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.