Today you're going to learn what is intonation, what is the difference between stress and intonation, why is intonation important?
And then you're going to learn about the rules of intonation and practice your English intonation with me.
Now it's time to start learning about intonation.
Let's start with the first question, what is intonation?
Intonation in English refers to the rise and fall of your voice while you're speaking.
Intonation to convey emotion and meaning.
Intonation plays a crucial role in the expression of questions statements emotions, and it can even change the meaning of words and sentences.
For example, look at this sentence you're leaving.
You can completely change the meaning of this sentence by changing the intonation.
With a rising intonation at the end it sounds like you're maybe a bit surprised, or you're just checking if the person's actually leaving.
For example oh, you're leaving.
With a falling intonation at the end, it sounds more like a statement.
For example, maybe you already know the person's leaving and you're just acknowledging it.
Oh, you're leaving.
As you can see, Intonation completely changes the interpretation of a sentence, making it super important for you to learn.
What is the difference between stress and intonation?
I've included this question because a lot of people think that stress and intonation are the same thing and they're almost interchangeable terms.
But stress and intonation are not the same thing.
However, they are kind of like sisters.
What I mean by that is you'll often find them go together.
So they're not the same thing, but usually they accompany each other.
Stress refers to the emphasis that you place on a word or in a part of a sentence.
For example, if I say really, with a falling intonation at the end, you can still hear that the stress is on the first syllable.
While if I say really now, you can hear that the intonation goes up at the end, but the stress is still on the first syllable.
Now when you change the intonation, notice that the meaning also changes.
Really, with a falling intonation, sounds more like a statement, while really sounds like I'm either asking a question or I'm surprised.
Why is learning about intonation in words important?
Intonation helps to give meaning and emotion to what you're saying.
It's so important for clarifying meanings, expressing your feelings and emotions, as well as managing the flow of a conversation.
Learning about intonation in English will not only help you to convey your emotions and feelings and thoughts, but it will also help you to understand other people's intentions behind what they're saying.
In other words, you can study all the vocabulary and grammar in the world, but if you don't understand how intonation works in English, it can lead to communication problems.
Now let's look at intonation in words and how to use intonation in words.
When it comes to words with just one syllable in English, your intonation will either slide down or slide up when you're speaking.
For example, yes and yes.
Freya has come to say hi.
Hi, baby.
She has a little infection in her eye, so she's a little bit gunky today.
Hi, baby.
Say hi.
Little cutie.
Leave the tea.
Leave the tea alone.
Leave the tea alone.
Yes, sounds like you're asking a question or you're perhaps unsure about something.
It could also indicate that you're about to add extra and further information.
For example, have you finished writing your essay yet?
Yes well, I just need to finish writing the conclusion, but it should only take me about 10 minutes.
When you have a word in English with two or more syllables, your intonation will jump.
For example, never and never.
Notice I'm not saying never.
It's not sliding.
It's never, never.
There's a jump between those two syllables.
Have you ever been to Madrid?
No, never.
Never?
Intonation in sentences.
When you stress words in sentences in English, you'll notice that your intonation rises on those important stressed words.
For example, I need to study.
I need to study.
Notice that the words I and T are very weak here and your tone is very low.
However, notice that your intonation on the important words need and study goes up.
With need, because it's just one syllable, your intonation starts high and then it slides down.
Need with study your intonation goes high on that first syllable because it's stressed and then it lowers.
It jumps down when you say the second syllable, because this is weaker and also it's the end of the sentence.
Study intonation in normal speech.
Typically in normal speech you will find a falling intonation at the end of the sentence.
This indicates that you've finished what you're saying.
For example, he arrived at noon.
You finished your sentence, so your intonation falls on noon.
When you've finished your sentence, you typically end with a falling intonation, which is why noon ends with a falling intonation.
However, if you want to show that you haven't finished speaking yet, you can use a rising intonation.
For example, when I opened the door, I got the fright of my life.
When I opened the door, I got the fright of my life.
So if I ended the sentence on when I opened the door, the other person would be sitting in suspense thinking and and finish the sentence because I ended with a rising intonation.
So to show to the other person, Look, I finished speaking now.
You can end with a falling intonation.
Giving old and new information.
You can use intonation to indicate what is new and old information for your listener.
When you think the information is new for your listener, the intonation at the end of your sentence goes down.
If you think your listener already knows something, or if something's quite obvious, then your intonation will rise at the end of what you're saying.
You can also use rising intonation with information that's a bit redundant.
In other words, it may be something that you've repeated from a person's question, or something repeated that someone said earlier.
For example, What time did Lisa leave?
I heard her leave at about five o'clock.
