Well hey there! I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!
This is part three in our pronunciation series
about connected speech.
We've been talking about the way that sounds
link together in spoken English, connecting words.
And sometimes even changing sounds
as words are spoken quite quickly in English.
Today we'll focus on an advanced element
of connected speech,
linking vowel sound to vowel sound - so stay tuned.
Okay as I said, this is quite an advanced
pronunciation lesson, but I absolutely recommend
that you keep watching,
even if you don't consider yourself an advanced student
because understanding how sounds influence
each other and change in spoken English
will allow you to be aware of it.
It will allow you to hear connected speech
when you're listening to native speakers
and help you to understand them more easily.
The way that native English speakers speak
is just not perfect.
You won't hear a sentence where each word is
perfectly separated. Well,
unless you're talking to Siri.
Hey Siri,
how old are you?
I am as old as the Eastern wind
and as young as a newborn caterpillar.
And if you want to sound more fluent
and more natural when you speak English,
then connected speech is a really good place to start.
In the first lesson of this pronunciation series,
I talked about consonant to vowel linking.
It's up here if you haven't seen it.
But I talked about how words that end in a consonant
sound can link to words that follow them
when they start with a vowel sound.
Like this:
In the second video, we went over
consonant to consonant linking.
When words that end in a consonant link
to the following word
if it starts with the same consonant sound.
It makes sense. It does make it easier and quicker
to say sentences when we reduce the number
of sounds that we need to say.
But we can also link consonant sounds to
completely different consonant sounds.
And when that happens, the sounds can change.
Today we're going to go one step further
and I'll show you how to link vowel sounds
to vowel sounds in spoken English.
And this can be a little tricky
so before we get started, I need you to relax.
Don't worry about how these words
are normally spoken. Just take it easy.
Listen to the sounds
and just try to copy the sounds that I make, all right?
Sounds are really influenced by the other sounds
that are around them in a sentence
and natural spoken English is really a skill that you need
to develop through practice
and by listening to native English speakers,
by imitating them or copying them
and trying it for yourself, right?
And that is exactly what we're going to do today.
You're going to learn it, you'll understand it
and then we'll practise together at the end of this lesson
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When we link consonants we often
connect or
blend or even sometimes change
sounds into new sounds.
But linking vowel to vowel sounds is a little different.
We actually add a new sound, a consonant sound,
to link two vowel sounds together,
which might sound a little crazy - I get that.
Emma, isn't the whole point of connected speech
to make it easier and faster to say a sentence?
Yes! Absolutely, and it will make sense soon
once I explain all this to you.
We link vowel sounds when one word ends
in a vowel sound and the next word
begins with a vowel sound.
It can feel kind of awkward or strange to link
two vowel sounds, it's not very natural.
It feels kind of strange, right? A little uncomfortable.
When we link vowel sounds to other vowel sounds,
we actually add a new sound to make it
easier and quicker to keep that sound happening.
All right? But these sounds are not written.
You can't see them and you can't hear them
when you say each word individually,
it's only when they're pushed together.
Now remember, just because a word ends in a vowel,
doesn't mean that it ends in a vowel sound.
You've got to be really careful with linking.
We're talking about sounds not letters.
So you need to be concentrating.
For example, the word 'make'
ends in the letter E, a vowel.
But the final sound is a consonant.
We don't say
we say 'make'. It ends in a consonant sound.
The /k/ sound.
The word 'by' ends in a consonant letter,
but the sound is a vowel,
so we can link 'by' to a word following
if it starts with a vowel.
So don't focus on the letters that you see,
think about the sounds that you hear.
Close your eyes if you need to.
All right, enough talking. Let's look at some examples
and get going here.
Where are the linking opportunities that you see here?
Any opportunities to link vowel sounds.
Which words end with a vowel sound and then
are followed by words that start with a vowel sound?
I'll give you a few seconds to choose.
All right, there are five vowel sounds at the beginning
or end of words in this sentence.
Now since we're focusing on vowel to vowel
linking sound, let's forget about 'of' right now.
That's consonant to vowel linking right there.
There is an extra sound in there if you can hear it.
We have to pay close attention to the vowel sounds here
and the position of our mouths as we make this sound.
We have
So we need to move our mouth quite a bit
between these two vowel sounds.
And when we do that quickly,
if we do that really quickly right now,
That /j/ sound naturally occurs.
As we move quickly between those sounds,
we naturally create that /j/ sound.
It's one continuous sound, there's no break
between the vowel sounds.
Let's look at another example.
