I am like 99% sure that Americans do what I said in the title, but I wanted ask you anyway. My question is: When a word ends with /rd/ after a vowel and when the next word starts with a vowel, also in the situations when /rd/ is between two vowels in a word, Americans usually make a "flap d" sound which is the exact same sound as
the "flap t" sound, right? I know that the /t/ of /rt/ (like in the word "party") is flapped in those positions I mentioned but I am not 100% percent sure if the same thing happens to the /d/ of /rd/ too.
For example the /d/ sounds in the sentences like "This bird is so beautiful" , "Was that show aired in USA too?", "I never heard of him" etc. are the same exact flap sounds as the /d/ sounds in the sentences like "This part of the game is very hard", "This is sort of crazy", "I never hurt anybody" etc right?(As I said, I know that Americans make a flap in the sentences like "This is sort of crazy" which include "rt", but I am not %100 percent sure if they make a flap sound in the sentences like "This bird is so beautiful" as well which include "rd" instead of "rt".)
Or the /d/ sounds in the words "skateboarding", "ordinary", "herder", "order", "hurdle" etc. are exactly the same as the /d/ sounds in the words like "party", "mortal", "turtle", "quarter" etc. aren't they?(As I said, I know that Americans make a flap in the words like "party", "mortal" etc which include "rt", but I am not %100 sure if they make a flap in the words like "order", "herder" etc. too which include "rd" instead of "rt".)
I am used to making the flap sound instead of the standard "d" sound in those situations(unless the /d/ is the first sound of a stressed syllable) and it mostly sounds natural to me. If I make a standard /d/ sound(like the /d/ sound in the word "day") in the words and sentences I gave("order", "skateboarding", "This bird is so beautiful" etc), I don't sound like an American native English speaker, right?
Best Answer
The flap (which is written as "ɾ" in the IPA) is an allophone of both "d" and "t" in North America, among other places. An allophone is one of the continuum of sounds that we perceive as a certain "ideal" phoneme, a deviation from this ideal. There will be different extents of deviation depending on the speed with which one is talking, regional differences (e. g. Californians would be more guilty of flapping than someone from New York or Kansas), formality of speech, etc.
I, for example, am hearing a distinct "d" in "according" in this video (0:38) and, e. g. in "heard and" in this video (3:39)
So, there will certainly be more flapping in AmE generally compared to RP in BrE, but it's not like you'll suddenly and definitely be outed as a foreigner as soon as you sound one good "d" in these positions.