Ever noticed how English speakers give rhythm to their sentences, stressing some parts more than others? This page will introduce you to some of the basic phonological principles of connected speech which will help you understand why English speakers talk the way they do and how you can improve the fluency of your speech.

Knowing how to pronounce an individual word is important; however, perhaps even more important is to know how to pronounce a word in context, in normal, fluent and connected speech. Indeed, the pronunciation of a word can vary depending on the words that surround it and on its importance in a sentence. Pronouncing an English sentence spontaneously is not simply achieved by adding the individual pronunciations of the words. If it was the case, people would speak like robots, simply saying one word after the other. As Kim Ballard points out: "When we write, we leave gaps between words so it is easy for the reader to process the text. [But] When we speak, it is unnecessary to leave pauses between words much of the time and it would sound unnatural if we did" (234). In a sentence, the pronunciation of a word is influenced by the presence and pronunciation of the others around it. For instance, in any sentence, while some words are pronounced loud and clear (strong pronunciation), others are pronounced less clearly (weak pronunciation); words sometimes sound as if they were all linked together and every now and then, some of the syllables seem to have disappeared or changed...

Listen to this spontaneous recording of the sentence below; do you notice how some parts of the sentence are clearer than others?

"Pilton was a small town of some 20,000 inhabitants in the south-west of England."

Words such as "was a," "of some," or "in the," for instance, are not pronounced very distinctly. They seem to have been reduced, linked and squashed together so to speak. There is a reason for this. What is it? In a word: laziness! Because English is a "lazy" language, instead of pronouncing all the words clearly, English speakers choose to pronounce only some of the words and syllables distinctly. In fact, choosing to pronounce only parts of a sentence clearly is not simply a matter of laziness but, rather, of efficiency. Indeed, take a look at the sentence above. What are its important lexical elements, i.e., which words carry the meaning of the sentence? Clearly, those words are: Pilton; small town; 20,000 inhabitants; south-west; England. Saying those words clearly is important because these are what the sentence is about. The other words in between simply hold the sentence together, so to speak. They don't need to be pronounced clearly. You will find that good English speakers give rhythm to their sentences by hopping from important word to important word, which gives their speech a flow that makes it easy to follow because it puts forward what is most important.

In the following tabs you will find further explanations of what happens to words in normal, fluent connected speech, with exercises to help you make your speech flow more spontaneously.

How come the pronunciation of words like 'can', 'do', 'and', etc. sometimes seems to vary?

English speakers choose to emphasise only the important lexical elements of the sentence while squashing, linking and weakening many of the grammatical tools that hold the sentence together.

When you look up in a dictionary the pronunciation of words such as can, do, as, and, you, from, his, at, and so on, you will be given the ‘full’ or ‘strong’ pronunciation, which is how they are pronounced isolated:

can, do, as, and, you, from, at, to, than, for...

You will sometimes hear these words pronounced like that, especially if they are at the beginning or the end of a sentence or if they carry important meaning in a sentence, such as in:

Of course you can!       Oh yes, I do like chocolate.       Sweet as!       Where do you come from?

Most of the time, however, when within a sentence, those words are simply grammatical tools holding the sentence together. Usually, those tools are ‘weakened’ or ‘reduced:’ “when these function words are produced in sentences their vowel is normally pronounced as /Ə/” (Kennedy, 40):

can, do, as, and, you, from, at, to, than, for...

Listen to the the following sentences, and notice how the words that are not in bold are weakened like above:

You can do it!

Why do you think so?

As long as it's OK with you.

It's touch and go.

Don't you think so?

He's from Yorkshire.

Not at all.

It's up to her.

He's taller than me.

It's going to last forever.

