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Every language has its own characteristics. One 
of the characteristics of English is smoothness,  

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and in order for Americans to get this, 
they often drop T’s and D’s in common words,  

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without even realizing it. Americans drop 
the D in many common words and phrases,  

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and we’ll go over more than a hundred 
of these, take these two words.

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In most cases, most people will pronounce them the 
same. This is ‘tens’, and they’ll drop the D here  

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making it sound like ‘tens’. Tens of thousands 
of people were there. He tends to be right. Tens,  

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tends. Honestly, it’s hard even to pronounce 
that with an audible D. Let me try.

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Tenndz, tendz.

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No. Almost every native speaker will say “tens.” 
Now don’t just go dropping any old D. There is a  

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specific pattern happening here, which we’ll go 
over. But first, let’s look at another word with  

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a dropped D and see if you can guess the pattern. 
The word is “friendship” . But let’s first look at  

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the word Friend. My friend is here. Friend 
is, friend is, dis, dis, d, d, d. We say that  

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word D. But in the word ‘friendship,’ we don’t. 
Instead of ‘friendship,’ we say ‘friennnnship’.  

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The D is completely gone. Nine times out of 10, 
if not more, you’ll hear Americans drop this D.

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This is the most common pronunciation. Why? 
D is a stop consonant. So by leaving it out,  

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by NOT doing the stop, we get more smoothness 
in our speech. American English is full of this  

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smooth quality. And one of the things that has 
evolved in spoken American English is dropping D  

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in the pattern N, D, consonant. In the word 
‘friendship’, D comes after N before SH.  

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Drop that D for more natural spoken English. 
Friendship. But in the phrase ‘friend  

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is’, the sound after D is a vowel. Don’t drop the 
D. My friend is here. Friend is. Dududu. Little  

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light d. But Friendship, drop the D. Friendly, 
drop the D, Friends, drop the D. N, D + consonant.  

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This is true in words that link too. For example, 
My friend was there last week. Frien-was. Linking  

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‘friend’ into a consonant, the W sound here, 
drop the D. My friend was. Friend was.

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What do you think? Have you been trying 
to pronounce that D? Friendddd was. Or  

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have you been dropping the D without realizing it, 
because that’s what you hear happening around you?

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To make sure we’re hearing it correctly, 
let’s go back to those examples,  

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other people saying ‘friendship’, 
and play them in slow motion.  

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We should hear no D, but the N linking 
directly into the SH, Friennnnnship.

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This dropped D really sounds very 
natural in the full sentences.

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If you want to know more about the right 
mouth position for the English sounds,  

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Click here or in the video description to 
get a free cheat sheet on the sounds of  

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American English, it’s a great reference 
tool and even I use it quite a bit.

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There are lots of words with 
N, D, and another consonant,  

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and when you include linking, there are even more 
cases. We’ll go over more examples with clips,  

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and then we will give you a huge list. Think 
of it, all these words without a stop,  

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that will smooth out your English 
and simplify your pronunciation.

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Before we get to our next common example, I 
want to pop in for a huge thanks to all my  

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supporters here on YouTube, everyone who has 
joined my channel, they get special badges to  

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make their comments pop, early release of videos 
when available, access to members-only posts  

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and videos, and the top tier gets a free monthly 
audio lesson from me. Thank you! Click JOIN to learn more.

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Our next word: Grandkids. Grannnnnkids, no D.

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What other ‘grand’ words do we have? Grandstand. 
That’s the main seating area in a stadium. No D.  

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Grandparents. No D. Grand piano.  

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Two different words there, but we 
link them, so no D. Grand piano.

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Errands. Whew, I have a lot of errands 
to run today. Errannnnns. No D.

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Kindness, with no D, is 
more common than kindness with the D.   

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Related words: kinds. There are all kinds 
of problems. No D. What about ‘kindly’?  

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In my research, the -ly ending is a case where 
I think it is more common to say the D. Kindly.  

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But it’s also okay to drop it. Oh, he’s a kindly 
old man. No D. Really, that one can go either way.

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Let’s look at a few two-word phrases now, 
with linking. Around - the, aroun’the.  

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Linking the words, dropping the D, the most 
common pronunciation. Let’s hear the others.

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Any time you’re linking ‘around’ into a word 
that begins with a consonant, do this. Around my,  

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around this, around those, around nine o-clock. 
Around one o’clock. Around one. Now the word word  

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‘one’ starts with the letter O, which is a 
vowel. What gives? Why am I dropping the D? For  

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this rule, I’m talking about sounds. Not letters. 
The word ‘one’ starts with a vowel letter but the  

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first sound is the W sound which is a consonant. 
So it’s N, D, plus consonant sound, Aroun’one.

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Another common ND word is found. Link 
it into a consonant, drop the D.  

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Found my. I found my phone. Founnnnnmmmmy. No D.

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Found my, found their, found this, found these. For example.

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Second is another common ND-ending 
word. Second time. No D. Seconnnnntime.

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Second time, second-best, second place,  

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second shift, also seconds, or second-hand. If you buy something second-hand,  

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that means it’s used, not new, it had another 
owner before. For example, I buy a lot of kid’s  

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clothes secondhand. Kids grow out of things fast, 
so the clothes can often be in good condition.

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Ok, you get it, you got it, you’re going to 
master this aspect of the American accent.  

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Just to get your brain 
going on these combinations,  

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I’m going to now give you a massive list of common 
words and two-word links where we drop the D.

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Ok wow, I went deep there. You get the 
point. Pick a phrase you want to work on,  

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go to Youglish to see a bunch of examples, that’s 
where I go do my research. It’s a great place to  

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not only get real-world examples for a particular 
word or phrase, but to hear the pronunciation  

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of many different people. Type in ‘behind the’ 
and practice out loud, imitating what you hear.

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Check out RachelsEnglishAcademy.com if you want to 
learn more about my online courses, which focuses  

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on accent reduction, listening comprehension, 
ease when speaking English and so on.  

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It’s packed with tips like this one, dropping the 
D after N before a consonant. Thanks so much for  

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learning with me. I love being your English 
teacher and accent coach. Keep your learning  

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going now with this video, and don’t forget to 
subscribe to my channel with all notifications  

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on so you never miss a lesson. That’s it and 
thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.