Intro to Linking American English Pronunciation

Today I simply want to introduce
the concept of linking.

I’ve had my blog for
almost two years now,

and have yet to explicitly mention
this in a video as a topic.

It’s high time.

If everything else is
pronounced correctly:

stress, the particular sounds of a word,
but words are not linked together,

it will still sound pretty
strange to native speakers.

It will sound very choppy.

Let’s take for example the sentence,
He told her to go to the park today.

He told her to go to the park today.

He told her to go to the park today.

That last time I said it, I tried to
put a tiny pause between each word.

He told her to go to the park today.

He told her to go to the park today.

Can you tell the difference?

It’s an important first step to
be able to hear the difference.

To native speakers, this tiny gap
between each word sounds very choppy.

He told her to go to the park today.

To me that is very smooth.

Can you hear that difference?

My students sometimes tell me that

when they pronounce wordsand sentences
that way, that it feels very sloppy.

We’ll that’s ok.

If your native language is
really different from English,

then when you pronounce
English correctly,

it might feel very
strange in your mouth.

Don’t be shy about that.

Linking is related to
reduction, or reducing sounds.

What is reduction? As you may
already know from other videos,

words in English will either
be stressed or unstressed.

Unstressed words and
syllables may be reduced.

This means that a sound is
either left out or changes.

For example, the word ‘can’
has the ‘aa’ vowel sound.

But, it might reduce.

I can be there.

Cn, cn.

There the word ‘can’ is actually
pronounced with the schwa sound: cn.

So that is what I mean by reduction.

I say that linking and
reduction are related.

And that is because if you
are reducing something,

you’re either leaving off a sound
or substituting a quicker vowel

in order to make that
word very short.

If you’re making it very short,

you don’t want to make your
phrase longer by adding gaps.

So linking is the idea that you will
take all the words of a sentence

and you won’t put any gaps between
for a smooth and fluid sound.

For example, in the sentence
I can be there by three.

I-c, I-c: you can hear how the
kk sound of the second word

is attached to the
first word: I-c, I-c.

There is no break
between those words.

I can be there by three.

So keep this in mind as you listen to native
speakers and do your best to imitate it.

There will be videos in the future
that will cover specific concepts

in linking and reduction
to help you practice this.

That’s it, and thanks so much
for using Rachel’s English.