When reading phonetic text, don’t pause between words! Remember that in S4 phonetic text, the single-space gaps between the words do not actually correspond to pauses in speech. Normal speech is delivered in chunks with no pauses between words. Accordingly, as shown in the register example, the end of one word may sound like the beginning of the next one: “isn’t it” is generally pronounced “isn tit”. In the example below, “children” would be written tʃi‛ldr‛n, ending in a Dark-N, if it were not followed by iz, which begins with a vowel. This is called “liaison” (and also “linking”). Also, sometimes, when a word ends in a vowel and the following one begins with one as well, a consonant is added between them to make the speech flow more fluid.
For instance:
ðiiy edʒəkeiʃ‛n əv ðee tʃi‛ldr‛n iz i’mpoot’nt
Note the y added to the end of the first word. This makes the delivery smoother.