When you make a glottal stop in English, does the front of your tongue touch the roof of your mouth?
Solution 1:
Glottal stops - Cockney or London accent
No, the tongue does not touch the roof of the mouth. It ends up floating in the middle of the mouth. But the shape of the tongue seems to depend on the vowel. If I say ‘butter’ with a glottal stop, my tongue is flat but floating. If I say ‘glottal’ with the stop, my tongue is more curled up at the sides, but floating. There’s a bit of a diphragm push on the ‘t’ of ‘hit’ as well - like a kick.
The glottal stop is rare in English, but it does exist in ‘Cockney’ - a London accent or localised ‘language form’.
Cockneys are people who are ‘born within the sound of Bow bells’ in London. Meaning, within earshot of the sound of the church bells of Bow church, in East London, and Cockney (the language) has a glottal stop on the letter ‘t’ - so for example ‘better’ sounds like ‘be -er’ with the glottal stop in the middle.
The glottal stop is found more widely also, in most people who have a ‘London accent’ or ‘East end’ (of London) accent - all the way down to Brighton - though the home counties people further south of London speak differently.
The tongue does not touch the roof of the mouth (I’m trying it now!)
The ‘Cockney accent’ is often referred to as just ‘Cockney’ in London, and thought of as ‘a language’ by Cockneys, although it is of course, a version of English.
This video shows the glottal stop in Cockney very clearly:
https://youtu.be/_4MJUi03GHM
Glottal stops also show up in Cockney at the start of words beginning with H - as in: ‘ow?’ instead of ‘how?’, and at the end of words ending in T like ‘light’. And also, in other accents including Glaswegian.
https://youtu.be/TtcLrYwyfPs
Here’s a video showing a few aspects of Cockney speech, including the glottal stop.
https://youtu.be/mmum5Pp5Rq4
PS I’m not a cockney, as I was born in Islington, out of earshot of Bow. But my sister is - she was born at Paddington and you can hear Bow bells from there.