Is it true that in America people pronounce the double t as d?
- Bottle as [bodl]?
- Hotter as [hoder] with a short er?
- Better as [beder] with a short er?
american-englishpronunciation
Is it true that in America people pronounce the double t as d?
Personally, I* pronounce this /had had/, with equal and nonzero amounts of stress on both words (assuming I'm not trying to inject emphasis via inflection). There's a stop between them, as two consecutive stressed syllables often don't flow well in English.
So even natives would have made a less hard pronunciation skill, I think.
I don't think this follows. You find /a/ difficult to produce because it's not a sound in your native language, which is perfectly reasonable. But native English speakers don't have this problem; /a/ is a common sound. There is the contracted form of had which makes it simpler to say and sees more use in spoken colloquial English, and while this does eliminate pronunciation of a strong vowel (reduction to a schwa has the same effect but to a lesser degree), I don't think the contraction was born from a desire to avoid saying /had had/.
Consider this sentence which has many consecutive /a/ syllables all bearing the same stress level:
He has had bad, sad anteaters.
A native speaker might have trouble saying this quickly and repeatedly (i.e. it may be a serviceable tongue twister), but in normal speech this wouldn't present any difficulties. I wonder if you're trying to speak too quickly; try saying the above slowly and with a clean stop between each word. That will give you time to form the repeated /a/, hopefully making it less difficult, and also practice saying it (which, as we say in English, makes perfect).
All that said, I don't think it's terribly uncommon (though I also think it's neither usual nor technically correct) to soften either one (but not both, that's definitely wrong) /had/ to /həd/. Use of the schwa and unstressed syllables generally go hand in hand and are extremely common in English. Even when the vowel is properly spoken as a different sound, if we're de-stressing the syllable for some reason, it may well be reduced to a schwa. Contextual emphasis, accent and the fact that stress is somewhat malleable account for this. I'm afraid I can't give you a recommendation on which had is the better candidate for schwa replacement, though.
At the end of the day, if you end up saying had had with a schwa because it's a lot easier for you to say, people will still (most likely) understand you. Better to pronounce something marginally imperfectly than struggle to get it out. In terms of clarity of your communication, it would be best to use the contraction to avoid the double /a/. But I've taken the heart of your question to be about the actual pronunciation, rather than the easiest way to get had had across in speech.
* Information about my accent: I grew up natively speaking American midwestern English. However, years working with (often subpar) voice recognition software and being in British English speaking places have muddled it considerably. There are words I noticeably pronounce "wrong" (even if my accent otherwise fits) among people from both my place of birth and current home. However, I'm reliably informed that my accent is usually still readily identifiable as American (though not as belonging to a particular region).
Some speakers will actually sound "you" more like "ya" when speaking quickly
Hey, whaddaya want? Can't you see I'm busy?
So I told him, ya got the wrong guy officer. I was tending to my sick grandmother last night and couldn't have been robbing some store.
This is dialect and probably shouldn't be imitated too closely (unless you want to sound like you're from New York / New Jersey), but otherwise you are correct and when "you" is part of a phrase the vowel is normally short, and often combined with the following word
I can't talk to y'now. I'm late for a date.
Pronouncing "you" with a "j" sound is, again, dialect, common among people who also speak Spanish, where the "y" sound is pronounced like the English "j". Again, it's not something you should imitate unless you are trying to sound like someone who speaks that dialect.
There is an in-between sound that is more like "choo", particularly when "you" comes after a word that ends in "t", like "what".
Whatchoo want? Can't you see I'm busy?
Most speakers use this pronunciation to one degree or another, unless they are intentionally careful with their diction.
Best Answer
This is known as flapping (or tapping), and it is done in some words that have double t, but not all of them. It's also done in some words that only have a single t (like water and beautiful), and between some words, (like "what a").
The rule, according to Wiktionary, is:
Wikipedia clarifies that last point:
In IPA, /d/ or /ɾ/ may be used, depending on the word:
Does this make some words (with d vs. t) sound the same? Yes, but not always. For me (a native AmE speaker), latter and ladder sound exactly the same, while there seems to be a big difference between the words writer and rider (which have identical IPA: /ˈraɪdər/). The i in rider is slightly longer, as this blog says:
(There's an interesting story behind the Toyota vs. toy Yoda example, BTW.)
This may be a difference between articulation and perception (that is, you know you're saying it differently, but nobody hears a difference). Research indicates that while the one vowel is "slightly longer", it may not be enough for anyone to distinguish between the two forms:
Resources
It's really easy to find resources once you know what it's called. Here are some I found: