American Rhythm Practice: Reducing Prepositions 

Wow, thank you!

Glad you like them!

You are welcome!

you can either say tappt him (or) tap dim, where the t becomes a fast d linking to the i in im- h dropped.

hafda with a fast D- is sufficient. hafta with a T is possible if someone is being very careful. I rarely hear native speakers say the V.

@@SmoothEnglish1 Thank you for your reply. How can I reconcile "hafda" to a statement in this video that is "to=tuh after a voiceless consonant" ?

Sometimes one way, sometimes the other. See the 2 examples: go = word 1 to = word to The O in Go influences to by changing it to d', so the end of word 1 modifies the beginning of word 2. paste = word 1 it = word 2 paste it = pas dit. The beginning of word 2 influenced the end of Word 1 to become a fast D.

@@SmoothEnglish1 Thank you very much for your detailed explanation! What I am trying to do is come up with a rule to guide our real talk. There might be exceptions to such a rule but as long as it holds in most cases it can be counted as a valid rule for practical purposes. For the two examples you provided as above, seems to me there's a common feature. That is vowel will keep unchanged whether it's in word 1 or 2. A more general rule might be that voiced sound(both vowel and consonant) modifies voiceless sound(consonant only). I remember somebody made a statement to the effect that voiced sound is superior to voiceless sound and the former prevails when the two sounds meet

for "the" we don't need to actually stick our tongue out, but the tongue doesn't touch the teeth either. It does come as close as possible to the inside of the teeth without actually touching them. The tongue will be slightly closer to the the teeth for TH than for Z.

Hi! Soft D and flap t are the same sound. so "leader" and "liter" sound the same. The place to put your tongue is the same for both of these words and the same in "out of." You also put your tongue in the same place for a strong D, as in "dog," but for "dog," you use more pressure. For the flap T or soft D, you use minimal pressure, and the tongue moves as quickly as possible. The tongue literally "flaps."

I would connect them. You can stress stared, hold it out and still connect them with a quiet "det." You need to connect all the words in a thought unit, or grammatical chunk If the sentence is long, it could have several thought units. In my opinion "stared at the frightened pedestrian" is one idea that needs to stay together in one chunk. Eventually, I'll make a lesson on this topic.

@@SmoothEnglish1 Yes, please make a lesson on this topic explaining when is better to stress and when is optional. Because I found it hard to connect all of them especially in on long sentence where there are lots of words you can connect. And if you could , more videos about intonation practice please. (e.g we tend to end a word or the sentence with a falling tone, which may sound a bit 'harsh' .) I have been watching your videos and bought a course on 'word stress', I found them very helpful. Thanks!

It applies d' the infinitive as well. It is an option that is commonly heard. You can always say t' in either case.

@@SmoothEnglish1 Thank you for your prompt answer! Some people also make a differentiation between "u" and "ə" in the pronunciation of the "o" in "to", with "u" before a vowel while "ə" before a consonant. Is this really necessary? I noticed that in your video it's always pronounced as "ə".

Since it's so fast, it could be either /u/, /I/ or /ɛ/. You wouldn't notice the difference at that speed. (Short U, Short I or Short E)