Sounds disappear

Often sounds disappear, usually the aspirated sounds, /h/ and /t/.


The /h/ and the /t/ are not pronounced. Often, especially in informal English the sentence will sound like:

If students don't know that sounds disappear they won't understand what they are listening to. How can they? We teach our students strict rules of grammar and so they naturally assume that pronunication is the same. It's not!

"Tell her" sounds like "Tell er". This is especially true in casual speech.

If you are teaching listening, you need to teach this.Top-Up Listening does.

Teach your students how English works and how aspirated sounds disappear. back