美音听力与发音小技巧
WelcometoDailyTipsonLearningEnglish.Today’stipisonsoundlinking.
When2identicalorsimilarconsonantsareinarow,mostsoundsarenotpronounced.Forexample,stopPeter.“stop”endsinthesound“p”,and“Peter”beginsinthesamesound.Togetherthewordsarelinkedas“sto-peter”.Thewordsaren’tpronouncedstopPeter.Topronouncetwoidenticalsoundsoneafteranother,wouldsoundlikesomeonestuttering.Englishwordsarealwayslinkedsmoothly.Similarbutnotidenticalsoundssuchasvoicedandvoicelesspairsofconsonantsarealsolinkedinthisway.Forexample,it’sabigcake.“big”beginsinthesound“g”,cakebeginswiththesound“k”.“k”and“g”differonlyinthat“k”isvoicelessand“g”isvoiced.Whentheyarenexttoeachotherinaphrasethey’relinkedsmoothlybynotaspiratingorpronouncingfullythefirstofthe2sounds.ListencarefullyasIreadtheexampleagain.It’sabigcake.Noticehowthefirstsound“g”isnotreleased.Ifthepairofsoundsisreversed,likein“Ilikegoats.”itisthe“k”soundwhichisnotpronounced.Listenclosely.Ilikegoats.Ilikegoats.
There’re8pairsofconsonantsthatdifferonlyinthepresenceorlackofvocalcordvibration.ListenasIgiveoneexampleofsoundlinkingforeachpair.
v,f:IloveFrance.
δ,θ:Let’sbathethreetimes.
z,s:SheisSusan.
з,∫:Thegarageshouldbecleaned.
dз,t∫:Hehasahugechin.
b,p:Putthecapbackon.
d,t:Dadtoldme.
k,g:IlikeGavin.(?)
Itisimportanttoincludethistypeofsoundlinkinginyourspeechifyouwanttoachievefluency.ItisalsoimportanttobeawareofhowthislinkingaffectshowspokenEnglishsounds.Otherwiseyoumaynotunderstandnativespeaker’sspeech.Thishasbeentoday’sdailytip.TuneintomorrowforanotheronlearningEnglish.
