'T as D'

'T as D' in contemporary British English:


'What are you going to tell your daughter ?'

Say the above sentence, out loud, or silently. If you're an American, Canadian, Irish, Australian, New Zealander, or South African speaker of English, or basically a speaker from anywhere other than Britain, then you probably pronounced these letters basically the same way:

What are you going to tell your daughter ?

If British, then you likely, but by no means certainly may have pronounced, as one might logically expect, the following the same way:

What are you going to tell your daughter ?

Given that our systems of spelling are based, however loosely, on the pronunciation of the words at the time the spelling was codified (though how we came up with 'ch' I will never understand), presumably the latter is the earlier and more 'original' form. And yet one, that seems to be nearing extinction as the more 'American' pronunciation becomes more and more common throughout Britain with every passing year.

I never used to notice it much, but once I did, I couldn't stop hearing it, seemingly everywhere. When I heard David Cameron (descendant of royalty, and graduate of Eton and Oxford) talking in various speeches about 'the Briddish people', 'Briddish innovation', 'the Briddish economy', and the like, in a way that I could never imagine hearing from the lips of Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher, I suspected that perhaps this was on the advice of some media consultant to make him sound 'less posh.' But I could be wrong. Perhaps this is just the inevitable result of a universal linguistic shift in English pronunciation. The ubiquity of this pronunciation throughout the rest of the English speaking world suggests as much. And yet when did this shift start ? When in Britain, and when in the former colonies ? Was it people of a particular place or class in Britain who took this habit around the world, or a spontaneous shift that took place across the globe, and is only latterly now conquering Britain ? 

There's no certain way to know how English was pronounced prior to the invention of sound recording, for all the speculation about the Elizabethans sounding 'more American' than Britons of the last century, though rhymes are a clue. But the last hundred years say, within living memory ? People would notice wouldn't they ? Perhaps, perhaps not. We don't notice the way our own pronunciations and accents change within our own lifetimes after all. And change they do, for individuals, and for societies as a whole. Watch any British film or documentary from the twenties or thirties or early forties, and compare the relatively high-pitched voices with those of Britons today, and even those of the same individuals still living. Was it just mass-affectation on behalf of everyone within range of a microphone (Thinking of a certain episode of Dad's Army, here) ? And when those mid-word 't's come along, or the elidable 't' at the end of a word (let us, gotta, It is, etc.), how often will it be pronounced in the more 'American' style in that old footage ? I keep an ear out these days whenever I hear such things, but somehow everyone of a certain age seems to clearly enunciate their t's, even today, whereas for many of those born since the sixties or so, it seems to be increasingly rare. It's clearly generational, and seemingly accelerating. But when did it start to change, and why ? Was the shift already under way, and just happens to have picked up since the war ? Or, as seems more likely to me, whether there were already pockets of this pronunciation in Britain or not, was the change not brought about, or at least accelerated, by a) the American presence in Britain during the war, b) the tendency after the war for most British singers to adopt the more easily flowing American pronunciation (t's as d's, yoo's as oos') in their lyrics, and c) the general pervasiveness of non-British English-language media in the United Kingdom post-war, whether it be Hollywood movies or Australian soaps ?

I've seen various suggestions for a regional origin for this pronunciation, including the idea that it originates from the southwest of England, and a Liverpudlian origin is certainly plausible, given the Irish population, but the best I can tell is that London seems to be ground zero for the phenomenon, whether this has something to do with its more cosmopolitan population or not. The 't as d' thing seems far more common in the southeast generally, versus the north. Far more common in London than say Manchester. And the oldest recorded incidences I've noticed personally are the voices of Sam Costa in ITMA & Much Binding in the Marsh, and Kenneth Horne of Much Binding and Beyond our Ken/Round the Horne (though it's the latter two in which I've noticed it for Horne, rather than Much Binding, not to say one way of another it wasn't present then), Londoners both. Of course there's also the possibility of voice coaching, and/or learning 'BBC English' for those who made an intentional career of the stage and/or radio (Costa started out a singer, Horne was more businessman than showman career-wise prior to BoK).

Truth is, I don't know for sure when or how this change started, but it is fascinating to me as it seems to be unfolding in my own lifetime. Another fascinating aspect is that of all the Britons I hear, the one constant I find in this regard, is the constant inconsistency, indicative of the degree to which things are still in flux.  Americans, Australians et al, will rarely ever pronounce their mid-word or elided t's as such, except in the rare cases of exaggerated emphasis.  Post-war Brits on the other hand, will switch back and forth between the two pronunciations of even the same word, in even the same sentence.  I'm not sure I'm aware of any, probably even including myself, who wouldn't at some point switch from 't' to 'd', and I've not come across any Britons who frequently pronounce their t's this way, who won't occasionally enunciate them.  If I ever think I do, all I have to do is look up their bio.: Ah, Pretoria, ah, Adelaide, ah Toronto, ah they were born in Islington but grew up in Calgary or Rhode Island...  (Yes, there are also those who drop almost all their t's routinely, but that's a whole other subject.) Within my lifetime at some point, probably the only Brits who still pronounce their t's will be old fogeys and the more ostentatiously pretentious. And they/we will sound as strange to the younger generations as your 'thirties BBC presenter does to us today.

One other side effect: It'll make it harder for British actors to 'sound American' by simply lowering their pitch and pronouncing all their t's as d's, and their yoo's as oo's. If I hear one more British actor pronounce Houston in a sci-fi. production as Hoo-stuhn, I'll scream. I mean really, it's only one of the most commonly referenced American cities throughout fiction and real-life since, I don't know, the start of the space age ? We're not talking Alberquerque or Poughkeepsie here...


PS, I know there's some dispute about whether the sound I'm referring to here is truly the same as the (initial ?) sound of a 'd'. Sounds exactly the same to me. Seems to involve exactly the same movements of mouth and tongue too. And 'pedal to the metal' ? Rhymes say so much.

PPS, the habit above of course manifests not only in the 't as d' sound but also the dropping of the 't' altogether where necessary, as with 'twenty' as 'twenny.' I'm sure there are many other subtle variants.