Do you pronounce the T in exactly?

[Ahhhhhbisto]

I have noticed that alot of people pronounce exactly without a T sound. I have always pronounced it ig-zact-lee.

Have I been saying it wrong all this time?!

Same here, I think. I don’t pronounce the T fully but nor do I say exack-ly. The T becomes a sound I wouldn’t know the name for - I realise I’m pushing my tongue to the roof of my mouth like with T but the sharp push of air that follows with a proper T doesn’t happen because I move straight on to the L. I wonder if this is what people mean when they say they pronounce it as a glottal stop because although the sound doesn’t come from the throat there is a certain resemblance.

So i know I say this weird.. it might be an accent thing. I say exackly

Yes! You are my people

My first thought too.

I've never seen this before but love it. Definately no T in there

I definitely pronounce the T: ex act ly unless I am being silly and pronounce it exakly.
I also pronounce the G in re COG nise.

Im shocking (SE) I dont even say the ex. I say zackly

I pronounce it egg-Zack-ly 😬 from Manchester

I pronounce it.

Scottish

I pronounce it egg-zack-leh (Leicester)

I always pronounce it, but I feel like I attach it to the ly rather than the exac part.

So exac tly, making a t-ly sounds run together.

I do, and hardly anyone else does. If I'm relaxed it's exackdly
If I'm on best diction, then the t sounds loud and clear!

Yes! Always say the T.

No I don't I say ezackly 😐

Yes. I do pronounce the "t".

I just said it out loud and it turns out I don't I just say ex-ack-lee oh my

Eck-zack-tly. Like a pp, it’s a tl sound for me (like the Icelandic ll sound). The T is there but definitely part of the third syllable and not the second when I say it.

Anyone else think about how super nanny says it!

You can't stick a glottal stop between two consonant sounds though. The t sound in "butter" often comes out as glottal stop but not the t sound in "exactly".

The options are to pronounce carefully the /k/, /t/ and /l/, which sounds laboured and unnatural, or swallow one of those three phonemes.

If I say it casually in a sentence the t sound is quite effaced.

I sort of pronounce the t but not fully. North West here and use glottal stops a lot. I’m curious where you’re from that the start of exactly is an ig sound? I don’t think I’ve heard it pronounced that way before.

Scottish again, I pronounce the T.

Well the /t/ is a plosive and you’re correct that when it’s sandwiched between /k/ and /l/ you won’t get the full plosive sound of the air being released right after the t. That I think is why it sounds effaced. Your tongue needs to move straight from the /t/ to the /l/ sound which is quite a gymnastic move to make, going from hard palate (or palatal ridge?) to a sort of hammock shape inside the mouth along the sides.

We’re also all lazy speakers by nature so drop lots of sounds without realising it. Think about how rarely we pronounce the d in “and” if the next word begins with a /k/ sound for instance.

Those saying they think they’re sticking a glottal stop in there are mistaken. Ts can only become glottal stops at the end of a word… like “what” becomes “wo#” ( # denotes glottal stop as can’t do phonetic notation on my phone) and also in between two vowels eg “bu#er” instead of butter.

It would be very unusual for a speaker, if speaking naturally, to painstakingly pronounce the c t and l in “exactly” to their fullest pronunciation. The t will suffer as pp has described. But it doesn’t become a glottal stop.

Alveolar ridge is the term I was looking for.

I have a mix of Home Counties with south London in my accent and it sounds like egz-agh-lee when I’m tired and egg-Zac-lee when I’m less tired! but if I’m being posher I’ll say “egz -act-lee”.

Totally depends on your accent.