Friday 2 October 2015

Word-medial glottal stop

Glottal stops do not only occur at the beginning of words which otherwise start with a vowel, e.g. almond, enter, idea, but may also be heard word-medially before a syllable with an initial vowel. Inserting glottal stops word-medially is by no means unusual. Here's an example taken from a speech Tony Blair gave in 1996 in Blackpool at the Labour Party conference. He said:
Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education and education.
Listen to the way he pronounces priorities.


3 comments:

  1. It isn't uncommon, especially in AmE, but overdo it and you'll out yourself as a German. An example is Ludwig Siegele, the Economist's tech correspondent, who speaks an otherwise very convincing AmE.

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