In spoken English, we don't have big spaces between the words.  We blend sounds together to move from one word to another quickly.  This allows us to keep to the rhythm of English sentence stress.    This linking of words happens most often when one word ends in a consonant and the next starts with a vowel and we connect these words together. 

The glottal stop An important feature of informal spoken English is the glottal stop. This happens when we tighten our throat and stop the air getting out. This means the / t / sound at the end of words is not pronounced.

A Valentine’s Day Surprise - part 2 The story continues...It’s two days after Valentine’s Day, you are waiting on the train station platform on your way home from work and the woman standing next to you is making a phone call.  Listening exercise with the transcript.

It's Valentine's Day, you are on the train on your way home from work and the women sitting opposite you is making a phone call. Can you work out what the phone call is about? You can only hear one-side of the phone call and there is background noise of the train as well.

In this blog post we are going to look at when the T sound is not pronounced in spoken English. This ‘elision’  happens most often with words that end in – t.  The t at the end of a word is often not pronounced when the next word begins with a consonant.

It’s Friday night….you have a message on your phone. Listen to my message and write down everything that you can hear. Remember – this is natural conversational speed English. It is fast. I am leaving you a quick message as I travel home from work. The sound quality is not great, everyday life is not usually silent in the background. You will not hear all the words, as I don’t say them all fully. What is important is to work out what the gist of the message is.

This week we are going to look at two more phrases that are very common in English, These are two basic and very common phrases. You will hear these phrases in any place that you can buy things, in shops, bars, restaurants, ticket offices and lots of other locations.