How do you pronounce "Cotton", "Button", "Britain", "Manhattan"...

Hi All,

When native speakers say the following words, in the word spelling they are "ton", "tan" "tain", sometimes I hear people would drop the sound of "o", "a", "ai", then they will pronounce "tn" sound only...but sometimes I hear people would say them without dropping the sound I mention the above....Could you please tell how to pronounce correctly for "Cotton", "Button", "Britain", "Manhattan"...?

WYH

These words are pronounced as it follows:

Cotton ˈkɒt.ən
Button ˈbʌt.ən
Britain ˈbrɪt.ən
Manhattan mænˈhæt.ən

The vowel schwa "ə" can be pronounced or not pronounced sometimes. It depends if we want to stress that sound.
;-)

I would say speakers either say the last syllable with 'schwa' as ac.lepioc said above, or indeed have no vowel at all in the last syllable. /n/, /l/, and sometimes some other sounds, can be syllabic. The difference between /ən/, and syllabic /n/ isn't much, and both are acceptable. /ən/ is standard.

As a side note, all those words I would pronounce with a glottal stop. That is:

Cotton - /'kɒʔ.n/
Button - /ˈbʌʔn/
Britain - /ˈbrɪʔn/
Manhattan - /mənˈhæʔn/

Although, I don't speak standard. Just to show that pronunciation varies.

Redundant thread
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/pr...forgotten.html