How do you pronounce often?

[Torsten]

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[Naz]

Hello everyone,
I listened to Sue's recording (don't and doesn't). In this session she used the word
often,but she pronounced as "often" while our teacher always pronouced as "ofen" means the "t" is silent.
Regards,
Naz(be informed)

[Samira]

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Hi, Mr. Torsten!
I've learnt to pronounce the word often_ like "ofn". But I had american friends, and they pronounced like oftn, and I asked them, why do you pronounce like oftn, and they told me that , they have never thought about it...they said that we always say oftn...and I showed the pronounciation in dictionaries, and they said that, no problem, you can say often and ofn,,,the people will understand you in both pronounciation. But I cant say oftn)))) Because I've never used to say like that.
Samira

[OxfordBlues]

Interesting!

Aside from a few British accents, I've always thought most people pronounce the t.
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[Blue113]

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i pronounce it as off-ten. if i pronounce it as off-fen, it might just sound like orphan

[Naz]

Thank you Oxford Blue and Samira!
As you declared to me the real pronunciation.
Naz (Be informed)

[Mixmixi]

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Please listen to my recording and respond with a voice message too. Many thanks.
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[Gemini Alpha Female]

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Hi all ^^;
I pronounce the "t" in "often" (hi5 Kitos). I know both pronunciations are correct but I just prefer it with the "t". The whole silent letters thing doesn't make any sense to me as long as I have the choice to pronounce what I read.

CHeeRz,
Chiquitita
(Nonnative English Speaker)

[Suspensi0n]

Maybe it depends on the place you're from... "Ofen" is maybe more American, and "OfTen" more British..

[OxfordBlues]

ofen is absolutely not American ;)
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[Suspensi0n]

Okay, so my "theory" is wrong ;)

[Me Ann]

I was stuck reading and listening to everyone's reply about this topic. To clarify which
is really the correct way of pronouncing the word "often", I checked the freedictionary.com and listened how it is pronounced. I heard it clearly that it is
pronounced with silent "t" /ofen/.

[OxfordBlues]

LOL you can't take things like freedictionary and wiktionary as fact Me Ann. They are written by people who put their opinions into what is on the website.
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[Me Ann]

Are you telling me then that the site I used to check the word is not credible?
How would you know by yourself the correct pronunciation of any word aside from
dictionary?

[OxfordBlues]

Well the thing about pronunciations is that they are not universal.

By the actual rules of English, often is pronounced with a /t/ and that is the standard pronunciation for most speakers in the world. Some (as has been mentioned above) do omit the /t/ but most do not. You can sometimes find /offen/ in the UK and will almost never find it in the US.

It's not that your website is not credible, it's just that it's giving you someone's opinion based on their own personal pronunciation.

If you look at the poll for this thread, you'll see that more non-native learners are obviously taught to omit the /t/ but this is not normal for native speakers.
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