liaison

In French, liaison is the pronunciation of a linking consonant between two words in an appropriate phonetic and syntactic context. For example, the word is pronounced , the word is pronounced , but the combination is pronounced , with a linking . Liaison only happens when the following word starts with a vowel or semivowel, and is restricted to word sequences whose components are linked in sense, e.g., article + noun, adjective + noun, personal pronoun + verb, and so forth. This indicates that liaison is primarily active in high-frequency word associations (collocations). Most frequently, liaison arises from a mute word-final consonant that used to be pronounced, but in some cases it is inserted from scratch, as in, which is the inverted form of. In certain syntactic environments, liaison is impossible; in others, it is mandatory; in others still, it is possible but not mandatory and its realization is subject to wide stylistic variation. Realization of liaison Silent final consonants may be pronounced, in some syntactic contexts, when the following word begins with a vowel or non-aspirated h. It is important to note that many words with silent final consonants have utterly lost them, e.g. neither the 'n' in million nor the 't' in art are ever pronounced. A liaison should not be made just because a word ends in a silent consonant and the next one starts with a vowel.