Hi everyone and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy, and this is our 66th episode.

After last week's glottal stop episode, I wanted to continue to talk about the glottal stop a little bit more,

especially since it leads right into two other pronunciation issues that are interesting and helpful to learn about,

syllabic ends and nasal plosions. I know, that is two new vocabulary words at once,

but I'll explain both of them. I really wouldn't have thought about doing this if a forum

user named Peggy hadn't asked a question she titled, T-vowel, consonant sound.

She asked an impressive advance-to-learner question.

Here's what Peggy said.

I'm aware that the word button is pronounced button.

So, when we have a vowel between a T and another consonant, this vowel is eliminated.

Does the same rule apply to irregular verbs like hidden, bitten, gotten, given, driven?

I think that given and driven are pronounced driven and given accordingly, right?

Peggy was on to something important right there.

She noticed that there is no vowel sound between the T sound and the N sound in the words button, hidden, bitten, gotten. However,

there is a vowel sound in the words given and driven. What Peggy was hearing in the first set of words

was a syllabic N. It's called a syllabic

N because there is no vowel sound in that short, unstressed syllable, just an N sound.

I've said before that every syllable needs a vowel sound.

Well, there are three consonants that cause exceptions, the N sound, L sound, and M sound.

Actually, the linguists don't agree about the M sound.

Today I'm only going to talk about the N sound as a syllabic consonant.

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