
Now, don’t get me wrong—I love the United States. It’s a great place to live and there are
really great people here. I guess we probably have accents here to the ears of
outsiders, but it’s hard for me to pick that up sometimes (unless it’s the
obvious Southern drawl) or appreciate because I’ve grown up hearing American accents all my life, so now they
just don’t sound as good as some of the other accents in the world.
However, there is one part of my speech
(accent, if you will. I don’t think I have one, but I guess I kind of do) that
I really like, and that is the Utah t
drop. I don’t know if it has an official name, but oh well. Basically, this is
when Utahns drop the t in words. The
linguistic name for this is called a glottal stop which, according to the
Internet, is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. Words like mountain, button, and Layton might sound a little different to
people who are not from Utah. Other people across the country do this as well,
but Utah gets a lot of attention for it.
Here at BYU, I’ve heard people talk about this
part of the Utah accent and I’ve had classes where we’ve talked about it. When
my sister was here, she convinced a bunch of non-Utahns that Utah children are
taught the silent t rule: if a t comes between a consonant and a vowel,
it is silent. People actually believed her! I guess having just a Utah accent
can be fun too. Click here to read more about the funny way Utahns talk.