Advanced Listening Skills: The Art of Linking

When a word ending in a consonant sound is followed by a word beginning with a vowel sound, native speakers often blend them together. For example:Put out sounds like “pu_tout.”Hand in sounds like “han_din.”This is very common with phrasal verbs because most prepositions start with a vowel sound. For example, “in,” “on,” “out,” “off,” and so on.What’s more when we substitute the noun (e.g. homework) for a pronoun (e.g. it), then this goes between the verb and preposition, creating another linking sound.Hand in your homework becomes “Hand it in” which may sound like “Han_di_tin”