词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Linking and Blending in American En

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- another lesson with Lida, our friend Lida Baker¹ from the American Language Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. This time she explains two features of pronunciation that help create the sound of American English -- linking and blending.

BAKER: "Linking refers to the situation where you have a word that ends in a consonant² and the next word starts with a vowel³. And when that happens in English, we don't put any pause between the two words, but instead we link them or connect them so that they sound like one word. And a lot of times when this happens, it's in, for example, two-word verbs -- where you have a verb followed by a preposition, so something like 'come over' becomes 'comeover.'"

RS: "Comeover to my house."

BAKER: "Right. There's a lot of examples I can give you that start with the word 'shut.' For example, 'shut up' becomes 'shutup.'"

RS: "Not very nice."

AA: "No."

BAKER: "Not very nice. 'Shut out' -- 'shutout.'"

RS: "Keep someone away."

BAKER: "'Shut in' -- 'shutin.'"

AA: "Someone who stays home all the time."

BAKER: "And what do we do when the water is running?"

AA: "Shut off."

BAKER: "'Shutoff,' right. So all of those are examples of words that end in consonants⁴ -- the 't' sound -- and the next word starts with a vowel. So we run them together and they sound like one word. Here's a great example where you have a whole sentence where one word ends in a consonant and the next one starts in a vowel: 'put it in a box.' Imagine how that sounds to a person who is learning English. They can read it: 'put-it-in-a-box.' But when we're talking fast, that's not how we say it, right? We say 'putitinabox.'"

RS: "It sounds like 'pudding in a box,' that you eat."

BAKER: "There you go, and it would be very confusing for someone learning English to try to tell those two things apart. Now, linking also occurs when you have words that end in vowels⁵ and the next word begins with a vowel. And in that case, we sometimes insert like a little 'y' sound or a little 'w' sound between them. So an example of that would be something like 'the end of.' That's what we would read. But we say 'thee-YEN-dov."

RS: "Thee-YEN-dov the year."

AA: "Thee-YEN-dov the book."

BAKER: "Right. And here are some phrases where there's a little 'w' sound between the two words: 'you are late.'"

RS: "You're late."

BAKER: "You can contract it and say 'you're' but you can also say 'yew-whar, yew-whar, yew-whaaar.' Hear that 'w'?"

AA: "Uh-huh."

BAKER: "Or 'show-wus, show-wus.' Or 'how-whar you?' It's actually not that hard for people to understand this second case of linking between vowels, but it's the consonant-to-vowel situation where sometimes it's very hard to tell where one word starts and the other word ends.

"Now, blending means that when you have a word that ends in a sound and the next word starts with the very same sound -- and then it's again very hard to tell where one word ends and the next one starts. So, for example, 'bad day,' 'badday.' 'June ninth, Juneninth,' 'hot tea, hottea.' And then there are some very common ones like 'phone number,' 'left turn,' 'orangejuice.' What do you think that is?"

RS: "Orange juice."

BAKER: "Right, very hard to separate the two words. And you know you can tell how normal it is when you hear it done unnaturally⁷. I went to a choir⁸ rehearsal⁹ to hear this big professional choir rehearsing. They were working on 'America the Beautiful.' And the director told them to put a little separation between every word. So what came out was something like this: 'Oh beautiful-uh for spacious¹⁰-uh skies-uh.' You see how unnatural⁶ that sounds?"

RS: "But you're saying it. When you sing it, it sounds a lot different."

AA: "How did it sound when they sang it?"

BAKER: "He told them to sing it that way, because he wanted the audience to be able to make out every word. So he had them over-enunciate on purpose."

AA: "Did it sound OK?"

BAKER: "Well, it made it very easy when they were singing to understand the words, yes. But you would never talk that way. You would say: 'Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber¹¹ waves of grain,' not 'for amber-uh waves-uh of grain-uh.'"

AA: Author and English teacher Lida Baker suggests one way to learn the differences between written and spoken American English is through the Internet -- by listening and reading along with radio scripts. You'll find our programs at voanews.com/wordmaster, and our e-mail address is [email protected]. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

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First broadcast on February 20, 2003

1 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

2 consonant   

n.辅音；adj.[音]符合的

参考例句：

• The quality of this suit isn't quite consonant with its price.这套衣服的质量和价钱不相称。
• These are common consonant clusters at the beginning of words.这些单词的开头有相同辅音组合。

3 vowel   

n.元音；元音字母

参考例句：

• A long vowel is a long sound as in the word"shoe ".长元音即如“shoe” 一词中的长音。
• The vowel in words like 'my' and 'thigh' is not very difficult.单词my和thigh中的元音并不难发。

4 consonants   

n.辅音，子音( consonant的名词复数 )；辅音字母

参考例句：

• Consonants are frequently assimilated to neighboring consonants. 辅音往往被其邻近的辅音同化。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Vowels possess greater sonority than consonants. 元音比辅音响亮。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

5 vowels   

n.元音，元音字母( vowel的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Vowels possess greater sonority than consonants. 元音比辅音响亮。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Note the various sounds of vowels followed by r. 注意r跟随的各种元音的发音。 来自超越目标英语 第3册

6 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

7 unnaturally   

adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地

参考例句：

• Her voice sounded unnaturally loud. 她的嗓音很响亮，但是有点反常。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Her eyes were unnaturally bright. 她的眼睛亮得不自然。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 choir   

n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱

参考例句：

• The choir sang the words out with great vigor.合唱团以极大的热情唱出了歌词。
• The church choir is singing tonight.今晚教堂歌唱队要唱诗。

9 rehearsal   

n.排练，排演；练习

参考例句：

• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。
• You can sharpen your skills with rehearsal.排练可以让技巧更加纯熟。

10 spacious   

adj.广阔的，宽敞的

参考例句：

• Our yard is spacious enough for a swimming pool.我们的院子很宽敞，足够建一座游泳池。
• The room is bright and spacious.这房间很豁亮。

11 amber   

n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的

参考例句：

• Would you like an amber necklace for your birthday?你过生日想要一条琥珀项链吗？
• This is a piece of little amber stones.这是一块小小的琥珀化石。