Re: USAGE: Glottal stop for /t/ (was Re: 2nd person pronoun for god)

> Jake Jotted;
> I lived for a while in Brooklyn NY, and I've recently wondered about that.
> Who was the first to say ['bV,?Er] for /bVtEr/ (or is it [bV?@r] and
> /bVt@r/ ). Come to think of it, in Brooklyn they'd probably say ['bV,?@] . I
> think it's not aspirated when I hear it here. Do other people's dialects
> also have ? as cophonemic with t?
Barbara Babbles;
In the UK the most notable dialects that use the glottal stop
(unaspirated) as a replacement for medial and final 't's are Scots
(particularly Glaswegian) London, and Thames Valley.

Except for Thames Valley (which is a fairly recent dialect) Wells'
"Accents of English" covers glottal stop using dialects reasonably well
IIRCC. Thames Valley is described in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
English Language. The interesting thing (to me) is that in all UK
dialects with the exception of Thames Valley the use of the glottal stop
is associated with the working class and low education levels. Thames
Valley however is an upper class accent (the younger Royal Princes speak
it) and in it the glottal stop is only used to replace t-final when the
vowel before it is a back vowel. Thames Valley is emerging as the
relacement for the now dying RP dialect but retains the U/Non-U
differences (these are also described in the Cambridge Encyclopedia).

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