Intrusive sounds are a feature of connected speech. What does intrusion mean? This phenomenon happens in American English when we say two words one after the other and add an extra sound between them to make them easier to say.
Intrusive sounds when linking two vowels:
If one word ends with a vowel and the next word begins with a vowel, there should not be a pause between the words. To accomplish this, for a smoother transition between the vowels, we insert the intrusive sounds y and w between the two vowels. More specifically, this means we add a short y (/j/) sound after a front vowel (like /eɪ/, /i/, and /ai/) and a short w sound after a back vowel (like /ʊ/ and /oʊ/).
Examples:
Intrusive /w/ sound:
- Pronounce go over as “go-wover”
- Pronounce How are you? as “how-warr you”
Intrusive /j/ (y) sound
- Pronounce I ate as “I yate”
- Pronounce he is as “he yis”
For example:
- We yate in. 5. May yI go now?
- Go won. 6. That’s so wamazing!
- They yallow it. 7. We’ll buy yit!
- You know wit. 8. She yate out.
Need help?
Check out these other articles on how to connect your speech more naturally when speaking English:
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