Glottalization - Glottal Reinforcement

Glottal Reinforcement

When a phoneme is accompanied (either sequentially or simultaneously) by a, then one speaks of pre-glottalization or glottal reinforcement. This is common in most varieties of English, RP included; /t/ and /tʃ/ are the most affected but /p/ /k/ also regularly show pre-glottalization. In the English dialects exhibiting pre-glottalization, the consonants in question are usually glottalized in the coda position. E.g. "what", "fiction", "milkman", "opera" . To a certain extent, there is free variation in English between glottal replacement and glottal reinforcement.