In American English, words ending with “rl” or “rel” can be pronounced using either one or two syllables, completely interchangeably. This is not the case in British English. “-rl” words like “girl”, “hurl”, etc. , are pronounced as one syllable with silent R, while “squirrel” is “squih-rul”, and “referral” is “re-fer-rul”. Some words are easier to say in a British accent. For example, mirror, which sounds like “mih-ra”. Do not say “mirror” like a “mere”; British people almost never do that. Some awkward pauses in sentences are also removed by the addition of “r” before a vowel. For example, “I saw it” becomes “I saw-rit”, to avoid the pause between the words ‘saw’ and ‘it’. Another example is “Bacteria are small”, pronounced “Bacteria-rar-small”.
The words human being are pronounced hewman being or yooman been in certain areas, though it could be pronounced hewman bee-in.
People with Estuary English, RP, Scottish, Irish and Welsh accents do consider it lazy and rude to drop the Ts, and this feature doesn’t exist, but in almost all accents it’s accepted to do it in the middle of words in casual contexts and almost universal to put a glottal stop at the end of a word.
For example, instead of saying, “is he going to the STORE?” Say, “is he GOING to the store?” Have the question descending in tone as opposed to ascending in tone (going up in tone is more common in American or Australian English).
