Link your words (part 1)

Native English speakers link their words when speaking. Understanding and practicing this concept can help non-native speakers not only have better casual American pronunciation, but they'll also be able to understand casual American English.

Linking consonant to vowel

In much of spoken English, our sentences are not made up of distinct vocabulary. It's really a collection of words that have been linked together in chains or varying lengths. Sometimes, when linking causes syllables to be minimized, these chains may even overlap.

There are many ways that this chain forms, but for now we'll talk about consonant-vowel chains. This is when one word ends with a hard consonant, and the next word starts with a vowel sound.

For example, when we say... 

What time is it?

...you wont hear "what-time-is-it?" Rather, you'll hear something like this:

What tie mi zit?

Go ahead and say it as it's written above. The final three words are linked.

Here are some others:

What's new?         What snoo?

It's OK.                  It so K.

I like it.                  I lie kit.

Hold on.                Hole don.

A long time ago.   A long tie mago.

Your assignment: Look for opportunities to link consonant-to-vowel words. Look at street signs, traffic signs, and other road signs. Read them, linking consonant-to-vowel words.  

Here are some examples:

blasting zoe nahead

brid jout

school zoe nahead

do nah denter

thirty fie veest

That's all for today. I'm going to sigh noff.