How do you pronounce sentences with consecutive "o" such as 日本語を話す?

Question

I've been listening to some audio of sentences and sometimes I feel like I hear them combine the consecutive "o"s together into a long "o"? Here is two examples of what I hear from different audio sources. You can see that after ご　there is を so double "o". I hear the following two styles of saying this sentence:

1. nihongoo hanasu

2. nihongo o hanasu

In the first example I hear that they just make a long "o" sound like "ou". But sometimes in the audio I hear them pause quickly and emphasize the particle "を". Which way is correct here? I always emphasize the particle "を" but it seems that in this special case it's not as much emphasized when speaking?

Answer 1

I would expect to hear a long o here, because 日本語 ends with a high pitch and makes the を high pitched as well. Other words with a pitch drop before the particle may have a more pronounced を.

Furthermore this is often pronounced as a more "wavy o~" instead of a "long o-", because を is actually not pronounced like お. It's just that the w sound is more subtle than in English. You should be able to hear it here: https://forvo.com/word/~_%E3%82%92%E3%80%80%E3%81%8F%E3%81%A0%E3%81%95%E3%81%84%E3%80%82/#ja

That said the audio sample you were listening to may also be slang, in which case you may have heard 日本語話す.