Stop Consonants

Which sentence sounds more natural, 1 or 2?

She has a black dog.

Linking happens when sounds are joined together, in this case, the sounds of different words.  Linking might be the reason why you have trouble separating words when you’re listening to a fluent speaker. Spoken English is different from written English because fluent speakers want to save breath and time when they speak.

If a word ends in a stop consonant and the next word begins with the same or different stop consonant, we hold onto the air after saying the first letter and then release it into the second one. The sounds blend together because we don’t say two distinct sounds.

For example, in She has a black dog, the word black ends in /k/ and the word dog starts with /d/. So we say /k/ without finishing the sound and then use the same breath to say the /d/: She has a black dog.

Note that there is no linking across different thought groups.

For example, in Because the hospital is short-staffed / but at least they pay him well, there are two thought groups. So we don’t link short-staffed and but.

We stop the air to pronounce the /d/, do not fully release it because /d/ is a final stop consonant, pause, and then pronounce the /b/.

To learn more about linking stop consonants, go to the Resources page to watch helpful videos.

Practice: Where does the linking happen in these lines? Listen and then check your answers.

1. You look tired.
2. I might not get to use the photocopier right away.
3. I usually decide what I’m wearing the night before.
4. That’ll make a big difference.
5. The first thing I always do is put water in the kettle to make tea.
6. He sleeps like the dead.
7. He usually just grabs a banana, has some toast, and downs 2 cups of coffee.