he more common an English word is, the less energy native speakers use saying it. Consonants disappear. Will becomes l and her becomes er. Vowels weaken, and can becomes /kn/. The preposition of is hidden between syllables, and cup of olives becomes
/k p va lvz/. These reductions cause problems, because the most reduced pronunciations are for the most common words. (Students should realize that the pronunciation only seems to be careless. The pronunciation is of course perfect for NSs, and is scientifically predictable.)

What are some of these words? To begin with, what is the most common word in the English language? That's right, the. Here are the top 10: the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, and I. About 25% of all English words, both spoken and written, are these words. They are almost always unstressed, so the vowel is reduced to a schwa. But Korean students usually pronounce these words with stress and with the vowel pronounced as it is written.

The reduction of unstressed syllables allows them to be "squeezed" between the content words. The sentence Joe called home and Joe will have called her at home take about the same length of time to say.