Study the AT reduction. There are many reductions in conversational American English. It’s important to know what they are to improve listening comprehension, but also to use the reductions in speech yourself. They are a key part to sounding natural.
I love reductions.As you probably know, there are lots of words in
American English that will sound different in the context of a sentence then they do on their own. AT is one of these words. On its own, it has the AA as in BAT vowel and the true T. At, at. But in a sentence,, it will often reduce to the schwa vowel. The final T will either be a stop T or a flap T depending on the next sound. If the next sound is a consonant, then it will be a stop T. If the next sound is a vowel or a diphthong, then it will be a flap T. Let’s take a look at some sentence fragments. First, at my, at my. The word after the ‘at’ , begins with the M consonant. So the T here is a stop T. At, at, at, at, at my, at my. At a, at a. The sound after the word ‘at’ here is the schwa sound, a vowel. So the ending T will be a flap T. At a, at a, at a. Now let’s look at some full sentences. I’ll be at school. At, at, the word after the word ‘at’ here is ‘school’, beginning with a consonant,, so the T will be a stop T. At school, at school. I’ll be at school.
Also, are you noticing how fast the word is? As a function word, as a reduced word, it’s very fast: at, at, at. This provides nice rhythmic contrast in the sentence to the stressed syllables. For example, at school, at school, at school. They’re both one syllable, but the word ‘at’, much quicker than the word ‘school’. At school.
I’ll be at her house. The next word, after the word at, is the word ‘her’. But I’m dropping the H to reduce that word, so the next sound is actually the schwa sound. That means the T will be a flap T.At her, at her, at her, I’ll be at her house, I’ll be at her house.
I got it at the corner store. At the, at the. So the word after the word ‘at’ begins with a consonant, therefore the T is a stop T. At the, at the. I got it at the corner store. rhythmic contrast in the sentence to the stressed syllables. At Anna’s, at Anna’s. The next word begins with a vowel sound, so the T is a flap T. At Anna’s. I’m going to be at Anna’s until 6. I’m busy at the moment. At the, at the Again, the next word, ‘the’, begins with a consonant, so it’s a stop T. At the, at the, I’m busy at the moment.
I hope you’ll notice when native speakers do this and start doing it yourself. Integrating the reduced ‘at’ into your speech will help smooth out the line, and also add some nice rhythmic contrast to the longer, stressed syllables in a sentence. That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.
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