Do Americans ever use the glottal stop ?

I've heard Avril Lavigne say " wai?ing " with the glottal stop in this song " I'm wid you " . What woz dat ?

She's Canadian ;-)

Yes, Americans use the glottal stop. I've been hearing it a lot here in downtown Chicago (I'm stuck here for the next 18 months. Goddamn job.)

A glottal stop is commonly used in North American English in the phonological context of a [t] followed by a syllabic nasal (such as in "kitten" [ki?n.] or "gotten" [ga?.n]). In the context of a vowel plus [-nt] in fast speech many people also nasalize [~] the preceding vowel, and the [t] becomes a glottal stop [?]. So, for example, in normal speech I often say [k@~?] instead of [k@nt] for "can't".

The glottal stop shows up in other places, too, and can be an allophone of [t] or nonreleased [t] at the end of a syllable boundary. I'm not familiar with [?] showing up that often in intervocalic positions in NAE, but I just listened to the clip of "I'm with you" where Avril says "waitin'", and the second part of the word seems like it's almost a syllabic nasal, so that probably explains the [?]...you could transcribe what she says as [wei?.n].

However I've learned that songs often aren't the best examples of how people really speak anyway, because singers either change pronunciations to fit the right number of syllables in (or rhyme with a previous word) or change pronunciations for purely stylistic purposes.

Avril trys to 'Americanize' her accent. It ruins her voice.

"Avril trys to 'Americanize' her accent. It ruins her voice."

Well, then she's a failure at it, because she doesn't sound American to me... The weird pronunciations in her songs always bother me.

Spend some time hanging around the Philadelphia and south Jersey area, you'll hear lots of glottal stops.

[wei?.n] would be a Canadian pronunciation.

I've got a specific example (I should've put this in the last post). About 3 years ago I went with my dad & my brother to visit the battleship USS New Jersey, which is a museum of sorts, at Camden, NJ, right across the river from Philadelphia. Everytime the tour guide said "battleship," the "battle" part came out as [bæ?l].

Interesting! [bæ?.l] would sound pretty different, indeed. I have a professor (who's American) right now who always says [se?l..rz] for "settlers", where I say [se4.l..rz], [4] being the alveolar tap.

Yea, I don't understand her at times.

<<Everytime the tour guide said "battleship," the "battle" part came out as [bæ?l].>>

Ah, the good ol' stereotypical Joizey accent. The real chuckles come when you get them to say words with the letter "r" in them, like "started" (stuahded), or words with an open "o" sound, like "coffee" (cuahfee). Maybe get them to say "starship battle"...

By the way, before I get a lot of nasty posts with bad spelling, I'm from New Jersey myself, and I reserve the right to mock my fellow New Jerseyans.

I say BADDLE for BATTLE