I heard her leave is redundant information, because the first person said what time did lisa leave?
We're basically repeating a bit of the question.
It's redundant.
It's shared knowledge, shared information.
So your intonation rises.
However, the new information is at five o'clock.
This is new.
Therefore, the intonation goes down at the end.
Alternatively, you can flip this sentence around and the intonation will still stay the same way, because it doesn't matter where these phrases are.
All it matters is what information is there.
So you could say, for example, at about five o'clock i heard her come in.
It sounds weird, sounds a bit like yoda speech, but It's possible because we don't really care where these phrases are in the sentence.
All we care about is whether it's new or old information. genuine and checking for information.
If you believe that you must use a rising intonation at the end of every question, then you are wrong.
Questions in English are usually clear from their grammatical structure.
For example, I could say, you have eaten and we know that this is a statement.
However, have you eaten is more of a question.
We know that because of the grammatical structure.
This means that intonation in questions in English can be very flexible.
You can use different intonation in questions to show different meanings or different types of questions.
If you want to ask a question and you don't know the answer so it's a genuine question then your intonation usually falls at the end.
For example, when's your birthday?
I'm asking you with a falling intonation because I genuinely don't know when your birthday is.
However, if you want to check or clarify something so maybe you already know the answer and you're not 100 sure, or you just want some clarification then your intonation usually rises at the end.
So let's stick with the same question we had before.
Imagine I say when's your birthday and I use a rising intonation at the end.
This sounds more like you've told me your birthday before, but I don't remember when it is exactly.
I've forgotten.
You can also use a falling intonation at the end of questions when you want someone to agree with something that you've said.
For example, Isn't it cold today?
I'm not genuinely asking if it's cold or not.
I'm making a bit of a statement, but in the form of a question, because I want you to agree with me.
I'm trying to create a bit of a conversation with you.
You can also use rising intonation in questions when you want to express criticism.
For example, are you crazy?
Or you can use it for surprise.
How much are these?
Be careful when using intonation like this, because there is a huge difference between how much are these and how much are these.
The first one sounds like you're asking a genuine question, because we're using a falling intonation like when's your birthday.
How much are these?
It's a real genuine question that you want to know the answer to, so your intonation falls.
The second one, how much are these?
Sounds like you're really shocked or surprised, like you can't believe the price of something.
So it can come across as quite rude or offensive, so be really careful.
Sometimes when you ask a question, you may have an idea what the answer is.
So you may want to add that after your question.
If you want to do this, then you add a full rising tone to that little question with that suggestion at the end.
For example, what time does the show start?
At two o'clock.
At two o'clock.
I'll give you another example.
Where have you been all day?
At work? and you notice that the intonation goes really down and then really back up again.
This is the fall rising intonation.
Intonation in question tags.
A question tag or tag question.
You can use either.
One is a short phrase that we add to the end of a statement to turn it into a question.
For example, You're coming to the party, aren't you?
You can use question tags for checking information, seeking agreements, giving opinions, being a bit critical and sarcastic and for even emphasising things.
So you can use it to emphasise something that was said earlier.
Let's talk about the intonation in tag questions when checking information.
The intonation in the first part will fall, but the intonation in the second part, the little question tag will go up.
For example, the film starts at 12, doesn't it?
Here we think that the film starts at 12, but we're not 100% sure, so we're just checking.
Now, if you want to say something and you're not checking for information and you believe that it's true you know that it's true then your intonation will fall, and fall on the tag question as well.
For example, It's so hot today, isn't it?
Like we know it's hot.
It's like 45 degrees outside.
So yeah, you can't deny it.
Yeah, right now, luckily it's not 45 degrees, but you are so annoying, aren't you?
She's not annoying, she's lovely.
Now let's look at seeking agreement and giving opinions.
If you're sharing a belief or an opinion and you want your listener to agree with you, then you can use falling, falling intonation.
For instance, the film was great, wasn't it?
My intonation goes down on the question tag, because I'm not actually asking for clarification or confirmation or anything.
I'm basically sharing my opinion and I want you to agree with my opinion.
Now, if you want to sound more sarcastic, you can use a falling intonation.
We usually start these sarcastic phrases with oh, so, and sometimes well.
For example, so, you think you're stronger than me, do you?
Oh, you think you're smarter than me, do you?
Here, I'm not asking an actual question.
I'm not being genuine.
I'm being a bit sarcastic.
Notice as well that I'm using a positive phrase with a positive question tag.
When you were first taught about question tags, your teacher may have explained to you that you must use a positive and a negative together.
So your question tag should be negative and your statement before that should be positive.
