Fusion (phonetics)

Okay kiddo! So, have you ever heard of fusion before? No? Well, it's a way that some sounds can combine together when we talk. Let's use an example.

Say you have two different sounds: "p" and "t". When we say "pit" we have to switch from making a "p" sound to making a "t" sound really quickly. So quickly that our tongue and lips don't have time to fully separate the two sounds. This causes the two sounds to fuse together, or combine.

So instead of saying "p" then "t", it sounds like one sound that's kind of in between the two. This is fusion! It's when separate sounds become one sound because they're said so quickly that you can't hear them separately.

This happens a lot in English when we say words with clusters of consonants, like "spl" or "str". We don't say each of those sounds separately, we blend them together with fusion so they become one sound.

Pretty cool, huh? Now you know what fusion means in phonetics!