Connected Speech in English

The first thing to understand about speaking English naturally is that it is very different from speaking English clearly. In English, words bump into each other. We reduce words when we’re speaking, contract them, and then mash them together.

That’s what connected speech is: it’s continuous spoken language like you’d hear in a normal conversation. It’s called connected speech because the words are all connected, with sounds from one running into the next.

Types of Connected Speech

• Catenation (Linking)

  A consonant sound at the end of one word gets attached to the first vowel sound at the beginning of the following word. For example: "an apple" becomes "anapple".

  • trip over - tripover
  • hang out - hangout
  • clean up - cleanup
  • get in - getin
  • go out - gout
  • take off - takeoff

• Intrusion

  An extra sound (/w/, /r/, or /j/) is added between two words that end and begin with vowel sounds. For example: "he asked" becomes "heyasked".

  • he asked - heyasked
  • do it - dewit
  • there is - therris
  • I am - Iyam
  • go away - goaway
  • see you - see-you

• Elision

  The last sound of a word disappears, especially "t" and "d" sounds. For example: "next door" becomes "nexdoor".

  • next door - nexdoor
  • most common - moscommon
  • want to - wanto
  • had to - haddo
  • last time - lastime

• Assimilation

  Sounds blend together to make an entirely new sound. For example: "don't you" becomes "don-chu".

  • don't you - don-chu
  • meet you - mee-chu
  • did you - di-djew
  • good night - good-night
  • get you - ged-jew
  • that you - tha-chew

• Geminates

  Two identical consonant sounds at a word boundary are combined to create a longer sound. For example: "single ladies" becomes "single-adies".

  • single ladies - single-adies
  • social life - social-ife
  • hot tea - hottea
  • big girl - big-girl
  • black cat - black-cat

Notice that in none of these cases does the spelling actually change. It’s just the sounds that change when we say them.