TR souding like CHR DR like JR and STR like SDR American English Pronunciation
In recent month, I’ve got a couple
emails from a couple people
saying they hear a weird thing happening
when they hear native speakers speak.
They hear the TR sound sometimes
sounding like the CHR sound.
For example: try.
Tt-ry.
They say they might be
hearing ch-ry, chry.
Try, chry.
Same with the DR consonant cluster.
D-rive, drive, they might
hear jj-rive, jrive.
Drive, jrive.
I hear this a lot myself, and I’m
certain that I do myself sometimes too.
To understand why these consonant blends
or clusters sometimes sound that way,
we need to look at some
photos of the sounds.
Here we see the T/D mouth
position on the left
and the ch/jj mouth
position on the right.
You can see they have a
similar tongue position,
with the forward part
of the tongue raised,
touching the roof of the mouth
just behind the front teeth.
In the T/D sound, the lips are
relaxed, and in the ch/jj, sound,
the lips have some tension, the come
away from the face, they round somewhat.
Here we see the R sound on the left
and the ch/jj sound on the right.
You can see the tongue
position is different.
In the R, the tongue does not
raise all the way to the roof.
It presses against the
insides of the top teeth
and the tip of the
tongue is pulled back.
But in the R sound, the lips also have a
bit of tension: they are not relaxed.
They are rounded somewhat, and
therefore, come away from the face.
Here are all three sounds.
You could say, if you take the lip
position of the R, somewhat rounded,
and the tongue position of the
T/D, where the front raises
and touches the front of
the roof of the mouth,
then you get the tongue position, the
mouth position, for the ch/jj sound.
Therefore, if the speaker is making the
T or D sound followed by the R sound,
their lips may start to round for the
R as they are making the T/D sound.
And if the lips round early,
which they may very well do,
then the mouth position will
be the same for the ch/jj,
and that is why the T/D
may sound like the ch/jj.
And that’s why you might
hear some native speakers
making a sound that’s more like jj
than dd in the DR consonant blend.
Drive, dry, draw.
And also, a sound that’s more like
ch rather than T in the TR cluster.
Try, trial, trip.
I do want to note that though these
may be the sounds that come out,
they are not the sounds that a native
speaker has in mind when they’re speaking.
Let’s look at a related question.
I recently got an email from someone
asking about the STR consonant cluster.
She says she sometimes hears
the T sounding like a D.
Let’s look at why that might be.
The sound that comes after the
T is R, and that is voiced.
T and D take the same mouth position,
but D is voiced, and T is unvoiced.
So in other words, tt, tt, only
air is coming through for the T,
whereas dd, dd, same mouth movement,
but this time, dd, dd, the
vocal cords are making noise.
Tt, dd.
So, in the consonant cluster STR,
what this person is hearing,
is the native speaker is beginning
the voice, uh, for the R,
before he or she has
finished the T sound.
This would naturally happen as someone
was speaking quickly through a phrase.
String, string, I’m
thinking about a T there.
Sdring, sdring, there
I’m thinking about a D.
They really sound the same.
So this is why you may hear a D
sound in the STR consonant cluster.
String, tt, string,
sdring, dd, sdring.
That’s it, and thanks so much
for using Rachel’s English.