So it's always positive, negative or negative, positive.
However, look at what happens when you use positive, positive.
It can give the impression of sarcasm or it can be used for surprise.
Here's another example eating all that cake to yourself.
Are you notice how using positive positive actually sounds quite sarcastic and quite critical like oh, you're actually eating all that cake to yourself, are you?
Again, i'm not asking a real, genuine question.
I'm being a bit critical, quite judgmental of the other person for eating whole cake, which i never would, because i am that person that needs the whole cake.
Sticking with the theme of sounding a little bit mean and adding some attitude to your intonation, if you want someone to admit something that they didn't previously want to admit or something that they previously didn't believe, then you can use a falling intonation.
For example, i told you not to touch that flame, didn't i?
So maybe the person before said i'm gonna touch the flame, i'm gonna touch the flame.
And you said you know, if you touch that flame you're going to hurt yourself.
Then they touch the flame and you can turn around and say I told you not to touch the flame, didn't I?
Yeah, falling, falling.
Finally, if you want to emphasise something that you said before, you can use a falling intonation to do this.
For example, That was a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?
Falling, falling.
So you could just say it was a stupid thing to do.
But to really emphasize it, you can add that question tag at the end, because it kind of makes the other person think like, oh yeah, it was a stupid thing to do.
And if you want to do that, use a falling, falling intonation.
It's a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?
Now let's look at the intonation in questions when you want to give your listener options.
When you want to give two possible options to your listener, your intonation will go up on the first option and then down on the second option.
For example, do you prefer tea or coffee?
Tea or coffee?
Here's another one.
Do you want to leave now or later?
Now or later?
So if you have more options like, for example, you may want to say tea, coffee or juice, it will just keep going up until you get to the final option.
And then the final option will have a falling intonation.
Do you prefer tea, juice or coffee?
So it doesn't matter how many options you have, you just keep listing them with a rising intonation, and then the final one will have a falling intonation to indicate that it's the end of all the possible options.
And finally, intonation in lists.
This rule is quite similar to the one that we've just looked at.
So when you're giving a list in english and you're reading it aloud, all of the things on the list will have a rising intonation to show that the list is continuing, but then the final item on that list will have a falling intonation and that falling intonation will indicate okay, that's the end of the list.
For example, so i need to buy some eggs milk, bread and butter.
So when reading a list, if you keep using a rising intonation and you say something like so i need to buy some eggs milk bread, and you just stop, then your listener will be like and and because they're waiting for you to complete that list with a falling intonation.
And that's the end of your master.
So let's focus on the first one here.
So we've got this text right and, as you can see, there are parts which are in capital letters and this shows where our stress goes.
Okay, this is how the book represents stress.
So you've got, you'll arrive.
For example okay, you'll arrive, the stress goes on rive.
Then you've got these little arrows.
These arrows indicate where our intonation goes does it rise or does it fall?
Okay, then you've got these little lines, these kind of dashes.
And these basically show the end of a speech unit.
So you've got speech units which I've not talked yet about on my channel, but I will do in the future.
You've got these little speech units.
They're like sections of speech before.
You have a little pause.
So every time you get these two little lines is basically a very short pause.
So i'm going to read through this.
Actually, you know what?
Let me just zoom in slightly.
Oh, you know what my editor could do it?
Editor sneaky, can you like zoom in please?
What i'm going to do is read through it and then you can listen, and then what i'd like you to do is just listen and repeat.
After that, I'd also like you to think why do you think the intonation is changing?
What's the rule?
Can you notice something?
Okay, so let's read through it first.
You'll arrive at Central Station.
When you get off the train, turn left along the platform.
At the end of the platform, there's an escalator.
Go up it, and you'll be in the main square.
There's a fountain in the square, and I'll be waiting for you there.
So I'm going to read it once more.
But I'm going to pause after each speech unit.
And I'd like you to listen and repeat.
Okay, let's go.
You'll arrive at Central Station.
When you get off the train turn left along the platform.
At the end of the platform there's an escalator.
Watch out for that word, escalator.
Go up it and you'll be in the main square.
There's a fountain not fountain yeah, fountain in the square, and i'll be waiting for you there.
So if you're still you're still struggling with the tones, don't worry, we're gonna sort that out in a moment.
We're gonna fix that, because i know my private students struggle with the tones quite a lot.
We're gonna fix it, don't worry.
Firstly though, notice the rule.
Any idea what the rule is?
Well, if we scroll down a little bit If I scroll down a little bit here we can see that if we use a falling tone when we're speaking, especially when we're giving information, I should say it tends to be when we're adding news.
So our intonation goes down when we're saying something new.
