Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy, and today is our 197th episode.

We recently released our new e-book about linking words, and to celebrate, I asked a few students of mine to participate

in a little before and after audio. Linking is one of the key skills to sounding fluent in English.

It allows you to speak in complete thoughts without sounding choppy or broken. Some English teachers also call this blending or even

using liaisons when speaking. I'm not a big fan of using the term blending because some

of linking, for example, linking vowels isn't created by blending sounds. Today we'll listen to Kumiko, linking vowels into

other vowels. Kumiko is a native Japanese speaker, and she was doing what many non-native

English speakers do. She was often using a glottal stop between vowel sounds. A glottal stop is that break in sound you hear when you say, uh-oh.

Uh-oh.

Now, English does use glottal stops, even when linking sounds and even when linking vowels from time to time. The difference is when and how

they're used. For instance, it's very common to use a glottal stop for the T sound in the word

can't, as in I can't go, and I can't think about it. With vowels, breaking words apart by using a glottal stop is a way to

add emphasis to a word. If I want to link you into only, nice and smoothly, I'll say you only. That was, you only. But if I want to add stress to the word

only, I can break it from you with a glottal stop. You only live once. You only live once.

Let's get back into linking without using the glottal stop, though.

You see, there's a trick to that nice fluent link in you only.

What is that trick?

I added a tiny W sound between the words you and only.

You only.

Try it.

You only.

...