Improving our American English pronunciation often involves a focus on correctly producing sounds at the ends of words. For example, many accents leave off certain consonants at the ends of words or devoice those sounds, resulting in mispronunciations and misunderstandings. In general, making sure the ends of your words are clear is a good strategy for being understood. But what about typical American English? The truth is, we have patterns of reducing some sounds at the ends of words, and sliding into the next word. This is called linking. There are several different types of linking. To introduce the idea, let's look at a few common sayings and how we link the words in these sayings. |
Try these phrases with the same linking pattern: Eat yogurt. Bright yellow. Not yet. |
Here are some additional phrases with a dropped h. Is he going? Call him. I've seen her. |