If however, our intonation goes up, it rises, then it indicates that we're sharing something old, that it's not news, that it's not new to the listener.
So if it falls, it's new information, and if it rises, then it is old information.
So let's just have another little practice, because I know that especially when I do these lessons with intonation with my private students, they struggle a little bit with the tones.
So what I want you to imagine is, every time we get an arrow that goes up, imagine you're kind of asking a question.
So it's like you'll arrive when you get off the train.
Go up it in the square okay, and it goes up like this like you're asking a question, all the others where the intonation goes down, you're just going to say it without falling intonation, it's just going to fall.
So at central station, turn left along the platform, there's an escalator.
It goes down like this okay, let's have a practice.
So again, i will say each speech unit.
I will pause for a moment.
If you need more time, pause the video rewind, do whatever you need to do to practice, but listen and repeat.
You'll arrive.
Imagine you're asking that question.
You'll arrive at central station.
At Central Station, When you get off the train, When you get off the train, Turn left along the platform, Turn left along the platform.
At the end of the platform, at the end of the platform, there's an escalator.
There's an escalator.
Go up it.
Go up it and you'll be in the main square, and you'll be in the main square.
There's a fountain.
There's a fountain in the square, in the square, and I'll be waiting for you there and I'll be waiting for you there.
So now we've gone through that.
We understand the rules and everything.
Let's take a look at this part here.
So this is taking the text, but just shortening it down to a shorter example, basically.
So we've got here, see you on Saturday.
B says, but I'll be in London at the weekend. more naturally.
But I'll be in London at the weekend.
But I'll be in London at the weekend.
You see how it goes down on London and then up again at the weekend?
So, with London, we know that London is new information.
That's why our intonation is falling.
The weekend goes up because A, already mentioned Saturday.
We know that we're talking about the weekend.
This is not new information for the listener.
So you can see here, we've got exercise one.
This is actually a listening exercise.
We're not gonna do this one together in this video.
We're actually gonna jump down to this one here and we're gonna do this one together.
So what we're going to do is read through each of them.
We're going to do them together.
You can pause the video at any moment if you want more time, or if you want to do them yourself and then play more of the video and check your answers later, and do it together with me.
But what we're going to do is read through each of these and I'd like you to decide whether you think.
In each of the speech units, the intonation rises or it falls.
So, as you can see in the example and this book is great because it always gives examples when it gives the activities you've got the example.
What an sorry.
Where on earth did you find that?
Where on earth did you find that?
I came across it in an antique shop. so in an antique shop gives us new information so the intonation is going to fall here i came across it is basically repeating i found it and the person asked where on earth did you find that and they're saying i found it i came across it so the intonation goes up to show that this is not new internet new new intonation is not new information i should say the new information is in the antique shop so take a look at the other ones what you can do is pause the video now have a go at doing these and then you can check back or we can do them together if you want to do them together then let's go and do it now so the first one what time shall we leave We could go now as you're ready.
We could go now as you're ready.
So, we could go now is basically answering the question.
It's giving us that new information.
And remember, new information falls and old information rises, okay?
So, we could go now as you're ready.
We could go now as you're ready.
Number two, what time did David get back?
Again, have a think.
What's important here?
What's new here?
What's new information?
New information always falls.
I heard him come in at about three.
I heard him come in.
What time did he get back?
He got back?
You're basically repeating the question, aren't you, at that point?
I heard him come in at about three.
I'm not sure his plan would work very well.
I thought his suggestion was ridiculous.
I thought his suggestion was ridiculous.
So our intonation is going to fall on was ridiculous, because here we're answering the question or we're not really answering a question here.
We're kind of giving some new information by saying I thought a suggestion.
We're not really saying anything, we're just saying I thought a suggestion.
Thought a suggestion was what you know we're not saying anything new but was ridiculous.
We're giving some new information.
So I thought a suggestion was ridiculous.
Number four The hall was packed, wasn't it?
Tag question there, careful.
The hall was packed, wasn't it?
Wasn't it?
I hate it when it's so crowded.
I hate it when it's so crowded.
So I hate it is gonna go down when it's so crowded.
Crowded, we've already mentioned that it was packed, okay?
Packed is the same as crowded, it's busy, there are loads and loads of people there.
So the crowded part is redundant, it's repeated, not new information.
I hate it is new information.
Number five.
I wouldn't mind some orange juice if you've got any.
I wouldn't mind some orange juice if you've got any.
So I wouldn't mind some orange juice is the part that's answering.
If you've got any, it's just a little plate thing in there.
It's not adding new or old information here, really.
It's just redundant.
