Learning English

Tim
Hi. I'm Tim and this is my Pronunciation workshop. Here I'm going to show you how English is really spoken. Come on, let's go inside. Well, here we are in the pronunciation workshop for the final time. Today, let's look back on what we've covered in this series and I'll offer some final tips and words of advice. When we write English, each word is separate; there are spaces between the words. But, that's not how we speak English. If. We. Did. It. Might. Be. Easier. To. Understand. But. We. Would. Sound. Like. Robots. No. When we speak English, although there are some pauses, we mostly bump the words together. And when these words bump into each other certain things can happen that affect the sounds. We've learned that /t/ and /d/ sounds disappear between consonants:

Example
'Mashed potato' becomes /mæʃpəˈteɪtəʊ/.

Tim
Consonant sounds can link with vowel sounds:

Example
'An egg' becomes anegg.

Tim
Certain vowel sounds can link with certain other vowel sounds by adding sounds:

Example
'The shoe is…' becomes the shoe/w/is…

Tim
Two consonant sounds can join together, or twin.

Example
'It takes two' becomes /ɪt:eɪks tuː/.

Tim
Some sounds can change completely:

Example
'Green Park' /griːn pɑːk/ becomes /griːmpɑːk/.

Tim
Unstressed grammar words are often weak:

Example
'I'd have been late' becomes /aɪdəv bɪn leɪt/

Tim
And we've also seen how a little sound, schwa, is important to the rhythm of natural spoken English.

Example
'A piece of cake' /ə piːsə keɪk/

Tim
These are all features of what we call connected speech. Natural speech is full of these features. And for native speakers, these changes happen automatically. The more you can get used to listening to and speaking English, the more naturally they'll come to you too. But my advice is that the most important thing to pay attention to is schwa. Getting schwa in the right place is the first step to getting English pronunciation right. And that, for the last time, is about it from the pronunciation workshop. And always remember that if you want to learn more about pronunciation or other aspects of English, then please visit our website, bbclearningenglish.com. Thank you so much for watching this series and I'll see you soon. Bye bye! Erm, hello? Hello? Erm. I can't get out. What do I do? Help! Help! Oh. Somebody?