How to RELAX your ACCENT | Part 3 | Vowel Linking in English

Well hey there! I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

This is part three in our pronunciation series

about connected speech.

We've been talking about the way that sounds

link together in spoken English, connecting words.

And sometimes even changing sounds

as words are spoken quite quickly in English.

Today we'll focus on an advanced element

of connected speech,

linking vowel sound to vowel sound - so stay tuned.

Okay as I said, this is quite an advanced

pronunciation lesson, but I absolutely recommend

that you keep watching,

even if you don't consider yourself an advanced student

because understanding how sounds influence

each other and change in spoken English

will allow you to be aware of it.

It will allow you to hear connected speech

when you're listening to native speakers

and help you to understand them more easily.

The way that native English speakers speak

is just not perfect.

You won't hear a sentence where each word is

perfectly separated. Well,

unless you're talking to Siri.

Hey Siri,

how old are you?

I am as old as the Eastern wind

and as young as a newborn caterpillar.

And if you want to sound more fluent

and more natural when you speak English,

then connected speech is a really good place to start.

In the first lesson of this pronunciation series,

I talked about consonant to vowel linking.

It's up here if you haven't seen it.

But I talked about how words that end in a consonant

sound can link to words that follow them

when they start with a vowel sound.

Like this:

In the second video, we went over

consonant to consonant linking.

When words that end in a consonant link

to the following word

if it starts with the same consonant sound.

It makes sense. It does make it easier and quicker

to say sentences when we reduce the number

of sounds that we need to say.

But we can also link consonant sounds to

completely different consonant sounds.

And when that happens, the sounds can change.

Today we're going to go one step further

and I'll show you how to link vowel sounds

to vowel sounds in spoken English.

And this can be a little tricky

so before we get started, I need you to relax.

Don't worry about how these words

are normally spoken. Just take it easy.

Listen to the sounds

and just try to copy the sounds that I make, all right?

Sounds are really influenced by the other sounds

that are around them in a sentence

and natural spoken English is really a skill that you need

to develop through practice

and by listening to native English speakers,

by imitating them or copying them

and trying it for yourself, right?

And that is exactly what we're going to do today.

You're going to learn it, you'll understand it

and then we'll practise together at the end of this lesson

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When we link consonants we often

connect or

blend or even sometimes change

sounds into new sounds.

But linking vowel to vowel sounds is a little different.

We actually add a new sound, a consonant sound,

to link two vowel sounds together,

which might sound a little crazy - I get that.

Emma, isn't the whole point of connected speech

to make it easier and faster to say a sentence?

Yes! Absolutely, and it will make sense soon

once I explain all this to you.

We link vowel sounds when one word ends

in a vowel sound and the next word

begins with a vowel sound.

It can feel kind of awkward or strange to link

two vowel sounds, it's not very natural.

It feels kind of strange, right? A little uncomfortable.

When we link vowel sounds to other vowel sounds,

we actually add a new sound to make it

easier and quicker to keep that sound happening.

All right? But these sounds are not written.

You can't see them and you can't hear them

when you say each word individually,

it's only when they're pushed together.

Now remember, just because a word ends in a vowel,

doesn't mean that it ends in a vowel sound.

You've got to be really careful with linking.

We're talking about sounds not letters.

So you need to be concentrating.

For example, the word 'make'

ends in the letter E, a vowel.

But the final sound is a consonant.

We don't say

we say 'make'. It ends in a consonant sound.

The /k/ sound.

The word 'by' ends in a consonant letter,

but the sound is a vowel,

so we can link 'by' to a word following

if it starts with a vowel.

So don't focus on the letters that you see,

think about the sounds that you hear.

Close your eyes if you need to.

All right, enough talking. Let's look at some examples

and get going here.

Where are the linking opportunities that you see here?

Any opportunities to link vowel sounds.

Which words end with a vowel sound and then

are followed by words that start with a vowel sound?

I'll give you a few seconds to choose.

All right, there are five vowel sounds at the beginning

or end of words in this sentence.

Now since we're focusing on vowel to vowel

linking sound, let's forget about 'of' right now.

That's consonant to vowel linking right there.

There is an extra sound in there if you can hear it.

We have to pay close attention to the vowel sounds here

and the position of our mouths as we make this sound.

We have

So we need to move our mouth quite a bit

between these two vowel sounds.

And when we do that quickly,

if we do that really quickly right now,

That /j/ sound naturally occurs.

As we move quickly between those sounds,

we naturally create that /j/ sound.

It's one continuous sound, there's no break

between the vowel sounds.

