What's that sound?

[Denzagathist]

I'm from Colorado too, but I honestly have no clue what you might be referring to. At first I thought your dialect might have some kind of diphthongization, like you hear in some varieties of Southern American English. Then I listened to your recording, but I didn't hear anything like what you described. I did hear a slight fronting of the /u/ in 'dude', which is typical for dialects in the western US, more like [dʉd] or even [dɪ̯ʉd]. But nothing for the other words.

I suppose what you're hearing could potentially a glottal stop in certain words, but in that case, I don't know why it would sound like a schwa to you. And it would only occur word-initially (e.g. [ʔiːt] 'eat', [ˈʔɑɫweɪ̯z] 'always'), not in words like 'dude' or 'never'.

[Brun Ugle]

I think glottal stop is what you're looking for

I don't think so. The glottal stop in English never occurs in the middle of a syllable, only finally (when replacing t) or right before a final t, or at the very beginning of a word which starts with a vowel (the specifics vary depending on the word or dialect). If a glottal stop occurs in "eat" in any dialect of English, it will replace the t or immediately precede it. In my dialect, it replaces the t when "eat" is said in isolation or before a word beginning in a non-alveolar consonant; before an alveolar consonant, I realize the t as a [t] and before anything else (that is, vowels) it becomes an alveolar flap. This, I believe, is fairly typical of North American English.

@OP you're not a failure, it's hard to overcome the phonetic tendencies of your L1, but being aware of them helps overcome them, and so I hope this has helped you. FSI Spanish has a section devoted towards getting you to avoid diphthongizing vowels where they needn't be.

The glottal stop also occurs as an initial sound in words that begin with a vowel.

[zenmonkey]

The sound in \əit\ would be a narrow diphthong because the vowel glide is short with regards to the standard IPA vowel chart. It can also be annotated as [əi̬t] to denote specifically the short i glide. I'm not a linguist but that's my understanding.

But I think eat doesn't have a dipthong - it's \it\ or \iːt\, maybe an AUS pronunciation?

Compare the sound with ate \eɪt\ where you can clearly hear the diphthong.

Here, use this tool to hear the vowels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel ... with_audio
You'll notice the shwa is quite different from the sound you are producing.

[aravinda]

"Glottal stops are made quite frequently in English, although we rarely notice them because they do not make a difference in the meaning of English words. . . . English speakers usually insert a glottal stop before word initial vowels, like in the words it, ate, and ouch. If you say these words naturally, you will probably feel a catch in your throat just as you [do] in the expression uh-oh."
(T. L. Cleghorn and N. M. Rugg, "Comprehensive Articulatory Phonetics: A Tool for Mastering the World's Languages", 2nd ed., 2011)
Quoted @ https://www.thoughtco.com/glottal-stop- ... cs-1690901

And a paper:
https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/int ... 5_1675.pdf

[smallwhite]

It was really "thinking out of the box" of Mista to think of the glottal stop, bravo! But OP also said:

> It happens anywhere there's a vowel. Uh-ee-tuh-eeng (eating), muh-een (mean), etc.

I still think OP means diphthongised monophthongs, though her "eat" in her recording sounded very pure to me and I wonder how she'd have noticed any sound before the /i/. In Australia, they/we have a much more pronounced /ɪ/ before the /i/.

(I survived typing IPA on the phone).

[Dragon27]

It's probably a diphthong. But it's hard to believe every word has a diphthong in it. It happens anywhere there's a vowel. Uh-ee-tuh-eeng (eating), muh-een (mean), etc.

Yeah, long i: can definitely be like that. I also suspect you may overthink it a little bit and start hearing things that aren't there (or just pronounce words not like you pronounce them in real speech). The second syllable in eating is definitely not like "tuh-eeng". It should be a shorter sound. Although short 'lax' ɪ in ending like "ing" does sound a little different from the usual ɪ (like in "ship"). It's higher on the diagram and closer to "i". I don't know. There are lots of different dialects and variations.

[zenmonkey]

"Glottal stops are made quite frequently in English, although we rarely notice them because they do not make a difference in the meaning of English words. . . . English speakers usually insert a glottal stop before word initial vowels, like in the words it, ate, and ouch. If you say these words naturally, you will probably feel a catch in your throat just as you [do] in the expression uh-oh."
(T. L. Cleghorn and N. M. Rugg, "Comprehensive Articulatory Phonetics: A Tool for Mastering the World's Languages", 2nd ed., 2011)
Quoted @ https://www.thoughtco.com/glottal-stop- ... cs-1690901

And a paper:
https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/int ... 5_1675.pdf

For clarity, I think the author means that this going to occur in a phrase like "we ate" but not when just pronouncing the isolated word "ate".

[kulaputra]

The glottal stop also occurs as an initial sound in words that begin with a vowel.

Which I literally said in my comment, but it's very unlikely that's what OP is referring to.

Actually now that I think of it this would be easier to resolve if OP dropped a recording of their voice saying the word.

[zenmonkey]

Actually now that I think of it this would be easier to resolve if OP dropped a recording of their voice saying the word.

OP did that on the last page.

[kulaputra]

Actually now that I think of it this would be easier to resolve if OP dropped a recording of their voice saying the word.

OP did that on the last page.

Oops I missed that. It definitely sounds like [ɪit] to me.