Linking words in English. An important pronunciation rule

Good afternoon, my name is Maxim, I am an English tutor.

Many beginners to learn English complain about certain difficulties when listening to the speech of native speakers – they cannot single out individual words (whole bundles of words turn into one). In addition, those who want to generally improve their speaking level will not be able to do this either if they neglect the linking rule.

You may have noticed that in English, several words are pronounced as one, without a significant pause between them (in the video below, one phrase is voiced).

For an unprepared listener, speech may sound fast, unintelligible.

There are several rules by which native speakers merge them together, this short phrase used one:

If one word ends with a consonant and the next begins with a vowel, the words are pronounced together.

In fact, we have been using this rule since the very beginning of learning English. We use the articles a/an in such a way that they are followed by a vowel or consonant, so that it is more convenient to attach the article to the word. Because the article is a function word.

We try to link in this way words that carry one idea, that is, we usually do not link whole sentences, but we will almost always link an adjective with a noun or some groups of functional words. For more examples of binding in prepared and unprepared speech, see videobut you can watch or listen to any other fragment and see that it will be observed almost always, except for moments when the speaker wants to emphasize one word that is important for the meaning.

Linking consonants and vowels is a simple technique, which, however, will increase the degree of understanding of the interlocutor and make fast, coherent English speech more understandable to us. Learning to link words is, of course, possible only through repeated repetition, reading texts aloud. You pronounce separate bundles together from the very beginning of learning the language (for example, I live in Russia), but when speaking some less common phrases (for example, it looks like if), you can see that the pace of your speech may differ from native speakers and there are no bundles .

All pronunciation rules, from individual sounds to intonation in texts, are discussed in textbooks, for example, “Advanced Pronunciation in Use”, that is, there is no secret that can be told to you on YouTube. All the features have long been analyzed, in particular, the topic discussed in the article is present in the 26th unit of the textbook. There are also exercises to practice.