The pronunciation of this "d" ressembles that of the "t" in "castle".

Regards,Einde O'Callaghan

If you utter a fully released /d/ in "handbag" (hand-bag) you're using a spelling pronunciation, which is normally a result of the word in question going out of daily use. I'm English too, but I live in Australia and while my students don't say "cup-board" because they use the word on a daily basis, they do say "waist-coat", "boat-swain", "grind-stone" and "black-guard" when confronted with the words in print because those words are as unfamiliar to them as the traditional historically reduced pronunciations /weskit/, /bos@n/, /grinst@n/ and /blagg@d/ (where @ = schwa).

Similarly they say "walk" and "talk" to rhyme with non-rhotic /fork/, reflecting the historical loss of /l/ after back vowels, but they pronounce the first syllable of "falcon" like that of "talcum", presumably because falconry hasn't been an everyday practice for a few centuries. Of course this doesn't quite explain why they say "fore-head" for /forrid/.

Peter Groves

Peter Groves filted:

I was with you (more or less) until you hit "falcon", and I don't think it's from unfamiliarity; most of us may not raise them, but the birds themselves are in plentiful supply around these parts..
What do your students do with "clapboard"?...r

"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!"
"You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!"

Some on your list may lose the "d" less easily than others depending on what the adjacent phonemes are. Elision of sounds evolves under pressure of efficiency. If there were such a thing as a "hambag" we would be less likely to lose the "d" in "handbag". As it is, if I were to use the word "hambag" in a context that I thought the listener would not have heard the word before, I twould probably exaggerate the pronunciation as "ham bag" and fully release the "m" before starting the "b".
To claim that what Peter wrote is "baloney" and to throw in the condescending "of course" to boot, you are blithely dismissing all of the possible pronunciations that people make of those words. Based on the ways in which pronunciation evolves, the similar words that clearly do drop the "d" and the diversity of idiosyncratic pronunciations, what he has written is entirely plausible and worthy of more careful consideration than you have given it.
I would add that, in any discussions of pronunciations of our native languages in which there may be a difference between spelling and sound, great caution in reporting what we perceive is necessary. If we already know how a word is spelled, we are undoubtedly biased to hear it in that way, even if the sound is slightly different.
All that said, I think I probably do drop the "d" in "handbag." The tongue, lip and voicing coordination from "n" to "d" to "b" is all very close together in timing and placement at the front of the mouth. I would be surprised if many people did NOT slide over the "d". there is no reason for them to not do that, pending the invention and widespread distribution of the "hambag."
I do not think it is as likely with "handguard" since the "g" is released in the back, but it is still plausible that some do.

Half the BBC thinks it's pronounced "clapperboard". They ought to be clopboard.

Mike.