Pronunciation
INTRODUCTION TO LINKING At its simplest, linking is the merging of multiple words together until they sound as if they are only one word. Native speakers of English all do this naturally. Linking is an advanced topic for non-native speakers, but learning to correctly link words can result in significantly more fluid and fluent sounding English speech. Failing to link words naturally results in spoken English which may have awkward pauses, extra, unnecessary sounds, and which will sound very foreign to native speakers. Techniques used for linking words depend on specific adjacent sounds where the words meet in the sentence. Blending sounds Blending is smoothly transitioning from the pronunciation of one sound into the next sound. Blending works well for linking from one continuous consonant--a fricative, approximant, or nasal sound--to another different continuous consonant. In the phrase "this month," the 's sound' /s/ blends smoothly into the 'm s...