So if it's redundant and it's not important and it's not adding any new information rice, and then the last one i could move that easily.
Well, why don't you try?
If you think you're so strong?
Well, why don't you try if you think you're so strong?
So the same as what's happened with the other sentences.
If you think you're so strong Here, it's not new information, because the other person just said I could move that easily.
So they already think that they're quite strong.
So here, it's old information.
Therefore, it rises.
The new information here is, why don't you try?
Yeah, it's going to fall because it's new information.
And that's it for this lesson.
I hope you've enjoyed it.
So in general, the way that people talk about intonation in questions is quite simple.
If you have a closed question and if you have an open question, the intonation changes.
So let's start with a closed question first.
What does that mean?
A closed question is basically when you can answer with yes or no.
So if I say something like, are you from Spain?
Are you from Spain?
Then this, you can answer with yes or no.
In general with these kind of questions, as you may have noticed, then we rise that intonation at the end.
Are you from Spain?
Are you from Spain?
Another example is do you like chocolate?
Do you like chocolate?
Do you like chocolate?
You hear?
It goes up at the end.
Now, contrary to this, if you have an open question, meaning that you can answer with anything besides yes and no, so it requires maybe a longer answer or a different answer essentially to yes or no our intonation changes.
It actually goes down.
Now this might be really weird for some people because intonation in your language when you're asking questions may always rise.
However, in english it can rise or fall, like i'm going to show you now.
An example of this is where did he go?
Where did he go?
Where did he go?
You see, it drops on the go.
Where did he go?
I cannot answer with yes or no.
Where did he go?
Yes, it doesn't work.
So this one our intonation has to fall because it is an open question, it's not closed, meaning i can only have a yes or no answer.
Another example is who's that?
Who's that?
Who's that?
It could be anyone.
I cannot say, who's that?
No.
Okay, it's not a closed question.
It is an open question.
It requires a different answer to yes and no.
Therefore, our intonation drops.
So, to sum that part up, if your question is a closed question, meaning you answered yes or no, that means your intonation rises.
If your answer is something other than yes or no, and it is an open question, then your intonation is going to fall.
Now, the next thing I'm going to talk about is something that quite a lot of books and teachers and videos and things miss out.
No shade towards them, that's fine, but We're gonna talk about that now.
Let's take the sentence, when's your birthday?
When's your birthday?
Now I said earlier that, because this is an open question, I cannot answer with yes or no, it means that the intonation's going to drop.
When's your birthday?
When's your birthday?
That's fine.
However, if I had a rising intonation and I say, when's your birthday?
When's your birthday?
The meaning completely changes.
So if I use a falling intonation here and I say, when's your birthday?
It means that it is a genuine question.
I'm trying to find the answer to this question.
I do not know the answer.
However, if I use a rising intonation and I say, when's your birthday?
When's your birthday?
It means that I've forgotten.
I'm making sure, I'm checking something.
So maybe you told me your name.
Sorry, you told me when your birthday was in the past and I just don't remember.
When's your birthday?
I don't remember when you told me it was.
Sorry.
You see, the intonation goes up.
Another example is, what's your name?
What's your name?
So the intonation goes down.
What's your name?
Because it's a genuine question.
I'm trying to find out the answer.
I've never met you.
I don't know you.
What's your name?
Intonation drops.
However, imagine I've known you for, I don't know, a day. but I've just forgotten your name.
So my intonation would rise because I'm just checking.
What's your name?
What's your name?
What's your name?
So with this rule, we could say that our intonation drops with these kinds of questions, when we genuinely want to find out the answer.
We don't know.
And our intonation rises when we do know the answer, but we're just checking, or we're clarifying, or we're making sure that the answer that we have is correct, or maybe we've forgotten and we're just checking.
Now another type of question which confuses a lot of students is our choice questions.
So this is when you offer mm or mm.
Now what happens with this one is that I rise my intonation on the first option and then my intonation drops on the second option.
For example, do you prefer tea or coffee?
Do you prefer tea or coffee?
Tea or coffee?
You see, on tea, it rises.
Coffee, it drops again.
Another example is, do you prefer Spain or France?
Do you prefer Spain or France?
Rises on Spain, falls on France.
It also works the same if I cut the rest of the question and I just have the two options.
Tea or coffee?
Tea or coffee?
Works the same way.
So that's pretty much everything you need to know for now about question intonation.
Now, before we start talking about the eight rules for word stress, we're going to start with some absolute basics that you need to know.
And that is, what is a syllable?
So a syllable is essentially the units of a word.
They're the sections of the word.
They're where we break the word up.
For example, the word go has just one syllable.
However, happy has two syllables.
Excited Three syllables, reality.
