"di?nt" (with glottal stop)

[Beckman, Jennifer Elizabeth (UMC-Student)]

Glottal stops in contractions are *very* common in eastern Missouri but were unknown to me before I started college at the University of Missouri-Columbia in '95.  (I had lived in the "Quad Cities" [Iowa], Chicago, Madison, WI, and Omaha, NE before moving to a small town in western Missouri [1.5 hours southeast of KC] in '87, where the feature does *not* occur.  Very interestingly [to me, at least], other [primarily South Midlands] features of eastern and western [rural] Missouri English seem to be shared--the glottal stop in contractions is a glaring exception.)
 
From:    "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>

: 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?

: =====================

No idea where it comes from, but it's not limited to African-Americans--my
white self does it, too.

David Bowie