The Stop T đŸ“č

Ok, so last but not least we have the stop T. This is where the T sound almost disappears completely. Which is crazy, I know. I didn’t make the rules so don’t kill the messenger. 

Oh, that is also a good saying in English, “Don’t kill the messenger.” That means don’t get mad at the person delivering bad news. Anyways, that has nothing to do with the stop T. 

So, one of the most common examples of when we see this disappearing T is when we have a T after an N.

So for example in the words:

Internet. No one says, “Oh, hey what are you doing?”

"Oh, I am just browsing the Internet.”

We say Internet. (innernet) There is really no “T” sound there.

We also have examples of this tendency in words like international, center.

So for example, I studied at the International Relations in college, so I could say, yes, “I studied at the center for International Relations.” A lot of stop T’s in that phrase.

And we see this a lot a lot of words like, um...entertain. You see the first T is silent, and the last T is a true t. Entertain. 

The stop T also occurs a lot when we have a consonant sound and then a T and then another consonant. So this almost always happens in adverbs. So verbs that end in ly. 

For example, exactly, perfectly, directly, abstractly. 

You see that everything in mouth is in the perfect position to make a T sound, and then we just do not really produce it. So when I say, exactly. I almost never say, exactly. I say exactly. Ok? 

Finally, you can see this same tendency, the stop T when we have a t in between 2 consonants in some nouns and more common words, not just adverbs. 

For example:

  • Partly 
  • Partner
  • Apartment 
  • Department 
  • Compartment 
  • Basketball. 
  • Racketball. 
  • Certain
  • Fitness
  • Outside
  • Outdoors 
  • At last

Ok, so I know the stop T is a little bit complicated, but after some good practice, I’m sure that you will be confident with the Stop T, so let’s take a look at some examples in words and phrases.