Four syllables, understandable.
Five syllables, accessibility. six syllables so you see we can add more and more syllables the longer the word gets however don't think that the more letters you add the more syllables there are for example we have a one syllable at One syllable, but two letters. sit One syllable, three letters. fool One syllable, four letters. tooth One syllable, five letters.
You see where I'm going with this.
Bought, six letters.
Brought seven letters.
So don't think that the more letters a word has, the more syllables it has.
Okay, it's not always the case.
So now we know what syllables are, let's start looking at our first rule.
Take a look at these words table ticket, pencil record.
What do all these have in common?
They are two syllable nouns.
And where does the stress go on the first syllable.
So notice, when we stress syllables, we're adding more emphasis, we're pronouncing it more strongly.
So pencil table ticket Record.
So let's take ticket for an example.
It's the perfect one here.
We have the same vowel sounds in both syllables, but I'm not saying ti-kit.
It's not strong, strong.
That first one is stronger.
Ti-kit.
Ticket.
Rule number two.
Take a look at these words.
Happy. angry busy easy What do all these have in common again?
They're not nouns.
They're adjectives.
Two syllable adjectives.
And just like our first rule, the stress goes on the first syllable.
So again, make sure you're pronouncing those strongest syllables with more emphasis.
Rule number three.
Take a look at these words and think about what they have in common this time.
Record.
Provide allow, become.
They are all verbs.
They are all two syllable verbs.
And where does the stress go?
On the second syllable.
So when you have two syllable nouns and adjectives, the stress tends to go on the first syllable.
However, if it's a two syllable verb, the stress tends to go on the second syllable.
So this means, if you get words that are spelt exactly the same but they perhaps have a noun and a verb form, we change the stress, we change the pronunciation.
For example, record, record.
This is the noun.
Record, record.
This is the verb.
Record, record.
You hear how the stress changes.
So in some sentences, I bought a record.
I bought a record.
I'll record it later.
I'll record it later.
Here are just a few other examples, but there are plenty of other pairs like this that go together produce produce produce produce rebel rebel rebel rebel conflict conflict conflict, conflict.
So notice how that stress changes depending on the word form if it's a noun or if it's a verb.
Rule number four if we have a word ending in ic, so ic, The stress goes on.
The penultimate syllable.
So if the word ends with "-ic", the syllable before that will be the stressed syllable.
For example static static barbaric barbaric enthusiastic, enthusiastic.
Rule number five words ending in s-i-o-n or t-i-o-n follow the same rule that we've just talked about, so the stress doesn't go on that t-i-o-n or s-i-o-n ending It goes before it.
So the syllable that's before it, we put the stress there.
For example nation, nation solution, solution.
So again, it doesn't matter how long the word is obligation, the stress still goes on that syllable before it, that penultimate syllable, obligation station.
So of course, if it's just two syllables, it's gonna go on that first one, because it's the syllable before the t-i-o-n station.
Rule number six if we have words that end with and i need to look at my list c-y t-y p-h-y, so phi, g-y or SY, the stress goes on the antepenultimate syllable.
What does that mean?
So it doesn't go on the last, it doesn't go on the one before that, it goes on the one before that.
Okay?
So we're going to focus on the third one from the end.
For example democracy.
So notice that there's the stress syllable and then there's the two after democracy.
Hypocrisy, now a nice long one here.
Cinematography, Cinematography.
So again, it doesn't matter how many syllables are before it, it has one of those endings, so it follows this rule.
Rule number seven.
If the word ends with "-l", so A-L, it follows the same rule that we just talked about.
It goes on the antepenultimate syllable.
So not on the "-l", not on the syllable before it, but on the syllable before that.
For example critical critical magical magical historical historical, A longer one economical, economical.
So again, doesn't matter what's before it, the stress still goes on.
The antepenultimate syllable economical.
Finally, rule number eight.
This is probably the trickiest rule to get your head around.
It's why I saved it for last for the most dedicated students who stuck around to the end.
We're going to talk about sentence stress and how that affects a word's stress.
So English is a stress-timed language.
What does that mean?
What is a stress time language?
It essentially means that we have two types of words.
Our important words that we emphasize more, and then little words in between that are there for grammatical purposes.
They're not that important and they are weakened.
So if you listen to English, it sounds something like And these words that are standing out tend to be clearer and you understand them more easily.
Let's compare it to a syllable time language to make it a little bit clearer what I'm talking about here.
So a syllable time language essentially puts stress and even timing on every single syllable.
So if you listen to a language, for example, like Spanish, you will hear it being pronounced as something like And I remember many years ago, a tutor of mine at university telling me that syllable time languages sound kind of like machine guns, like they're very even, are all of the syllables.
