in UK

[suprunp]

I don't really have McDonald's often, but I feel like it's going to taste different here than it is in UK.
(Trying mcdonalds in NEW YORK for the first time!!!; YouTube)

Would you be so kind as to tell me whether I heard it correctly and if so, why did she leave out 'the' before 'UK'?

Thanks.

 

[GoesStation]

She says in th'UK.

 

[suprunp]

in th'UK.

Yet again, may I ask you whether you can actually hear it?

Thanks.

 

[GoesStation]

Yet again, may I ask you whether you can actually hear it?

Yes. That's why I wrote post #2. Sorry about the typo in my response, which may have confused you.

 

[Tdol]

It is nearly inaudible, but it is there.

 

[suprunp]

Yes. That's why I wrote post #2.

The reason I asked is because sometimes the response is 'No, not really. I just know that they say it.' (in which case I can relax and stop winding it back and listening to it over and over again)

 

[GoesStation]

She says the quickly but it's quite distinct to me. If you want to hear some barely-there the's, try listening to some Yorkshire English speakers. They often reduce it to t', realized as a stop or even a lengthening of the following consonant when it's a t.

 

[emsr2d2]

Note that she made a grammatical error (as we often do in speech). It should be "... it's going to taste different here from how it does in the UK".

 

[GoesStation]

That's five minutes I'll never get back. Wow.

I confess that I actually bought a hamburger and fries at a MacDonald's while visiting Israel. It was Friday, the first day of the weekend there. Not feeling well in the afternoon, I decided to watch a movie at the theater in the mall attached to my hotel. By the time the film ended it was shabbat (Saturday, the sabbath - but the day begins at sundown, so it was Friday evening by my reckoning). All the stands in the mall's food court were closed except for MacDonald's. I later learned that they rotate, and it was just my bad luck that that was the only choice.

Although the hamburger was far better than what you get at MacD's here in the States, I was not inspired to make a YouTube video to commemorate the moment.

 

[jutfrank]

Listen to the video on 0.25 speed and you'll be able to pick up the the.

 

[suprunp]

She says the quickly but it's quite distinct to me. If you want to hear some barely-there the's, try listening to some Yorkshire English speakers. They often reduce it to t', realized as a stop or even a lengthening of the following consonant when it's a t.

I've just been watching one video and this is what one gentleman had to say there. Maybe it's not a matter of reducing it, maybe they just don't use it after all?

And when I was growing up, I grew up in Yorkshire. And, you know, looking at 'the English Language is Going to the Dogs' I wouldn't find anybody in the street who wouldn't say 'the English language is going to dogs'. There wouldn't be 'the'.
(Between You and I the English Language is Going to the Dogs; YoutTube)

 

[jutfrank]

As GoesStation says, the the is there, but is realised as a stop. The speaker in your video obviously means that this stop cannot be considered as a the.

The point is that something is there, however reduced, which has the function of the.

 

[GoesStation]

The Yorkshireman produces a long stop between "going to" and "dogs". That's his way of pronouncing the definite article. If he had omitted the article, he would have said "going to dogs" rather than "going to' ... dogs". His to sounds almost like ​toot.

 

[suprunp]

The Yorkshireman produces a long stop between "going to" and "dogs". That's his way of pronouncing the definite article. If he had omitted the article, he would have said "going to dogs" rather than "going to' ... dogs". His to sounds almost like ​toot.

I took his pause as a way of emphasizing his point - the definite article would be left out ('there wouldn't be 'the'') by anyone he'd meet in the street. I doubt people produce long stops there as a substitute for the definite article (i.e. would say it the way the Yorkshireman did). This, of course, doesn't necessarily mean they don't produce rather short stops

 

[GoesStation]

I took his pause as a way of emphasizing his point - the definite article would be left out ('there wouldn't be 'the'') by anyone he'd meet in the street. I doubt people produce long stops there as a substitute for the definite article (i.e. would say it the way the Yorkshireman did).

Watch some British TV series set in Yorkshire and you'll soon think otherwise. He prolonged the article a bit to emphasize it, but that's one extreme of the way it's pronounced up there. Yorkshire speakers don't omit their definite articles, they just pronounce them differently.