Hi Shirley, I think maybe your question is about 'T' pronunciation alone, instead of ton/tain/tan-->>N. When you say the letter N (e.g. reciting the alphabet A-B-C-D-.....-N-....), you're not really making the N sound alone. You're saying 'en', or 'ain'. The N sound alone is just nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn (humming - it sounds like a small plane flying overhead, or a grass cutting machine 100m away). So when you write CER-N, and BR-N, it is actually the sound of CER-AIN, and BR-AIN. So, what is really changing? The missing pronunciation is...the T! This is something called T-glottalization and it happens in some situations in some English accents / dialects. And basically, I think the answer is...because English speaking usually evolves over time to become easier to say. Similar to how a river can change the shape of stone! So, some British accents will say 'WA-ER' instead of 'WATER', because the flow of speaking is smoother if they just stop the air there, instead of making a clear T pronunciation. That is the same reason in a lot of people in North America will pronounce 'water' as 'wader', and 'competitive' as 'compedidive', instead of saying true T sounds in the middle of the word. It is smoother and faster to make a D sound. But not everyone in Britain skips middle-word-Ts, and not everyone in North America changes middle-word-Ts to D's. Here is a video discussing it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtcLrYwyfPs And if you really want to dive into the details, the wikipedia article (there might be similar articles in your native language also!) is probably a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-glottalization Another similar regional difference in accents is when an R-sound suddenly appears! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R And 'connected speech' is a good topic to search to learn about how connecting words can change the sounds! I hope that helps! If you have any other questions, let me know.

It’s just about pronunciation. Most Americans (and Canadians) realize the T as a glottal stop before /n/ or /ən/ (note that most vowels are reduced to /ə/ in unstressed position). (Some Americans in the “midwest” and some people in southwestern England may pronounce this T as a “quick-D”.) This glottal-stop realization is also true of most British speakers, except in careful RP (so-called “Standard British” pronunciation). Actually, most people in southeastern England, Australia, etc., realize the T as a glottal step generally in syllable-final position. As far as the reason, it’s probably because the /n/ and /t/ are both articulated with the same tongue position, so stopping the air in the larynx with a glottal stop is easier and makes a more noticeable sound.

That’s a good question. I’m not sure of the grammatical reason but I do know that it has something to do with the endings of the words. ( -ain ). It probably has something to do with the words having a “dipthong”. Two vowels together produce different sounds. Here are a few more words that sound different than they are spelled but have the -ain ending: Britain, Certain, Curtain, Sustain, Disdain, Refrain, Entertain, Slain.

Hi Shirley, Im not sure why did you ask this question about how to pronounce “N” in English. Maybe you want to compare how to pronounce “N” in English and in your own native language? The thing is “N” is pronounced clearly in English. How clear it is, it depends on the words before the “N” because English has “stress” when you need to pronounce it more clear (emphasis) than other syllables. And for the vowel with “t” before N, normally they don’t pronounce the vowel if no stress on it, such as “Button” ( ‘But - tn ) and for “obtain” ( ob - TAIN ) because the stress is on “TAIN”

The simple answer is that some varieties of English do this while others do not. I don't know much about the history of the English language, though, so I can't tell you why...