Well, if you listen to a language like english, it's not like that.
If i were to pronounce it like that, it would sound like this and everything would be stressed and it would sound very, very robotic.
So how do you know which words are stressed?
We can categorise words in English into two different groups.
Content words, which are stressed.
They always carry the meaning, the important parts of the sentence, the content.
And then we have the structure words, the little grammatical words that are not so important and they don't hold that much meaning.
All of the content words would be stressed in a sentence.
The function or structure words, whatever you want to call them.
These in sentences tend to be weaker.
So your content words are nouns adverbs adjectives verbs, question words like who what when, etc.
At the start of a question, negative auxiliary and modal verbs, as well as negative words like no and not, etc.
Your function and structure.
Words, whatever you want to call them, tend to be your articles, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, the verb to be pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions, otherwise known as connectives.
These words tend to have, if you look in the dictionary, a strong and a weak form.
In sentences, when we're speaking naturally, we tend to use the weak form.
I'll give you an example.
I wanted to see the film.
Notice that rhythm.
I wanted to see the film.
See what I was talking about earlier?
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.
You see, those words that are stressed, the intonation goes up and they're a lot clearer.
While if we look at the words in between, those little function words, you can see that they're very, very weak.
I don't say to see the film.
No no, to see the.
They become much weaker.
So these sorts of words they tend to be pronounced with schwa sounds like uh.
Not always depends on the word, but what you'll see is it goes from to to the to the.
They're a lot softer and a lot weaker.
Here's another example.
Can you help me with my homework?
Can you help me with my homework?
So notice that help homework are both stressed.
Everything else is a lot weaker and a lot softer.
So we pronounce those content words a lot stronger, while the other words, those structure words, they tend to get pronounced a little bit weaker.
If you want some more practice on this and some more information, some more examples, i do have a video fully dedicated to this.
I will leave it down in the description.
Go and check it out.
It's one of my most popular videos, so i'm sure you will enjoy it and benefit from it.
And that is the end of this lesson.
So let's start firstly with what kind of stress English uses.
English is a stress-timed language and this basically means that you give certain words which we'll talk about in a moment more stress and more emphasis when other words are weakened.
They sound a lot softer.
This is why, when you're watching something with subtitles, for example, you understand everything and then you turn off the subtitles and you think what?
What was that word?
That sounded like a really long word.
But actually when you put the subtitles back on and you take a look, it actually turns out to be these little words all squished together and said very quickly.
And that's because of sentence stress.
We can compare a stress time language to, for example, a syllable time language.
A syllable time language basically gives each syllable approximately the same amount of time.
We can also compare it to mora time languages, for example, Japanese.
So if you're a Japanese speaker, congrats, you speak a mora time language.
This is very similar, in a sense, to syllable time languages, where you give each mora the same amount of time.
I still remember when I was at university, a lecturer of mine described mora timing and syllable time languages like machine guns.
It's like, while english is more like, and that's because we give certain words more stress in a language like english.
So let me give you an example of what i mean.
Let's take this exercise here.
Very simple one.
Okay, i hope you can count to four, because that's all you need to do right now.
So we've got one, Okay.
That's the rhythm we're going to follow.
One, two, three, four.
Let's try adding some words in between.
For example, one and two and three and four.
Now notice what I did.
I didn't say one and two and three and four.
I didn't stress and.
I only stressed the numbers.
An and was weakened to an.
So not and, but an.
We're using a weak form here.
One and two and three and four.
Let's add another word in there.
One and a two and a three and a four.
One and a two and a three and a four.
Again, I'm not saying one and a two and a three and a four.
Okay.
That's quite tiring.
And my poor hand is going to start hurting in a moment, but you see what I mean.
So in English, we don't stress every single word.
We're going to stress the numbers because they're important here in this exercise, but the and and a are going to be weakened to an a.
We're going to join them together an a, an a One, an a two, an a three, an a four.
Now let's apply this same rule to a proper sentence.
So here I've got I want a cup of tea.
I want a cup of tea.
So notice, i'm not saying i want a cup of tea.
It's not all stress.
I want a cup of tea.
Now, when it comes to intonation, we're going to raise our pitch slightly on those stressed words.
So we're not going to read it all monotone, like I want a cup of tea, okay?
Sounds very robotic in English if you do that.
You'll be understood, but to another person's ear it will sound quite robotic.
So raise your pitch on those stressed words.
I want a cup of tea.
I want a cup of tea.
Now you're probably thinking great emma understood that.
But which words are stressed and which ones are unstressed?
