Did you know that there are at least five possible ways to pronounce the letter T in English? In this video, we'll focus on one of these variations. You'll learn all about the held T in English, what it is, and when to use it. Before talking about the held T, I'd like to review the characteristics of the regular T sound. Remember, I'm talking about American English here. Other dialects of English can be different. By the way, have you subscribed to my channel yet? And don't forget to click on the bell icon for notifications when new videos are posted. Also, help me out by liking this video and sharing it with your friends. Now back to this lesson. If I asked you to pronounce the T sound, you'd probably place the tip of your tongue behind your upper front teeth. And then bring it down quickly and release the air with a puff. This is what most people think of when talking about the T. This is the T we use at the beginning of words, like teacher or table. What's special and very noticeable about this T is the puff of air you hear. Take a look at how this paper moves as I say the T sound. This puff of air is called aspiration. So we say a beginning T is aspirated. By the way, in many languages you do not aspirate the beginning T like we do in English. So this may be something you need to work on. Take a moment to think about it. Do you aspirate beginning T's in your language? When you say a word beginning with the T, do you hear that puff of air? Leave me a comment letting me know if your language does or does not aspirate the beginning T. But let's get back to the held T sound now. When a T comes at the end of a word, we do not release the air. Here are some examples. Hat. Great. Did you notice that there was no aspiration with those ending T's? Hat. Great. Your tongue moves to the T position with your tip just behind your upper front T's. And it stays there. Hat. Great. It does not move away quickly nor is there the puff of air like there is with the beginning T. Let's compare time versus weight. Where did you hear the aspiration and where did you not hear it? Time. Time. Weight. You should have heard the aspiration on time. Do you hear that sound? And you should not hear any aspiration on weight. Weight. It almost seems like the T disappears when it's at the end of the word. Let's take two more words. Talk. Eat. Talk. Eat. Let's put some of these held T words into sentences. I like your hat. I like your hat. That's great. That's great. What would you like to eat? What would you like to eat? Now another time you hold the T is when there's a consonant sound after the T. Now if you remember, consonants are sounds like B, D, F, G, M, N, S and there are many, many more. Here are some examples. Absolutely. Notice how I held that T because it comes before the L sound. Absolutely. Outside. Network. And now a few sentences. Let's go. Where were you last night? Notice on that last one, both last and night have a held T. Want to hear more T variations? Check out my other videos on T pronunciation. Do you have questions about this video? I'm happy to answer them. Just leave them in the comments section below. Thanks for watching.