I'm not a native speaker of English, and I was recently puzzled with the question, "How can Americans put their tongue in z (is) position and then change to th (there) in such short time?"
May you explain to me how it is possible?
Learn English – How to pronounce “is there” in fast speech
american-englishpronunciation
Best Answer
Actually, it's not the /th/ that usually gets dropped. It's the /i/. First, in contractions:
And secondly, at the beginning of a sentence the /i/ is often dropped, so that the sentence actually starts on a /z/ sound:
The /z/ sound is very brief and after experimenting with this for a while, it sometimes sounds like /sz/ (szthere). You start with the tongue almost stopping the breath at the front of the palate (the place where you would start a /t/ or /th/ sound, let some air through which begins a sibilance, add voicing which turns it into a /z/ for a few milliseconds, then slide the tongue up behind the teeth very rapidly to form the vocalized /th/.
In cases where the first syllable is not dropped, you do the process mentioned above except starting with a full vocalized vowel /i/, then moving the tongue to create the /z/ and so on. It's not hard for native speakers.