“that” is one of a number of common functional words in English that have “weak” and “strong” forms that are distinct in pronunciation. Others include “the” and “than”. In the weak form, all the vowels in the word are reduced to a central vowel or schwa.
Reminds me of “the La Brea Tar Pits”…which translated is “the The Tar Tar Pits.”
So this is the one specific thing I remember from tutoring for the ACT back in the day. I was told never to use double thats, or to start/end a sentence with that. Oh crap I just did it!
ninja’d twice!
With Au Jus Sauce
Pretty amazing that we’ve gotten this far into this thread with only one oblique reference to ‘Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.’