CONCEPTMind Your FutureInteractive pronunciation book
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CONCEPTMind Your FutureThese are the symbols you will see in a dictionary. Click any one to hear it. You do not need to memorize them.
English speakers do not put spaces between words. The spaces are on the page only. Pick it up is not three words. It is pi-ki-tup. An old apple is a-nol-dapple.
Two payoffs again. Your speech stops sounding like a list of separate items, and you start being able to hear where words end, which is one of the main reasons connected English sounds like an unbroken stream.
If your language marks word boundaries clearly, you will keep them in English, and each word will start with a small fresh beginning. This sounds careful and unmistakably non-native.
If your language does link, as French does with liaison, the concept is familiar but the rules are different.
And everyone has the listening problem. When you cannot link, you cannot hear links, so pick it up arrives as an unfamiliar single word rather than three familiar ones.
Everyone has the listening problem: if you cannot link, you cannot hear links, so a linked phrase arrives as one unfamiliar word.
The main rule: a consonant at the end of a word attaches to a vowel at the start of the next. Move the consonant across the gap and say the result as one word.
Pick it up becomes pi ki tup. Turn it off becomes tur ni toff. An old apple becomes a nol dapple. Give it a moment becomes gi vi ta moment.
The picture: the words are holding hands. The consonant belongs to whichever vowel is nearest, and it does not care which word it started in.
A second rule that surprises people: Americans add an r between vowels. Law and order becomes lawr and order. The idea of it becomes the idear of it. You do not have to do this, but knowing it happens will stop you being confused when you hear it.
The way in. Rewrite the sentence the way it sounds, then read your own version. Students who see tur-ni-toff produce it. Students who are told to link do not.
Rewrite the sentence the way it sounds, then read your own version. Turn it off becomes tur-ni-toff. The words are holding hands.
Pick anything above, then record yourself saying it. Your recording appears in red over the model in gray. You are comparing shapes, not chasing a score.
Why might a sentence made of words you know still sound like a foreign language?