Chapter 2. Word Connections CD 2 Track 35

As mentioned in the previous chapter, in American English, words are not pronounced one by one. Usually, the end of one word attaches to the beginning of the next word. This is also true for initials, numbers, and spelling. Part of the glue that connects sentences is an underlying hum or drone that only breaks when you come to a period, and sometimes not even then. You have this underlying hum in your own language and it helps a great deal toward making you sound like a native speaker. Once you have a strong intonation, you need to connect all those stairsteps together so that each sentence sounds like one long word. This chapter is going to introduce you to the idea of liaisons, the connections between words, which allow us to speak in sound groups rather than in individual words. Just as we went over where to put an intonation, here you're going to learn how to connect words. Once you understand and learn to use this technique, you can make the important leap from this practice book to other materials and your own conversation. To make it easier for you to read, liaisons are written like this: They tell me the dai measier. (You've already encountered some liaisons in Exercises 1-38, 1-49, 1-53.) It could also be written theytellmethedaimeasier, but it would be too hard to read.