Consonants TAPS and FLAPS

Like other North Americans, Southerners produce intervocalic coronal stops as a tap or flap . This process normally occurs when the stop falls after any vowel or  and before a heterosyllabic vowel or , as in batty , sit out  , Ida  , hardy  , and inner . It does not occur before a tautosyllabic vocoid, e.g., attain [ə.thεin], go tell , and a tamale , except for unstressed to and don’t, e.g., go to  and I don’t . It also affects nt clusters, as in Santa  and enter . Technically speaking, a tap occurs after a vowel and a flap after  or a tap + vowel (e.g., in additives, in which the <dd> is tapped and the <t> flapped). Some Southerners extend tapping/flapping to one additional context: before unstressed /n/. They produce important as   and get in a as  instead of as the more widespread pronunciations  and , respectively. This process does not affect all pre-nasal examples, e.g., button . Outright deletion of the tap/flap is common in casual speech, e.g. pretty  , little .