
Originally Posted by
TheNewOne
1) How do you pronounce I'm, I'll, you're, we're, they're? Sometimes I hear that you're is pronounced as your. Instead of [aɪm] I hear [am].
2) I often hear that the word "fantasy" is pronounced as [fænəsɪ], that is without [t].
What other words can be pronounced this way?
1 You're right about /aɪm/. In some variants it comes nearer to [a:m] - often written, in what is called 'eye' dialect', as "Ah'm". 'You're' is mostly /jɔ:/ (as is 'your'), but some variants pronounce the first part like a 'you' standing alone; they also (in Scottish English) pronounce the 'r' as [r] (perhaps with a slight trill): [ju:r] (this follows a general tendency in Scotland to preserve vowels followed by r: ['stəʊri], for example (for 'story')). Some variants also have /jʊə/. 'We're' is /wɪə/, and 'they're' is sometimes /ðeə/ and sometimes /ðeɪə/ (depending on how careful the speech is).
When I say 'is' I mean 'that is the version that will be widely understood by most British Eng Speakers, that is pronounced that way by a significant number of them in formal contexts, and that is expected in all
ELT exams'. 'Standard British English' is a theoretical construct, to which most speech approximates - especially in formal contexts - and from which some speech differs wildly. Melvyn Bragg, presenter of
The Adventures of English - credited as the author, but [a heɪ ma dyts] as they say in Scotland

- reports that when he was at school in Yorkshire he would say to his friends [az 'gaŋən jam] when to a teacher he would say 'I'm going home'.)
2 The /t/ is often dropped in less careful speech, more commonly - I think - in Am Eng.
b