The examples above showed you how can and do are often reduced, but these are not the only auxiliary verbs that are often reduced. The same is true of could, will/would, be and have. Just as we have seen with the words above, if they are at the beginning or the end of a sentence, they will usually be pronounced strong (as in "are you waiting for me?" or "would you like a cup of tea?") but in most other cases they are weakened. This weakening is even frequently visible in informal writing; "they're looking for you", "I've seen her before", "I'd like to meet her"... In those three cases, particularly the last one, the weakening is such that part of the word, a sound, disappears; this disappearance is called elision,a phenomenon that is explored and explained in the next tab.

Why is linking important?

English language learners sometimes have trouble understanding a native English speaker because they expect to hear every word said separately. Also, English language learners sometimes think that in order to be understood and speak fluently they should make sure every word is pronounced separately, with a short pause between one word and the next. In fact, they should think the other way around. Indeed, in order not to break the natural flow of a sentence, English speakers constantly link words and expect other speakers to do so as well. Being aware of the kinds of links that exist can thus be helpful both to achieve more fluent and spontaneous speech and to understand English speakers better.

Consonant+Vowel?

If a word that ends in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, then the two will usually be phonetically ‘linked', as with "not at all" for example, where the three words are linked by the /t/ sounds at the end of ‘not' and ‘at'. Likewise, although in British English you usually cannot hear the /r/ sound at the end of most words (for example "car", "hair", "centre", "near" or "there"), if a word beginning with a vowel follows a word ending in ‘r', you will usually hear that sound (as in "car accidents"). Click on each of the blue fragments to hear them pronounced.

Vowel+Vowel?

Sometimes, "when two vowel-sounds meet at a word boundary" English speakers "insert an extra sound in order to mark the transition between the two vowels" (Dalton & Seidlhofer, 30). It is difficult to say two unrelated vowel sounds one after the other without stopping; in order not to break the natural flow of a sentence, English speakers add discrete /j/, /r/ or /w/ sounds here and there between two words. Thus, in "Now I understand" (click to listen) you can hear that a /w/ sound links the words ‘now' and ‘I' while a /j/ sound links ‘I' and ‘understand'.

Try to say the sentence fragments below (using the italicised linking sound in-between underscores (_x_)). Once you have tried to say each fragment, click on each one to listen to a recording.

     Asia—r—and America

    Who—w—else?  

    Quick! Go—w—after the dog! 

    You should definitely see—j—it.
  
    It’s really­—j—exciting.

“When we speak at normal speed, individual sounds segments follow each other so quickly that the tongue may never reach the ‘ideal position’ connected with a particular sound.” (Dalton & Seidlhofer,28)

“In the company of particular sounds or words, and sometimes simply through language change, some sounds can disappear. This is called elision” (Kennedy, 37).

This phenomenon happens all the time: people even write “Rock ’n Roll” or “Pack ’n Save” where you can see that the “and” has been reduced simply to the /n/ sound. One could say that the redundant sounds and unimportant unstressed syllables (often with the sound /Ə/) are sometimes eliminated from speech.

Elision even happens inside words. For instance, the sections that are crossed out in the following words are often not pronounced in normal fluent speech: comfortable, sepərate, grandmother …(click on each word to hear it pronounced).

"When we minimize our effort, the articulation of sounds is weakened: perhaps we do not close our lips fully for a /p/, or the friction of a /(voiced th)/ may almost disappear. If the articulation is weakened too much, the sound may disappear altogether. . . . Naturally, it is the vowels from unstressed syllables which are the first to go in not-so-careful pronunciation: the schwa in many final unstressed syllables disappears." (Dalton & Seidlhofer, 29)

As you can see, elision and assimilation are yet another proof that native English speakers do not rigorously pronounce every word clearly; when a sequence of sounds is difficult to pronounce in normal fluent speech, one of those sounds is often naturally changed or deleted for ease of communication. If you, as an English language learner, are sometimes finding it difficult to pronounce some sequences, perhaps you are trying to force yourself unnecessarily; try to say that sequence normally, fluently, and your tongue might just do the natural kind of assimilation or elision that native speakers do. Being aware of these phenomena should help you gain confidence when speaking.