How to Reduce 'THAT' -- AMERICAN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

In this American English pronunciation video, we're going to go over how to pronounce the

在这节美式英语发音视频中，我们将要学习句子中的“that”如何发音。

word THAT in a sentence.

As you probably know, in American English, there are lots of words called function words

你们应该知道，在美式英语中，有许多词被称为功能词

that will be unstressed in a sentence. And some of these will reduce. THAT is one of

这些词在句子中不重读，有一些则要弱读。

that就是这样的词。在一个句子中，元音经常会弱化为弱读音。

those words. In a sentence, the vowel will often reduce to the schwa sound. The final

如果下一个单词的首字母为辅音，则结尾的T为停顿T

T will be a stop T if the next word begins with a consonant, or it will be a flap T if

如果下一个单词的首字母为元音或双元音，则结尾的T为闪音T。

the next word begins with a vowel or diphthong.

The voiced, TH, where the tongue tip comes just through the teeth. Then for the schwa

th发音时，舌尖要伸出，位于上下齿之间。

而对于弱读音，舌尖收回放下，置于下前牙后，舌头放松。

sound, the tongue tip pulls back and comes down, rests just behind the bottom front teeth,

and the tongue is very relaxed. Tha-, tha-. For the T, flap or stop, the tongue tip will

无论是闪音T还是停顿T，舌尖都要抵住上颚，停顿T时要切断空气流动，闪音T则要反弹回来，让空气通过。

go to the roof of the mouth, that, that, and cut off the air flow for the stop T, or bounce

back down, letting the air through for the flap T.

Let's look at some sample sentence fragments. That my, that my. The next word here, my,

让我们来看一些句子片段示例。

“that my ”（循环两次）这里的下一个单词“my”，首字母是辅音，所以“that”结尾的字母T是一个停顿T，“that my”。

begins with a consonant So the T at the end of the word 'that' is a stop: that my.

That I, that I. The next word here, I, has the AI diphthong.

“that I”（循环两次）这里的下一个单词“I”是双元音[ai]，所以“that”结尾的T是闪音T，“that I”（循环两次）。

So, the T at the end of the word 'that' is a flap T. That I, that I. Now, let's look

at some full sentences. The movie that I saw was boring. That I, that I. Again, the AI

现在，我们来看一些完整的句子。The movie that I saw was boring.“that I”（循环两次）因为双元音(ai)，所以T是闪音。That I.The movie that I saw was boring.

diphthong, so the T is a flap. That I. The movie that I saw was boring. We thought that

We thought that we could be there.“that we”（循环两次）单词we首字母是辅音W，所以T是停顿T。

we could be there. That we, that we. So, the word 'we', beginning with the W consonant,

the T is a stop T. That we, that we. We thought that we could be there. I know that you're

“that we”（循环两次）We thought that we could be there.

I know that you're disappointed. “that you're” （循环两次）这里的下一个单词以辅音Y开头，所以T是停顿T。

disappointed. That you're, that you're. So, the next word here begins with the Y consonant,

so the T is a stop T. That, that, that you're. That you're. I know that you're disappointed.

“that”（循环两次）“that you're”（循环两次） I know that you're disappointed.

I read that her team won. “that her”（循环两次）在这里，单词“her”省略了“H”，

I read that her team won. That her, that her. Here, with the word 'her', I'm dropping the

H. So, the sound after the T, is the schwa sound, a vowel. Therefore, it's a flap T.

所以T后面的发音是弱读音。因此，这里是闪音T。“that her”（循环两次）I heard that her team won.

That her, that her, I heard that her team won.

句子中的“that”一直都是这样发音吗？不。有时它会发元音/æ/ 的音。

Will the word 'that' always be pronounced this way in a sentence? No. Sometimes it will

have the AA vowel. For example, if you want to stress the word:

例如，如果你想要强调单词：It was easy. It wasn't that easy.

>> It was easy. >> It wasn't that easy.

Thaa, thaa. There, I'm keeping the AA vowel. Also, in this sentence, the word 'that' is an

Thaa，/æ/ . 这里我保留了元音/æ/ 。这句话中，单词“that”是一个副词，副词通常是实义词，在一个句子中不会弱读。

adverb. And adverbs are generally content words, not going to reduce in a sentence.

但是你会经常听到单词“that”弱读。自己这样练习会使你的演讲更加流利，

But you will often hear the word 'that' reduced. Doing it yourself will help to smooth out your

speech, and will also provide some nice rhythmic contrast to the longer, stressed syllables

也会提供一些很好的节奏，与句子中较长的重读音节形成对比。

in a sentence.

这次的学习就到这里，非常感谢使用Rachel's English。

That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.