Assimilation

Do you native speaker speak this way?

/ t / changes to / p / before / m / / b / or / p /
basket maker [b{skp meIk@r]
mixed bag [mIksp b{g]
pot plant [pQp pl{nt]

/ d / changes to / b / before / m / / b / or / p /
bad pain [b{b peIn]
good morning [gUb mOrnIN]
blood bank [blVb b{Nk]

/ n / changes to / m / before / m / / b / or / p /
action planning [{kSm pl{nIN]
iron man [aI@rm m{n]
brown bear [braUm bE@r]

Perhaps "mixed bag" sometimes becomes "mixt bag". Sometimes the consonant might disappear or almost disappear in some of these cases in rapid or casual speech ("guh morning" or g'morning", for example). I don't think "n" becomes "m" before "b" or "p", as in your examples.

For me:

basket maker: t becomes glottal stop
mixed bag: -ed is chopped off unless careful
pot plant: t becomes glottal stop

bad pain: d remains d
good morning: sometimes d is spoken, sometimes chopped off if not careful
blood bank: d remains d

action planning: n remains n
iron man: n remains n
brown bear: the diphthong becomes nasalized if said quickly, otherwise the n remains n

Owww my god! I've gotten these examples from a site confused, this examples is wrong! In any way, thanks upstater.

thanks for explanation Entbark

I'm interested in this.

<<Do you native speaker speak this way?>>

Not Americans, it seems, but some (or most?) Brits seem to have those features, even though they are probably not consistent (that is, a speaker sounds that way and ten seconds later he doesn't anymore).

Those features you have listed are mentioned in many accent reduction courses for British English. The only way I can understand them is that that happens because of a kind of laziness of the tongue (so they might be extremely common in fast, colloquial speech). In practice, the point is you can avoid raising your tongue for certain sounds, like T, D, N.

T --> Glottal stop --> It's like you have a P before bilabial consonants.
D --> Tongue not raised --> No plosive --> It sounds like a B before bilabial cons.
N --> Tongue not raised --> Still nasal --> You get an M before bilabial cons.

I find it difficult to get used to that though... One that comes naturally to me is T --> P, because it's natural once you use glottal stops and you don't raise the tongue.
N --> M comes naturally as well, but D --> B doesn't, because I would tend to change it to P most of the times. Anyway, it's just a matter of practice, I guess (and I studied American pronunciation, so I never considered that).

I have these features for /d/ and /n/, but largely not for /t/, and I am from the US myself...

I forgot about you, Travis. You have a lot of interesting features in your dialect :D

Maybe you don't have it for final /t/ because you don't pronounce them as pure glottal stops (not raising the tongue), as many Brits do.

Anyway, I have some questions for you.
Did what I wrote sound reasonable? I mean, they come from not raising your tongue for certain sounds at the end of words?
You have a couple of those features in your dialect, ok, but do you think there are many other American dialects that have them? How widespread would you say that is in the US?

I'd be glad if the same questions were asked by a Brit too. Not raising your tongue? How widespread are those features in the UK?

>>I forgot about you, Travis. You have a lot of interesting features in your dialect :D

Maybe you don't have it for final /t/ because you don't pronounce them as pure glottal stops (not raising the tongue), as many Brits do.<<

I in such positions pronounce postvocalic coda /t/ as pure glottal stops in normal speech, but such is by no means universal in my dialect; many people pronounce postvocalic coda /t/ as [ʔt] rather than [ʔ].

It seems to be a more a matter of fortis obstruents such as /t/ being better preserved than other consonants; they generally do not assimilate other consonants other than /t/ readily assimilating to a preceding /s/, or for some, to a following /s/ as well. On the other hand, more sonorant non-sibilant coronals in my dialect are not very well-preserved as a whole, with /d/ and /n/ generally assimilating to any consonant, obstruent or sonorant, which follows them.

>>Anyway, I have some questions for you.
Did what I wrote sound reasonable? I mean, they come from not raising your tongue for certain sounds at the end of words?<<

It seems to be just that more sonorant non-sibilant coronals in my dialect are not very well-preserved as a whole, with /d/ and /n/ generally assimilating to any consonant, obstruent or sonorant, which follows them. Intervocalically, they tend to be very readily elided as well, which /t/ tends strongly towards as well.

But yes, my dialect seems to just not like non-sibilant coronals, but rather seems to avoid pronouncing them when it can in more informal speech, and much better preserves other consonants, especially dorsal ones (and note that /l/ and /r/ in the dialect here are normally pronounced velarly and uvularly, actually).

>>You have a couple of those features in your dialect, ok, but do you think there are many other American dialects that have them? How widespread would you say that is in the US?<<

I would say that it is probably very common in the Inland North area, considering that I am quite used to such and most of the English-speakers I come into contact with have some degree of Inland North-type features, but I think it is less common outside the Inland North region; I rarely hear people in media content, for instance, who really have such features aside from the commonplace realizing of /sts/ or, to a lesser degree, /st/ as if they were /ss/ and of /dn/ and /dən/ and /dɪn/ as if they were /nn/ in more common forms.

Wait - /t/ will assimilate to following plosives, it seems here, but generally does not assimilate to following sonorants, unlike /d/, which will readily assimilate to things like /n/, /l/, and /w/.

Are there actually people that pronounce "bank" with [{] (the ash vowel)? I've heard some people from down south that used [{] in "bag", but I've never heard anyone pronounce "bank" as [b{Nk]. Does that mean that you pronounce "thank" as [T{Nk]?

The classical forms of "bank" and "bag" in conservative General American are /ˈbæŋk/ and /ˈbæg/ respectively, actually. It just happens that in very many North American English dialects /æŋ/ has become /eɪ̯ŋ/ or equivalent (such as [ẽ(ː)ŋ] here, here being Milwaukee). Likewise, there has been a shift in some dialects in some areas such as the West Coast and parts of the Upper Midwest of /æg/ to /eɪ̯g/ or equivalent (such as [eːg]~[eːg̥] for some individuals here), but this is actually far less common than the other shift within NAE.

And as for "thank", yes, this applies to that as well; in conservative GA that is /ˈθæŋk/ not /ˈθeɪ̯ŋk/.

I liked the explanations very much, and these cases?

/θ/ changes to / s / before / s /
eg.: bath salts, earth science, bath seat, fifth set, birth certificate

/ z / changes to /ʒ/ before /ʃ/ or / j / followed by a rounded vowel sound
eg.: cheese shop, where's yours?, rose show, these sheep

/ s / changes to /ʃ/ before / j / followed by a rounded vowel sound
eg.: nice yacht

<</θ/ changes to / s / before / s /
eg.: bath salts, earth science, bath seat, fifth set, birth certificate>>

I don't do that one; it sounds unnatural to me.

<</ z / changes to /ʒ/ before /ʃ/ or / j / followed by a rounded vowel sound
eg.: cheese shop, where's yours?, rose show, these sheep>>

It's natural to do that before /ʒ/, although I think it's less common before /j/.

<</ s / changes to /ʃ/ before / j / followed by a rounded vowel sound
eg.: nice yacht>>

That might occur to some extent, but I don't think it's as common.

What is your dialect Lazar?
I guess that British tend to use this assimilation, probably RP:
/θ/ changes to / s / before / s /