English Pronunciation Linking Consonant to Vowel American Accent
The title of today’s video is wuh tsup. What’s
up? This video is about linking: the specific
case where you take a word that begins with
a vowel or a diphthong and you link it to
the word before that ends in a consonant sound.
Wuh tsup. I’m sure you are noticing that I’m
putting the TS sound, the final consonant
sounds of the first word, and I’m attaching
it to the second word. Tsup, tsup. Let’s look
at this example, which has two cases where
the consonant will link to the next word that
begins with a vowel or diphthong. First, hours.
It’s spelled with an H, but the first sound
is the ‘ow’ as in ‘now’ diphthong. So, if
we’re going to take the consonant sound and
put it at the beginning of that word, we’re
going to be saying ‘nowers’: nowers, nowers.
It’s like we’re making a new word.
Teh - nowers. The next case, a, is going to be the
schwa sound. And we’re actually going to take
the Z sound from the word before: zuh, zuh,
zuh. Teh - nower - zuh - day. Ten hours a
day. So taking the consonant from the end
of one word an putting on the next word that
begins with a vowel or diphthong, will make
your speech sound much more connected, and
much better linked. The T here in ‘what’ comes
between two vowel sounds, so we’re going to
pronounce it like a D. That’s wuh - dai -
thought. Dai – connecting it to the word
‘I’. Wuh - dai. Now let’s reconnect those:
what I, what I, what I, but still think of
the D as beginning dai, dai. That’s what I
thought. This sentence has two words that
begin with vowels, and the words before end
in consonants, so we’ll be linking. Again,
the T is going to be pronounced as a D because
it is between two vowel sounds. Wuh -
dih - zit. Wuh - dih - zit. What is it, what
Wuh - dih - zit. Wuh - dih - zit. What is it, what is it?
In this sentence, we’re going to take
the Z sound and put it at the beginning of
the word anniversary: zanniversary. It’s hih - zanniversary.
It’s his anniversary. And here,
I - mon - the train. I - mon, I’m on, I’m on. I’m on
the train. Here, we’ll take the S sound and
put it at the beginning of the word ‘is’.
Thih - siz - too much. Thih - siz, thih - siz,
this is. This is too much. Here, again
remember, those T’s between vowel sounds will
be pronounced as D’s. Forgeh - dabou - dit.
Forget about it.
That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.