Catenation is one of the ways speakers join words together. In catenation, a consonant sound at the end of one word joins with a vowel sound at the beginning of the next word.

Example
The two words an + apple become 'anapple' in speech, with catenation of the consonant n and the vowel a sounds.

In the classroom

Learners often have difficulty hearing individual words due to catenation. Specific listening tasks such as counting the number of words heard, dictation, and reading with a cassette recording can help practise this.