"di?nt" (with glottal stop)

[Mark A. Mandel]

A question from a friend in Boston:

---------- Forwarded message ----------

I was on the Green Line, and there were a couple of African-American
teenage girls talking loudly to one another (they were about twenty feet
away, almost out of sight, but I could hear every word they said).

And it occurred to me as I was listening that there's a linguistic
artifact that I've only heard from urban African-Americans my age or
younger, mostly girls.  It's a sort of glottal stop used in place of t or
d; eg. di-unt instead of didn't.  Do you know where this might have come
from?

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-- Mark
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]