How to Pronounce NT Contractions American English Pronunciation

Today we’re going to go over the N’T contractions
for the word not. You may have noticed as

you’ve listened to native speakers that you
can’t rely on hearing a good tt, released

T sound, shouldn’t tt, tt. You’ll more often
hear shouldn', without that release of the

T. So the T is pronounced as a stop consonant.
If you’re not familiar with what that means,

you’ll want to watch my video on the three
T pronunciations. Let’s look at an example

sentence. He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t,
shouldn’t, nt, nt, nt. Just imitate that sound

if you can. Nt, nt, nt. The N consonant is
a nasal consonant. We’ll look in a minute

at what that means, but for now just think
of it as being in the nose, nn, nn. And the

T here is a stop. Which means it’s going to
stop the sound. It’s going to be an abrupt,

short, n. The N sound, nn, NT, nt. So it’s
just a very quick sound here in the nose.

On its own, it’s unlike really any other sound
in English. It almost doesn’t even sound like

a speech sound. I also want to note that if
it’s adding a syllable to a word, like should/shouldn’t,

that it’s always going to be unaccented. So
it will be lower in pitch than the rest of

the word. Shouldn’t, shouldn’t. Here we have
the N and the T sounds next to each other.

You can see the tongue position is almost
the same. In both, the tongue reaches up and

touches the roof of the mouth just behind
the front teeth. The main difference is that

in the N, the soft palate is down. What that
means is that the air comes through here,

which is why you feel it so much in your nose.
In the T the soft palate is raised. So though

you won’t hear the T release, the T makes
makes itself known when the soft palate raises,

cutting off the sound. Now of course sometimes
you will hear native speakers pronounce the

T, like this: does, doesn’t. But most of the
time in conversation in the middle of a sentence,

you will not hear the T released. Let’s look
at some more NT contractions. Could, couldn’t,

couldn’t. I couldn’t see. Did, didn’t didn’t.
I didn’t find it. Would, wouldn’t, wouldn’t.

I wouldn’t if I were you. Does, doesn’t, doesn’t.
Doesn’t it hurt? Is, isn’t, isn’t. Isn’t that

strange? Was, wasn’t, wasn’t. Wasn’t that
good? Have, haven’t, haven’t. I haven’t been.

Some N’T contraction words are just one syllable.
For example, won’t and don’t. They still have

a shape, won’t, of tapering off at the end.
Won’t, don’t. They’re sort of funny sounding

words, they both have the ‘oh’ as in ‘no’
diphthong. Will not becomes won’t, won’t.

I won’t be there. Do not, don’t, don’t. I
don’t think so. If you’re wondering about

can vs. can’t, there will be a separate video
on that. So look for it in the future. I hope

that you better understand this chopped off
N sound in the nose, the N’T contraction.

That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s
English.