How to RELAX your ACCENT Part 1 Connected Speech Linking in English

Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!

I’ve got an awesome lesson for all of you today.

I have got an awesome lesson for all of you today.

What do you notice about the pronunciation

of these two sentences?

I say them quite differently.

Same sentence, quite different.

The first time, really naturally.

Just like I’d say it to my friends.

The second was a little awkward, very clear but

a little like a robot, don’t you think?

Not how I would normally speak anyway.

Natural English pronunciation is

definitely not spoken perfectly.

Words reduce, they contract and they link together.

These are the secrets of natural, relaxed and

generally a pretty cool English pronunciation.

Now I will warn you that this lesson is advanced

pronunciation practice. Now anyone can give it a go,

anyone can practise

but I want you to know that it’s not easy.

It takes practise speaking out loud,

listening carefully to native speakers and imitating them

Pronouncing English words correctly is

absolutely necessary for all of you.

But to really take your English speaking skills

up to the next level,

well we need to focus on your natural pronunciation

so that you can reduce your accent a little

and sound a bit more relaxed when you’re

chatting in English.

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All right, let’s get back to our lesson.

Let me say it again, English pronunciation is

definitely not perfect.

So we’re going to rough things up a little bit this lesson.

I want you to loosen up, let your hair down

and go with the flow because you just won’t

hear a native English speaker say:

No no no no no no no.

In English, words bump into each other.

Sometimes sounds change.

New sounds can get added in.

And sometimes

sounds are dropped or just completely eliminated.

Natural pronunciation is not something that you can see

you can’t read it in a sentence and know

exactly how a native English speaker would say it.

So speaking naturally is really only a skill

that you can develop through practise.

By listening to native English speakers

and by trying it yourself

and that is exactly what we’re going to do today.

We’ll take a close look at linking an important part

of natural pronunciation and I’ll explain how it works,

where it happens and how you can use linking

to reduce your accent and sound

more natural when you speak English.

Linking is an important part of connected speech

in English and there are three main categories to it.

Now there’s a lot to cover here so in this lesson,

we’re going to go over

consonant to vowel linking.

And I’ll go into more detail about vowel to vowel and

consonant to consonant linking in another lesson soon.

Now if you haven’t subscribed to the channel yet,

please do click the subscribe button and the bell

so that I can tell you when the next lesson is ready.

And if you need to,

just turn on the subtitles down there too.

The most important thing when talking about

linking in English is that we’re talking about sounds

not letters.

Sounds that you can hear

but not the letters that you can see

and this is really important to keep in mind.

We’re talking about consonant sounds linking

to vowel sounds in quite particular situations.

When a word ends in a consonant sound and it’s

followed by a word that starts with a vowel sound,

we can link them.

Consonant to vowel linking happens all the time

with phrasal verbs like this.

Now what happens all the time in English is

that a word that ends in a vowel letter on paper

can sometimes end in a consonant sound when spoken

Can you think of any examples of this?

If you can, write some of them in the comments.

So here, ‘like’ and ‘it’ can link together.

Now if we just look at the spelling,

‘like’ ends in E, a vowel letter.

But the E is silent in this word so ‘like’ actually ends

in a /k/ sound, a consonant sound.

So with linking sounds, don’t look for the letters,

listen for the sounds. This is the first clue to help you

link words together when you’re speaking English.

All right let’s keep going!

With consonant to vowel linking, the sounds blend

or they push together and this is how

native English speakers speak so quickly.

We push our words together because

it makes it so much quicker and so much easier

to say them.

When one word ends with a consonant sound

and the next word starts with a vowel sound,

we can push them together.

The two sounds come together

so that they flow.

So can you tell me, looking at this sentence,

where there is a word that ends in a consonant sound

followed by one that starts with a vowel sound?

There are two examples here.

Both of these vowels are unstressed so the

sound actually reduces to a schwa sound.

And if you’re not sure about what a schwa sound is,

then check out this video next, it will explain everything.

But the /k/ sound from the end of ‘like’

joins with the vowel schwa.

Hear how quick that is

when you push those sounds together?

There’s no space between these sounds.

Don’t take a breath, don’t do anything like that,

just combine the two sounds together

until they roll smoothly from the /k/ to the

sound so it becomes like one word.

Now ‘slice of’ follows the same rules.

You blend the /s/ from the end of ‘slice’

and connect it to the schwa sound at the start of ‘of’

which is pronounced

and so it’s smooth and connected,

moving from one to the other.

Okay so I think the rules are pretty clear here,

consonant sounds at the end of a word linked to a word

following that starts with a vowel sound.

Simple, as long as you remember

that you’re listening for sounds

rather than looking for letters, you’ll be fine.

So right now I want to practise with you a little but first

I want you to think of your own sentence

that includes an example of consonant to vowel linking.

See if you can write your sentence in the comments.

Practise saying it out loud.

And if you see other people’s sentences down there,

then try and practise with them as well.

Practise the linking between those sounds.

Okay so I’m going to put a sentence right here

on the screen and then I want you to listen to me

say each sentence.

Listen carefully because I want you to

listen to how these words connect,

where do they link, when they’re spoken.

I want you to look at the sentence, listen to me say it

and try and work out where this linking can happen.

You can write it in the comments so that looks like this.

Using little dashes to link those words together.

Okay ready! It’s hot today!

Okay.

Where are the linking opportunities?

Did you get those?

Did you hear how those sounds push together?

So the words move together in your sentence.

Now speed it up, I want you to say it with me.

Are you ready?

Nice one!

Okay!

Say it with me.

So where in this question can we link words together?

For sure.

And

Where are those linking opportunities?

Or even it might reduce down to

There are lots of opportunities to connect

these consonants to these vowel sounds, right?

It’s really addictive when you start, isn’t it?

You’ll notice all of these opportunities to link

words together all the time.

And you haven’t even seen part two or part three

of these lessons, right? I’ve got more.

Can you say it with me?

So we’re replacing the full vowel sound of ‘of’

with the schwa.

Nice!

Well I hope that you’ve enjoyed this lesson so far.

Remember that this is part one, there’s more coming.

And while it may seem complicated at first,

this kind of linking is quite straightforward

when you slow down and you think about it.

You’ll notice that lots of small and very common words

start with vowels, prepositions, articles, conjunctions

these are all great places to start practising

linking and connected speech.

Remember to practise with your ears by imitating

and copying a native English speaker.

This is a really great way to improve your linking sounds

and your natural expression.

My imitation lessons are a great place to start

practising connected speech

so you can check them out right here.

And with a little practice, you’ll start feeling that flow

and that rhythm in your sentences and it will start to

impact on the way that you speak English naturally.

Don’t forget that part two and part three

of these lessons are coming soon,

so in the meantime while you’re waiting,

why don’t you check out these lessons here?

That one in particular, where I’ll show you how to focus

on your pronunciation and natural English expression

through imitating.

Thanks for all of your hard work today

and all of your comments

that you’ve been writing down there.

Make sure you say ‘hi’,

you are amazing, I’ll see you next week.