I tried to read novel and could read every word correctly. But one thing that hindered me was the "connected speech or linking in English". I listened to the audio version of the book but as I listened, some parts they connected the words together but for some parts they didn't.
For example: " the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green…" . As I heard in the audio, I dont know why they didn't link "deep" with "and" but just "deep" + p + "and"
And example 2: "trees—willows fresh and green with every spring…." : should I link "with" with "every" to become "with devery"
My main problem is I dont know where I should link the words and not link (I know all the rules of linking C+V…but sometimes the speaker didn't link C with V that made me confused) , because of that I couldn't read smoothly. And as I listen to the audio, I found it hard to figure out whether the speaker/reader was using linking or not because it 's hard to detect the linking in the audio voice.
Thank you very much for your explanation.
Best Answer
In spoken English, linking is pretty much universal, which is what gives English its sing-songy quality. This means that pauses can be used to create significant emphasis.
For example, without adding emphasis, I would read the phrase ...runs deep and green... as:
(notice that I dropped the /d/ from "and"). But if I wanted to emphasize that the river was deep, I would pause between "deep" and "and":
If I wanted to emphasize that it was both deep and green, then I would pause both before and after "and" (which would also see the return of /d/):