

And on this dropping of t's in the middle of words- it's all over Youtube. I'm really wondering where it originated.

Also, I learned a couple of weeks ago that in parts of Pennsylvania they say "Yinz" as a form of "You all." I like that. I use "y'all" all the time and think everyone should. But I understand that regionally there's things used like it- yinz, youse, you'uns. I like all those. Everyone needs a good slang "y'all" in their life to use.

[Mike]

Oh damn, apparently the process is called t-glottalization. It's been around in some UK dialects for at least a century, and is more recent in the US. No one knows why except that it probably makes words easier to pronounce.

But the more I read about, the more I realize that I don't actually pronounce the t's in bottom or cotton. Or the t in Latin, for example. I just slur it all together. What my ear hears as young people dropping the T, is actually just them leaving a noticable pause between syllables.

[Kyle]

Yeah- I do the same thing. I say "LAHT-in" with a de-emphasized "t". But the phenomenon I'm talking about puts a full stop of breath in the middle "Lah. [slight pause]. In."

[Mike]

Right. Except I don't pronounce the t in Latin. I think I do. And maybe I do when speaking slowly. But at normal conversational speed, there's not really any t. If I say Latin "normally" and then say it intentionally without any t, they sound the same. The only thing different between me and those kids is that pause you speak of. It's like the difference between how I say Hawaii: with the vowels of the last two syllable pressed together into a dipthong*; instead of how it is supposed to be pronounced: with a full glottal stop (slight pause) between the last two syllables. Now I want to talk to one of them and ask if they realize they do it. Do they think of it as a silent T?

*Shit, is dipthong even the right word? Y'know, when two vowel press up together and pretend to be one sound, but they're really not? Like 'oi'. We picture it as one vowel, one syllable, but it's actually long O sliding into long E: oh-ee. Just really fast.

Okay, I looked it up. Dipthong. We're good.

[Phoebe]

I say length and strength more like the kids - you can still tell there's an E in the word but definitely has a long-A sound coming in. Penguin is inexplicable - it is pronounced like the writing instrument + guin! I blame Iowa - there is no A in that word.

I know what you mean about the TTs - it seems like there are three ways: one with sharp, crisp T sounds, one with a blurry T that incorporates some D sound, and one with the glottalization that leaves a gap in the middle of the word. I tend to have a blurred T but less so than most people where I live, maybe due to years spent among people using a crisper TT.

The weird ass thing I do apparently is to pronounce Pillow as Pellow, which I adamantly insist I am pronouncing like a pill you try to give your cat, but The Others say I am saying Pellow because they have excess ear wax. The other one is Ruff instead of Roof - I also deny this although I admit I do not give the Rooooo its full DUE at times. It's a lazy Roo but it's not a damn RUFF! The one thing I freely admit to is Crick rather than Creek because it's pronounced Crick, y'all. I didn't make that rule. Kind of like Warsh and Wash give you two fully acceptable options there.