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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 75th episode.

Lately, the forums have had a lot of questions that were originally about sound production of certain words, but the answers

were directly related to sentence stress and specifically function words and content words.

We learned that the word of can have the V sound dropped and that the word for spelled F-O-R can have an altered R-controlled vowel depending on if the word for, spelled F-O-R, can have an altered R-controlled vowel, depending on if the word is

being stressed in a sentence. People often have a greater preference to learn about sound

production than sentence stress and intonation patterns. I hope these recent podcasts are helping

you understand how the concepts of sound and

stress are related and how they rely on one another. Let me warn any new listeners to the podcast

that today's topic is an advanced lesson, and I would highly recommend that you listen to

episodes 73 and 74 before trying to fully

comprehend this one. Now let's get started. Today's episode is about the pronunciation of the words

can, C-A-N, and can't, C-A-N-A-N-A-A-P-T, and how to correctly hear and comprehend what a native speaker has said.

I want you all to ask yourself, right now, if you use the word can't, C-A-N-A-A-N-A-Postrophe T, or if you prefer to say cannot, and not use the contraction

at all. I will bet more of you use the word cannot and avoid can't in your spoken English.

And I'll bet that you do this because people kept misunderstanding you

when you said the word can't. So you stopped saying it. The reason can't is so difficult is not

intuitive. The only difference we see in the spelling of the word is the addition of the apostrophe and T.

So it is natural to think the only difference in pronunciation is the T sound.

This is absolutely not true.

In spoken English, there is a difference in sentence stress and vowel quality in sentences that use the words can or can't.

To make it more difficult, the T sound of the word can't is quite difficult to hear when linked to another word.

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