Daily Squeeze: [ɪʔwǝz], [ɪwǝz], [z]

In North American English we often don’t pronounce ‘t’ clearly at the end of a word, especially if the next word begins with a consonant. Let’s listen to how a very common phrase like “it was” might sound.

Often the /t/ in “it” will be replaced by a glottal stop.

and it was…
and it was hot…
and it was sweet…
and it was a little off the path…

Sometimes the /t/ will simply disappear, so “it was” sounds like [ɪwǝz].

and it was just…
I think it was…
what it was supposed to look like…
but it was like, yeah…
it was… it was 1984…

In very quick speech, [ɪwǝz] might be reduced even more, to sound like [ɪz] or even just [z].

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