Present participle and letter T are Extinct in new politico-media Argot A rapidly standardising New Zealand dialect has now overwhelmed the diction of broadcasters and politicians. It has caused to disappear the spoken alphabet consonant “t” and without the substitute Estuary glottal stop. The discarded letter “t” simply emerges as a “d” as in the frequently spoken “baddery” or “budder,” i.e. battery, butter. Duty is rendered as “doody,” and not as the glottalised “doo-ee,” the Cockney-Essex version. The absence of the glottal stop as in for example “buh-uh” for butter isolates this new semi-received politico-broadcast dialect or patois from any…