Gabe - TS #14

  Masoud and I met at the Starbucks near where he lived. For this session, I went over the ways in which native (North American) speakers can pronounce the letters "t" and "d", as they're not always pronounced with their standard pronunciation. The purpose of this wasn't so much that he could emulate these pronunciations, but understand them when he heard native speakers talking. We've talked before about how North American English speakers tend to pronounce the "t" more like a "ch" in front of "r" (i.e. "tree" frequently sounds more like "chree"), so I reviewed this pronunciation change first. I then pointed out how the "t" sound also tends to be reduced or even silent in certain situations, such as after an "n" or at the end of words (e.g. in the words "can't", "winter", and "internet"). Throughout the lesson, I emphasized that this is how native speakers talk, but it is perfectly correct and understandable to always pronounce the "t" like a "t" in these contexts. Next, I went over cases where this doesn't hold true, such as when the "t" is followed by "-ion" or "-ual." The last thing we went over was the pronunciation of the letter "d" in front of "r", which sounds more like a "j" (i.e. "drum" sounds more like "jrum"). 

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