English, baby!

Stressing the Right Word in a Sentence

Date: Jan 27 2009

Author: nad1a

Lesson

In a previous lesson, we saw how intonation can change the underlying meaning of a whole sentence. Over here, we will see which words are important to be pronounced well and clearly and which can be “swallowed”.

Languages, like French and Italian, are considered syllabic languages and each syllable is pronounced clearly, and takes up roughly the same amount of time. English is a stress-timed language and syllables may last different amounts of time. Only main words are stressed and given importance in pronunciation and small non-essential words are reduced and glided over.

Consider these two sentences:

The banks say their programs offer convenience.
I'm just calling to let you know that I'll be a little late to the game tomorrow night.

Both sentences need the same time to be pronounced, despite the second one containing more syllables. This is because they have the same amount of stressed words.

We usually stress content words, carrying the essential meaning, like nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs. When we pronounce these words we raise our voice there or may prolong the sound. The small connecting words, usually called grammatical or structure words, like auxiliary and modal verbs, pronouns, articles, and prepositions are not stressed but rather sound like one long unstressed word.

You can check this for yourself while you watch a movie in English, some TV show or the news or speak to a native speaker. Notice the way they stress the key words only and the rest of small words are scrunched down. You may also want to try this with any of the Englishbaby lessons, on here. This will improve not only your listening comprehension but also your pronunciation, when you start stressing words correctly, yourself.

Further reading:
More help on Pronunciation

Comments

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Nikos

Greece

Thanks for being there for all of us!

sweetme

Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

thank you it was very good lessen

Layz

China

Oh yeah ,it’s good for me! Thanks

FatalGirl

Ukraine

thanks for the lesson

EDITH ^.~

United States

It's enlightening. Thanks!

iyezi

China

useful,thx

tiffintime

Sri Lanka

Thanks for these reference links on rhythm in speech. I believe that this a problem that we often have here in South Asia. People may be able to write quite decent English, but may not always have the correct speech rhythm due to the influence of their native language.

Professor Stahlke's talk was very interesting. He says that people first acquire their native language rhythm while they are still in their mother's womb! He goes on to recommend the use of jazz chants to teach English speech rhythm.

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=59397&docid=146250

ZOOM78

Egypt

thank u for your information u gave us but if u have any information about the rules which control the pronunciatin of english language .iwill be so grateful to u like letter a have more seven way in pronunciatin

david.chen10

China

I know a lot of English words but pronounce them incorrectly.how can I improve it?thanks!

yawar

Pakistan

yeah thank, it was a good lesson to me,

Kujtesa

Serbia and Montenegro

thank you , it is a very good lesson for me

yasmeen123

Saudi Arabia

thank for you

klara92

Iraq

nad1a

Greece

Brian,

assuming that they already know what a noun or a verb is from their first language, that's not what you have to explain at all. but raising students' awareness of the stress and rythm of English will make them better speakers AND listeners.

Brian USA

United States

As a teacher in China, it would take the entire class period to explain nouns and verbs and the other grammatical vocuabulary.. Just say the sentence and let the native listener figure out the details.. dont confuse yourself with these details