One way that you can immediately improve the fluency and overall flow of your English is by paying attention to how you link your words together. Although it’s important to finish your words, not drop word endings, and speak clearly, in everyday speech we normally do tie our words together. When you fail to link your words, you end up sounding (at best) staccato, and (at worst) jarring.
In this short post I’d like to talk about just one type of linking: vowel to vowel. This refers to words that end in a vowel sound followed by words that begin with a vowel sound. When this happens, we tie the two words together by inserting a ‘w’ or ‘y’ sound.
Let’s look at a few examples. Say this sentence out loud:
You always do that!
‘You’ ends in a vowel sound and is followed by ‘always’, beginning with a vowel sound. If you say this sentence several times, faster and faster, you’ll notice that ‘you’ and ‘always’ tend to run together. The sound that links them is a ‘w’.
You-walways
How about this example?
Why is the sky blue?
Assuming you are placing a little bit of stress on ‘is’ and not forming a contraction ‘why’s’, you’ll notice that a ‘y’ sound links ‘why’ and ‘is’ together.
Why-yis
Learn more about linking in Part 5 of the free course at http://bit.ly/free8-partproncourse
Can you think of other examples, and figure out which vowels create a ‘w’ link and which vowels create a ‘y’ link? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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When will we add”W”? for Vowel linking to Vowel?
When will we add”Y”? for Vowel linking to Vowel?
Hi Phanna. I go into greater detail about these linking rules in part 5 of the free course. You can sign up with your name and email in the form to the right and then you can either listen to the program or download the transcript (or both). I hope it will answer your questions! 🙂
Thank you so much teacher