Pronunciation: linking words

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"Linking is a feature that belongs to connected speech," Professor Lovegood said that morning. "That is, when we speak naturally we don't pronounce a word, stop, then say the next word in the sentence."

Professor Lovegood turned to the students. "Fluent speech flows with a rhythm and the words bump into each other. To make speech flow smoothly the way we pronounce the end and the beginning of some words can change depending on the sounds at the beginning and end of those words."



Linking is a way of joining the pronunciation of two words so that they are easy to say and flow together smoothly.
When we say a sentence in English, we "link" words to each other. Due to this linking, the words in a sentence do not always sound the same as when we say them individually. Then, if you recognize and use linking, two things will happen:

  1. You will understand other people more easily.
  2. Other people will understand you more easily.
There are two basic types of linking:
  • Consonant ↔ Vowel
  • Vowel ↔ Vowel

To understand linking, it's important to know the difference between vowel sounds and consonant sounds. Here you have a chart of English vowels and consonants:


In this chart, you can see the letters that are vowels and consonants, but the thing is that in linking, what is actually important is the sound. They are often the same, but not always.
For example, look at the word pay. It ends with the consonant letter y but the vowel sound a.



LINKING CONSONANT TO VOWEL

When a word ends in a consonant sound, we often move the consonant sound to the beginning of the next word if it starts with a vowel sound.
For example, in the phrase turn off:

  • We write it like: turn off
  • We say it like: tur-noff
*REMEMBER that it is the SOUND what matters the most.


In another example in a sentence: Can I have a bit of egg?, look at the word have:

  • The letter e (a vowel)
  • The sound v (a consonant)
Thus, we link the ending consonant sound of have to the beginning vwel sound of the next word a.
In fact, we have four consonant to vowel links:



LINKING VOWEL TO VOWEL

When one word ends with a vowel sound and the next word begins with a vowel sound, we link the words with a sort of Y or W sound. It depends on the shape of our mouth at the end of the first word.

  • When the first word ends in [ eɪ / i: / aɪ ], our lips are wide. Then we insert a Y sound at the beginning of the next word:




  • When the first word ends in [ əʊ / u: ], our lips are round. Then, we insert a W sound at the beginning of the next word:


Now, let's try an exercise to see if we have understood how linking works when we speak.




References:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/features/connected.shtml
https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/linking.htm
https://pronuncian.com/introduction-to-linking/
http://englishspeaklikenative.com/phonemes-the-sounds-of-the-english/word-linking/

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