This is high on my list of recent rants. We are all starting to sound like Brits–and not the upper crust, Oxford & Cambridge near-royal types either. I blame it on the Beatles. They showed up here and were followed by hordes of others in the same genre–not that I object to the music, for Pete’s sake, but their manner and sound of speech became so ubiquitous that we are trending in the same direction and the same sound, which is to say getting rid of the sound of the letter “T”.
Listen to the folks on TV or radio or any mode of communication heavily dependent on sound/vocal communication. What do you hear? You hear T’s dropping like flies, at the end of words, in the middle of words, any place they might, logically. contribute to understanding of a word. If you hear anything at all, it’s like the letter T has been replaced by an apostrophe (‘), or even a “glottal stop”(Got that, you linguists out there?).
In the middle of a word it’s weird, at the end of a word, it sometimes comes close to changing the word altogether
Examples : “bu’ er” (butter), ”ga’”(got), “spa’” (spot). “vi’amin” (vitamin)–it’s everywhere. Speakers on the radio, speakers on television, public speakers who ought to know be’ er (better). Makes me crazy. Also makes me sometimes a little confused as to what these sloppy speakers are meaning, for goodness’ sake. After a while, especially for long-ish pronouncements, it gets a little (li’l–that one has slurred over into print too) difficult to know what a speaker is meaning to say…or if they are meaning to say anything worth listening to.
The letters “D” and “T”, according to language mavens are known as “dental stops”, in other words, they are involving the teeth and tongue stopping the sound coming out of your mouth; one is “voiced” (D), with an accompanying sound in the throat and one is not (T)–just a burst of air escaping from being trapped behind your teeth by your tongue.
The letter D has, apparently so far, escaped being eliminated (“Do, Lord, OH, Do Lord, OH, Do remember me.”) but we should be vigilant (“vige’ lan’”) so that (tha’) all speech does not become mush all of the time.
Are there any “tongue-twisters” might help us put an end to this disappearance of T’s? “Round and round the rugged rocks, the ragged rascal ran.” won’t help. Nor will “Sister Susie’s sittin’ on a thistle.” How about “Hickory, dickory dock, two mice ran up the clock. The clock struck one, the others escaped with minor injuries.” Nope, not working. Keep an eye out–or an ear, for that matter–for any exercises that (tha’) might combat this scourge upon the English language
Otherwise, we might (“mi’) as well all be speaking Chinese, which we would not understand very well either. More public speaking might be a help but heaven only knows what we might have to listen to, especially since a lot of official speakers in public aren’t worth listening to..
Speak up !
