pronunciation - In the natural way of speaking, How to pronounce "next stop"?

If I were reading this phrase I would read "next" "stop", but when people talks it seems to me they say something like "nextop". Is this a sort of shortening like "acopotee" instead of "a cup of tea"?

Answer

1. 
   

   Next stop, /nekst stɒp/

   
   


2. 
   

   Next stop, /neks stɒp/

   
   

The answer to the original poster's question is: Yes, we do say "nex stop".

In example (1) you can see an unnatural pronunciation for the phrase "next stop". It's not a mistake, but it's not the normal pronunciation we'd expect. If you say these words like this, people will probably guess that you aren't a native speaker.

If you look at the transcription for the end of the word "next" you'll see that it ends with the sounds /st/. In the spelling there's an 'X', but the sound is /st/. The transcription of the sound looks like this: /nekst/

However, you don't need to pronounce the /t/ in this word. In English there's a rule that when we have the sequence /st/ at the end of a syllable, then if the next word begins with a consonant, we can drop the /t/. But in some very common words - words that we use with high frequency - we can often drop the /t/ anyway. For these words it isn't important if the next word begins with a consonant. The word next is one of these words.

So, native English speakers usually say /neks wi:k/ and /neks stɒp/ not /nekst wi:k/ or /nekst stɒp/. However, this is just what we generally do. Sometimes we pronounce the /t/ and sometimes we don't. It is never a mistake to pronounce the /t/. It's never a mistake to drop it either.

Hope this is helpful!