Voldemort pronunciation

[sineala]

No: HPFGUIDX 31428

Newbie here, delurking, and I hope I'm doing this right...

One explanation for the presence or absence of the final "t" 
in "Voldemort" that I don't think anyone has brought up yet is that 
it might have something to do with how English is pronounced in 
general.

I haven't heard any of the audiobooks yet, so I can't check to see if 
this is indeed true, but, in my (Californian) dialect of American 
English, and I believe in some dialects of British English as well, 
there is a very common process of glottalizing voiceless stops at the 
ends of words (possibly syllables as well, but definitely at the ends 
of words).  What this means is that in normal speech, the ps, ts, and 
ks at the ends of words are pronounced as glottal stops. Your mouth 
is in the position it would be to say these sounds, but the sounds 
are not actually produced -- only a glottal stop is.  This would be 
an "unreleased" or "glottalized" sound.

I've noticed that it's very hard for English speakers to notice this 
process, or to notice most glottal stops at all, like the ones 
beginning vowel-initial words.  "Voldemort" ends in a t, and is 
subject to the rule I just mentioned. So maybe what people are really 
saying is a syllable [mor?], where [?] is a glottal stop, and we're 
just not hearing it.  The speaker would know that the sound there was 
supposed to be "t," and if they were articulating carefully, as 
Hagrid no doubt was when saying the name to Harry, they would 
pronounce a very audible "t".

Like I said, I haven't heard the audiobooks yet, and I don't know as 
much linguistics as I would like, so it's possible that I'm 
completely wrong, but I just thought I'd throw the idea out there...

--Elena