Pronouncing 'Out of' | American English

24 Nov 2015 · 2 min

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A short YouTube pronunciation lesson by Hadar Shemesh explaining how the two-word phrase “out of” is commonly pronounced in American English as a single reduced form that sounds like “atta.” The video shows that the diphthong in “out” reduces to an a (as in cat), the /t/ becomes a flap (sounded like a D) between vowels, and “of” is reduced to a schwa — producing pronunciations like “I’m outta here” and “Get outta here.” The clip gives several example sentences and a brief closing.

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Hey, what's up? I'm Hadar and this is your how to pronounce accent Sway video. Today we're going to talk about the combination of the two words out and of. Outta, outta. Like get outta here or I'm outta here. So in order to pronounce it, we have to think about these two words as one word. Atta. Atta. Okay, so atta doesn't sound at all like out of the way. It's written. Again, don't think about the word as actually written. Think about the way it sounds, especially in context. Out of the office, out of here. So actually the first sound, the ow of the out becomes one sound that sounds like a as in cat, the T because it's in between two vowels, between the a sound. And the of becomes a flap T which sounds like a D, atta. And then the of is reduced to a schwa. Okay, so actually these two words narrow down to atta. Atta. It's just like when you say at a house or at a park, right? Atta. Again, nothing like the way it's written, but this is how it sounds. I'm outta here. Get outta here. Out of this world, out of the office. Atta. Atta. Alright, so it's not out of but atta. All right, guys, I'm outta here. I'll see you next week in the next video how to pronounce video. Bye.