Let's look at another example.

Can you hear that /w/ sound in there?

The most important thing to keep in mind

while you're linking sounds together

is we're trying to create just one long continuous sound.

There's no pause, right? The sound flows

from one sound to the next.

And when we link vowel sounds, one of these two

sounds will naturally occur if the sound is unbroken.

Whether to add the /j/ or the /w/ sound

will depend on which vowels are being linked.

So the /j/ sound is added between words

that end in the long /iː/

and words that start with the short /æ/, right?

Now you could write down and memorise

all of these linking sounds which is great,

I really think that you should just try and hear

those sounds between the words.

The added sound should flow and it should make it

possible to say the two sounds without pausing.

It's pretty easy to hear the incorrect option

or even to feel it yourself if you say it out loud,

it doesn't make sense to add /w/ between 'I asked'

because your mouth has to come into this very tight,

small position, right?

It doesn't really make sense, whereas the /j/ sound

helps us to flow between 'I asked'

Let's try a few more examples together.

I'm going to say two words separately

and I want you to link them.

Say them out loud wherever you are,

decide whether you need to use the /j/ or the /w/ sound

to link these words, right? You need to say it out loud.

Ready?

Did you add the /j/ sound?

That's correct. What about

Again, the /j/ sound and notice that high ends with a -gh

but it actually ends with a vowel sound.

A little tricky, huh?

This one is the /w/ sound. Did you get that?

The /j/ sound.

One more.

This all makes sense, right? Just practise

combining these vowels out loud, all right?

You can say them, you can whisper them,

you can yell them,

whatever makes you say it out loud,

pull these vowel sounds together

and practise using those linking sounds.

And while you're at it, can you think of any other

examples where you can add linking sounds

between two vowels?

If you can think of some examples,

add them to the comments and don't forget to include

the linking sound that you're using to connect

those vowels.

See if you can write a few in the examples

and I'll come down and check them in a little while.

Now there's an interesting little rule here

for British English pronunciation

and Australian English pronunciation

which is how I speak.

There's actually a third sound that you can link

between vowels,

the /r/ consonant sound.

The linking /r/ doesn't occur in American English

pronunciation because the /r/ consonant sound

is always pronounced at the end of a word

whereas

in British English or Australian English, it's not.

Let's look at the number four as an example.

It's pronounced

in American English and

in British English or Australian English.

You don't hear that consonant sound at all.

Now I talk about these pronunciation differences

between British and American English

in this lesson here if you want to go a bit further.

But the reason why it's important now is the

/r/ linking sound occurs between vowels

in British English pronunciation.

All right, so look at this example.

Now in British and Australian English pronunciation,

you don't hear that /r/ sound at the end

when it's pronounced. The final sound of that word is

a vowel sound, it's /ɔː/ as in 'door'.

So technically here I'm linking

two vowel sounds together.

And we do that with the linking /r/.

In American English, this is just the standard

consonant to vowel linking but in British English,

we actually have to add that sound.

It's not there when we pronounce this word in isolation,

all right?

Let's practise some more.

Now this linking /r/ sound probably makes quite a bit of

sense to you since the letter itself is actually there.

But I just wanted to highlight

how this happens in British English

and Australian English.

I'm wondering if you can think of any more

examples like this.

Can you think of any where you add or I would add

an /r/ linking sound between two vowels?

If you can think of any more examples,

add them to the comments.

So let's practise with a few example sentences now.

I'll put a sentence right up here

and I'm going to read it aloud for you.

Listen for the extra linking sounds

and try to hear them yourself.

But I also want you to say the sentence out loud,

see if you can feel

which sound is the correct sound.

Saying it yourself is going to help you to feel that

transition between the vowel sounds, right?

Practise as much as you can out loud and as

exaggerated as you can.

All right there you have it! Over the past three lessons,

we've covered three important areas

of connected speech in English:

consonant to vowel;

consonant to consonant; and now

vowel to vowel.

Now you really have a good understanding

of connected speech in English,

how it works

where it happens and how you can use linking

to speak more fluently and just sound more natural

as you speak, even speed up your speech in some ways.

So let me know in the comments if you've

enjoyed these lessons about connected speech

and if there are any other pronunciation lessons

that you want me to teach you.

Just remember that all of this takes practice.

You can't expect to just suddenly wake up

and perfectly link sounds in English.

It takes regular practice.

Both your ears and your mouth.

My imitation lessons are a great place to practise

so you can test out your linking skills

right here in this lesson

or you can check out that one there,

which I've picked out especially for you.

I'll see you in there!