Can you hear that /w/ sound in there?
The most important thing to keep in mind
while you're linking sounds together
is we're trying to create just one long continuous sound.
There's no pause, right? The sound flows
from one sound to the next.
And when we link vowel sounds, one of these two
sounds will naturally occur if the sound is unbroken.
Whether to add the /j/ or the /w/ sound
will depend on which vowels are being linked.
So the /j/ sound is added between words
that end in the long /iː/
and words that start with the short /æ/, right?
Now you could write down and memorise
all of these linking sounds which is great,
I really think that you should just try and hear
those sounds between the words.
The added sound should flow and it should make it
possible to say the two sounds without pausing.
It's pretty easy to hear the incorrect option
or even to feel it yourself if you say it out loud,
it doesn't make sense to add /w/ between 'I asked'
because your mouth has to come into this very tight,
small position, right?
It doesn't really make sense, whereas the /j/ sound
helps us to flow between 'I asked'
Let's try a few more examples together.
I'm going to say two words separately
and I want you to link them.
Say them out loud wherever you are,
decide whether you need to use the /j/ or the /w/ sound
to link these words, right? You need to say it out loud.
Ready?
Did you add the /j/ sound?
That's correct. What about
Again, the /j/ sound and notice that high ends with a -gh
but it actually ends with a vowel sound.
A little tricky, huh?
This one is the /w/ sound. Did you get that?
The /j/ sound.
One more.
This all makes sense, right? Just practise
combining these vowels out loud, all right?
You can say them, you can whisper them,
you can yell them,
whatever makes you say it out loud,
pull these vowel sounds together
and practise using those linking sounds.
And while you're at it, can you think of any other
examples where you can add linking sounds
between two vowels?
If you can think of some examples,
add them to the comments and don't forget to include
the linking sound that you're using to connect
those vowels.
See if you can write a few in the examples
and I'll come down and check them in a little while.
Now there's an interesting little rule here
for British English pronunciation
and Australian English pronunciation
which is how I speak.
There's actually a third sound that you can link
between vowels,
the /r/ consonant sound.
The linking /r/ doesn't occur in American English
pronunciation because the /r/ consonant sound
is always pronounced at the end of a word
whereas
in British English or Australian English, it's not.
Let's look at the number four as an example.
It's pronounced
in American English and
in British English or Australian English.
You don't hear that consonant sound at all.
Now I talk about these pronunciation differences
between British and American English
in this lesson here if you want to go a bit further.
But the reason why it's important now is the
/r/ linking sound occurs between vowels
in British English pronunciation.
All right, so look at this example.
Now in British and Australian English pronunciation,
you don't hear that /r/ sound at the end
when it's pronounced. The final sound of that word is
a vowel sound, it's /ɔː/ as in 'door'.
So technically here I'm linking
two vowel sounds together.
And we do that with the linking /r/.
In American English, this is just the standard
consonant to vowel linking but in British English,
we actually have to add that sound.
It's not there when we pronounce this word in isolation,
all right?
Let's practise some more.
Now this linking /r/ sound probably makes quite a bit of
sense to you since the letter itself is actually there.
But I just wanted to highlight
how this happens in British English
and Australian English.
I'm wondering if you can think of any more
examples like this.
Can you think of any where you add or I would add
an /r/ linking sound between two vowels?
If you can think of any more examples,
add them to the comments.
So let's practise with a few example sentences now.
I'll put a sentence right up here
and I'm going to read it aloud for you.
Listen for the extra linking sounds
and try to hear them yourself.
But I also want you to say the sentence out loud,
see if you can feel
which sound is the correct sound.
Saying it yourself is going to help you to feel that
transition between the vowel sounds, right?
Practise as much as you can out loud and as
exaggerated as you can.
All right there you have it! Over the past three lessons,
we've covered three important areas
of connected speech in English:
consonant to vowel;
consonant to consonant; and now
vowel to vowel.
Now you really have a good understanding
of connected speech in English,
how it works
where it happens and how you can use linking
to speak more fluently and just sound more natural
as you speak, even speed up your speech in some ways.
So let me know in the comments if you've
enjoyed these lessons about connected speech
and if there are any other pronunciation lessons
that you want me to teach you.
Just remember that all of this takes practice.
You can't expect to just suddenly wake up
and perfectly link sounds in English.
It takes regular practice.
Both your ears and your mouth.
My imitation lessons are a great place to practise
so you can test out your linking skills
right here in this lesson
or you can check out that one there,
which I've picked out especially for you.
I'll see you in there!