American English Phonetics

10.2 Incomplete plosion of stop clusters

In words like apt, coped, packed, rubbed and hugged the two stops overlap so that the release of the first takes place during the compression stage of the second and is inaudible.

In Dutch words like loopt and lijkt, where the two stops form a cluster, i.e. are tautosyllabic, this is not normally the case: the release of /p/ and /k/ is audible. In English, the second stop does tend to be released – as in Dutch – although GA /t/ may also be unreleased. When the two stops occur in different syllables, Dutch, like English, has incomplete plosion of the first stop, as in op tijd, actueel.