#but when mushing my words together and talking really fast or when i sorta throw a line away

[lexosaurus]

Oh boy, more of an excuse to be nerdy! Thank you for being complicit in this moment 🙏

So first, I actually did what I should have done before and said "Fenton" in a bunch of different contexts, and there were several cases where I did drop the /t/—specifically when I was talking quickly and/or offhandedly—which is pretty neat. Whether or not I glottal stopped or elongated the /n/ like a goddamn heathen really depended. This will tie into my overall thesis here of "humans are lazy."

So when I say shit like "easier," the reason I put it in quotes like that is because I'm talking wayyyy more broadly, which I probs should have specified. Humans are inherently lazy when we talk and if, collectively, we find one phoneme "easier" to say than the other, then collectively we'll swap. We can see this with /s/ vs /z/ pronunciations at the ends of words. If there's a vowel right before the plural ending, like in "bees" or "ideas" we will collectively replace the /s/ with a /z/ because it's "easier" for us to keep our voice on for the end of the word, than it is for us to switch it off for only one phoneme that doesn't change the inherent meaning of the word (say "bees" and "boats" to hear the /s/ vs /z/). But since we're lazy talkers, we'll go one step further and will devoice the /z/ as we're saying it, because we've finished the word, so what's the point of following through to the end?

In the case where if we say the /n/ then that sets us up to pronounce the /t/ off the bat and there's no additional tongue movement we need to make to get to the alveolar ridge, phonologically, that's pretty damn "easy" for our lazy mouths to commit to. Maybe still a bit begrudgingly, as /t/ is definitely one of the first phonemes to get swapped with something else or dropped entirely because it's a "hard" phoneme to pronounce compared to the others, but it's "easy" enough that there's not an overwhelming pull for a collective action to switch or drop/swap it like we see in words like "atom" vs "atomic" (/t/ turns to a tap) or at the end of "cat" (/t/ turns to a glottal stop or an unreleased t). We think, okay, the /ɛ/ in "fenton" is a mid vowel pronounced at the front of our mouth, so we're really really close to that /n/ anyway so we might as well just pronounce it, and then oh look we're all set up for that /t/ at the start of the next syllable, so we'll go ahead and pronounce it too. Barely extra work. Of course, there are totally people who will drop the /t/, because as I said /t/ is annoying to pronounce even on a good day, but collectively it's maybe not as popular as other allophones.

So, I got a little curious about the origins of the southern accent in general and which language you guys came into contact with to kickstart it, and like any other civil human being I turned to Wikipedia. In short, much of the Southern American English drawl originates from Scots-Irish immigration to the Southern US in the 17th and 18th century. This also got influenced in the 19th century from some parts of upper class London and West Africa via African-American slavery. As it happens when two dialects interact, often they smush together to create a new dialect via children (yes, I mean actual human children who grow up and pass the new lingo down to their kids). The South was directly affected after the American Civil War when the southern economy had a giant upheaval, and many southern farmers with that blended accent moved to Texas to start a new life. Those people came into contact with south midland US communities and Hispanic communities to make a new dialect baby, which became the stereotypical Texas accent.

Okay, I have to go fold laundry, but I hope this was fun to read!