Whatymizit? – Why spoken English can be hard to understand

Learn British English idioms, phrases, expressions and vocabulary, and improve your British English pronunciation and English accent.
You’re probably thinking this is a strange title for a video English lesson.
I just wanted to demonstrate how you will actually hear the question, “What time is it?” when asked by a native British English speaker.
The /t/ sound in the word what disappears in what we call the glottal stop.
If it doesn’t disappear, we have an unnatural pause between what and time.
As the question is a speech unit, we can’t have unnatural pauses between the words.
Try saying what with a /t/ followed by time, which begins with a /t/ sound, and you will hear what I mean.
What time is it?
I spoke yesterday about linking consonants, and we have two of them here.
Can you hear the two linking consonant sounds?
What time is it?
There is one between the /m/ at the end of time and the /ɪ/ in is.
time is
That’s right! Time doesn’t end with a vowel sound, even though it ends with a vowel letter.
I suppose time ends when the universe runs out of energy, but I digress.
Back to linking consonants.
The second linking consonant is between the / z / in is, which is actually pronounced as /z/ because it comes after a vowel, and the /ɪ/ in it.
is it
Even if I speak unnaturally slowly, but don’t leave unnatural gaps, you can hear the linking consonants clearly.
time is it?
You hear something like tymizit.
Your brain is expecting to hear what time is it / wɒt ˈtaɪm ɪz ɪt /, because this is how many students pronounce it.
They pronounce it like this often because their teachers have drilled it like this.
what time is it / wɒt ˈtaɪm ɪz ɪt /
But, as I say, this is not the way native speakers speak.
When a native speaker speaks, you will hear, / wɒtaɪmɪzɪt /, and if you don’t know about linking features such as linking consonants, you’re going to be confused.
Notice the stress pattern in the question “what time is it” / wɒtaɪmɪzɪt / is weak, strong, weak, weak. oOoo
It also has a falling intonation after the main stress on time.
Falling intonation is used in the questions we ask in order to obtain information.
These questions are known as 5WH questions.
If you want to know more about 5WH questions, check my 5WH questions course at Britlish.
I see that our time’s up so we’ll leave it there.