Speaking and Understanding

In my classes, I often have conversations with students about speaking like a native speaker and about understanding native speakers. Many students say that native speakers are hard to understand and that they hope to pronounce English like native speakers some day. This post explains one important fact about native English speech that will help learners pronounce and understand English.

Connected Speech

Many students say that natives speak English very quickly. This is true, but it is not the only reason that they are often difficult to understand. Another thing that makes native English is a thing called connected speech.

The What

What is connected speech? Connected speech is connections between words when we speak. Native speakers of English will connect shorter words with longer words. This means that two words will often sound like one, or three words will sound like one long word. Usually, function words are connected with content words. Function words are small words that have some meaning. Content words are words that have most of the meaning in a sentence.

The Why

There are two reasons why we use connected speech in English. One reason is that English has a music, or rhythm that is made by pronouncing some words and parts of words more strongly, (with more stress), and others more weakly, (with less stress). Often, the little function words do not have stress and are pronounced weakly. The second reason for using connected speech is that it is less work for the tongue and mouth. Imagine, when you have to pronounce each word separately and carefully, your mouth and tongue must do a lot of work. If you use connected speech, your tongue and mouth will do less work because you can slide like a snake from one word to the next.

Connected Words

I will show you an easy example to explain these two reasons. First, we will think about the music of English.

The roses are beautiful this year.

This sentence has two function words: “the,” and “this.” It also has one content word, a verb, that will not have much stress: “are.” The first three words in the sentence will be connected to sound like one word:

the-roses-are.

The word “beautiful: will be pronounced separately and clearly because it is a content word. The words “this” and “year” will be connected because “this” is a function word:

this-year.

When this sentence is spoken by a native speaker, it will sound like it only has three words in it.

The-roses-are beautiful this-year.

Can you see the rhythm? Can you say it out loud and hear the music?

Less Work

The second reason for connected speech is very difficult to show in writing. But think about the example sentence. Pronounce it without connected speech. Then try to pronounce it using connected speech.

The roses are beautiful this year.

The-roses-are beautiful this-year.

Can you imagine how the tongue and mouth will move through the words smoothly if the sounds are familiar? One way to imagine it is a chain. The stressed content words: “roses,” “beautiful,” and “year” are large links, or parts of a chain. The unstressed words: “the,” “are,” and “this,” are smaller links in this chain. The chain, of course, is the sentence.

Review

For a little review, remember that one reason English speakers are difficult to understand and copy is connected speech. Connected speech is used because of the music of English, and because it is less work for the mouth and tongue.

Your Turn

Now it is your turn. Can you give some examples of words that are connected in spoken English? Leave comments with your ideas below this post.