Dropping of after a consonant is much more extensive than in most of England. In most North American accents, is "dropped" or "deleted" after all alveolar and interdental consonants (everywhere except after /p/, /b/, /f/, /h/, /k/, and /m/) and so new, duke, Tuesday, assume are pronounced , , , (compare with Standard British , , , ). T-glottalization: is normally pronounced as a glottal stop when both after a vowel or a liquid and before a syllabic or any non-syllabic consonant, as in button or fruitcake . In the absolute final position after a vowel or liquid, is also replaced by, or simultaneously articulated with, glottal constriction: thus, what or fruit . (This innovation of /t/ glottal stopping may occur in British English as well and variably between vowels.) Flapping: or becomes a flap both after a vowel or and before an unstressed vowel or a syllabic consonant other than , including water , party and model . This results in pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding being pronounced the same. Flapping of or before a full stressed vowel is also possible but only if that vowel begins a new word or morpheme, as in what is it? and twice in not at all . Other rules apply to flapping to such a complex degree in fact that flapping has been analyzed as being required in certain contexts, prohibited in others, and optional in still others. For instance, flapping is prohibited in words like seduce , retail , and monotone , yet optional in impotence . Both intervocalic and may commonly be realized as (a nasalized alveolar flap) (flapping) or simply , making winter and winner homophones in fast or informal speech. L-velarization: England's typical distinction between a "clear L" (i.e. ) and a "dark L" (i.e. ) is much less noticeable in nearly all dialects of American English; it is often altogether absent, with all "L" sounds tending to be "dark," meaning having some degree of velarization, perhaps even as dark as (though in the initial position, perhaps less dark than elsewhere among some speakers). The only notable exceptions to this velarization are in some Spanish-influenced American English varieties (such as East Coast Latino English, which typically shows a clear "L" in syllable onsets) and in older, moribund Southern speech, where "L" is clear in an intervocalic environment between front vowels. Weak vowel merger: The vowel in