Do the Nasal Tap

Have you ever heard an American English speaker pronounce the word “twenty” like “twenny”? You may also hear similar transformations in words like “international” (sounds like "innernational”) and “winter” (sounds like “winner”). What’s going on here and are you saying it incorrectly if you include the /T/ or not?

What’s happening is a reduction called a “nasal tap”. Here’s the rule: When a /T/ comes just after an /N/ and the following syllable is unstressed, delete the /T/ and say the /N/ rapidly, so that you just barely touch your tongue tip to the bony ridge (alveolar ridge) behind your teeth.

As for correctness, this process is entirely optional. You will hear lots of variability within American English speakers, with some choosing to use this sound change and other, who perhaps are speaking more carefully, do not. If you are trying to master English pronunciation to improve your clarity, then don’t worry about this. Learning this sound change will only make you sound more American. If you are studying the American accent specifically, then this is a subtle rule you should learn.

Something to note about this sound change is that it is highly variable. I find that it tends to happen in more common or shorter words, although it is very common in long, common words containing “inter”. I also find that it is less likely to happen in words ending in “nty” if the word is longer or less common. An example is “dainty”. I personally do not use a nasal tap when pronouncing this word, although one certainly could use one in this word. The word “dainty” has a word frequency score of 4347 according to this word frequency data tool. This is a relatively high score compared to “twenty” which has a frequency score of 892. That means “twenty” is more frequently used by speakers than “dainty”. I personally use a nasal tap with “twenty” most of the time unless I am being careful with my enunciation.

Here are some more examples with the nasal tap. This list is not exhaustive and is subject to inter speaker variability.

winter

hunter

center

twenty

county

plenty

county

plenty

international

interconnected

intervention

Written by Sarah Sherer, PhD 3/24/2023