Generally a ‘normal’ <t> sound is used, produced when the tip of the tongue makes solid contact with the roof of the mouth. Although one frequently also uses a tapped ‘t’ – a sound produced by flicking (tapping) the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth – thus making only very brief and rapid contact. This can occur when <t> appears between vowels or before <l> and has the effect of producing a consonant that sounds a little closer to a <d> sound (e.g. little, bottles and whatever and a lot of friends; my place at Oxford; total freedom; get out of bed; get into tune; get on the plane; sort of; quite a lot of people and a lot of places. This tapped ‘t’ is a traditional feature of a number of English accents, including RP, and is a very frequent feature in US English.
Another type of <t>;
Occasionally T-glottaling can be heard – substituting a glottal stop for a <t> sound between vowels or at the end of a word (e.g. got a summer free; go and see what happens; but I actually bought a single ticket; worked in the pub at night and then again on the weekend; I’ve also quite often travelled with one or two other people; you actually start anticpating each other’s moods quite a lot and forming quite a strong bond; I don’t even know what that expression means; you can get a discounted flight and but I don’t think that means it’s a global village). T-glottaling is an age-specific feature, rather than characteristic of a particular accent, and can be heard among younger speakers the length and breadth of the country. Intriguingly it causes disapproval in some circles, but is a distinctively British innovation. It is not, for instance, a feature of any US accent and thus one of many examples that British English and American English, in terms of pronunciation at least, are diverging rather than converging.