I have a handy table for you.
What we can do is categorize English words into two different groups our content words and function words.
To name a few content words nouns adverbs adjectives verbs, question words and negative auxiliary modal and negative words in general.
For our function words.
We have articles, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, the verb to be pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions, otherwise known as connectives.
So if we go back to our original sentence, I want a cup of tea. we have i it's a pronoun want verb a article cop noun of preposition t noun so you can see here how it follows that list that i gave before now let's change our sentence a little bit would like a cup of tea this time we've got the pronoun well it's the same as before pronoun then we've got would we've got a modal verb but notice i'm not saying i would like i weaken it i would like so would becomes would i would like like is a verb i would like a it's the same after that actually is the first sentence so we have the article a cup noun of preposition and t the noun let's take a look at this one together which of these words do you think will be stressed okay you can pause have a think she will be late to the party she will be late to the party so again she pronoun will is our modal verb and we don't usually stress modal verbs she will be late late is an adjective to the, not to the, to the, preposition, article, party, noun.
She will be late to the party.
She will be late to the party.
Here's another sentence, a little bit longer to practise with.
Which ones do you think will be stressed here?
Feel free to pause the video and take your time.
Can you go to the shop and buy me some bread?
Can you go to the shop and buy me some bread?
Can, remember, is a modal verb.
We're not going to stress it.
Can becomes can.
Can you go?
Can you go, not to the, To the, to the shop.
Can you go to the shop and buy me some bread?
Some, strong form is some, gets weakened to a schwa.
Can you go to the shop and buy me some bread?
Can you go to the shop and buy me some bread?
Now, we sometimes break this rule if the word is used for emphasis contrast, if it's alone in a sentence or sometimes if it comes at the end of a sentence.
So, let's take this sentence here.
Now, in normal sentence stress we could say, I asked her if she wanted fish and chips.
I asked her or asked, it's up to you, or asked, asked.
I asked her if she wanted fish and chips.
Fish and chips.
So not fish and chips.
Fish and chips.
Okay, and gets weakened to un.
But let's imagine the listener that we're speaking to got a bit confused.
They thought we said something else, so we need to clarify something.
No, I said fish and chips, not fish or chips. fish and chips, not fish or chips.
Now I'm giving stress to and and or.
Otherwise, naturally, it would be said as fish and chips and fisher chips.
Fisher chips, that sounds really weird.
But it's what we would say.
Now for some extra practice and to talk about Now.
There are different types of sentence stress depending on the language.
Here I've got three different ones.
Syllable timed, stress timed and mora timed.
I'm very interested to know whether you know this already.
What timed language is English?
Is English a syllable, a stress or a mora-timed language?
What do you think?
What do you think?
Oh, there are arguments breaking out in the chat.
Yeah, don't start arguments in the chat.
Uruguay Spanish sounds sexy.
Yeah, it's a country.
It's a country in South America.
Yeah.
It's very famous for its beef, apparently.
Yeah, got more timing, stress timing and syllable timing.
Which one do you think English is?
So do you think English is a syllable-timed language?
Is English a stress-timed language?
Or is English a mora-timed language?
We've got stress-timed, mostly stress-timed.
A few people said syllable, one or two people said syllable.
People are asking what mora timing is.
I will talk about that in a moment.
You only need to be concerned about mora timing if you are a Japanese speaker.
Don't worry.
If you're not a Japanese speaker, then forget it.
It's not important to you.
No doubt a lot of people here probably speak a syllable time language as their first time, as their first time, as their first language heard about syllable and stress.
But what's mora?
Don't worry, i'll talk about it.
English is stress, spanish is syllable and japanese is mora.
Yes, that's so cool.
Ah, Very smart.
So yes, as Atsuko said, syllable time languages are ones like Spanish, Italian, and French.
Some stress time languages, English, English is there.
Not Japanese, German, Russian, and European Portuguese.
Brazilian Portuguese is a bit of a weird one, because a while ago when I was learning Portuguese, I focused mostly on Brazilian Portuguese and I was looking at the type of sentence stress it had and it was supposedly like a mixture, depending on the accent in in brazilian portuguese but um, it's mostly considered syllable timed apparently, while european portuguese is more stress timed, which is super interesting from a linguistic perspective.
I found that really interesting.
And a more time language is uh, one like japanese.
So for people asking what a mora time language is, what mora timing is um, it's essentially like uh, it's kind of hard to explain if you don't know japanese.
Japanese speakers will be like ah yeah, got it.
I understand, but the way that Japanese words are formed are not in syllables, they are formed in mora, which are, to put it in the simplest way for you, is essentially units of sound, like blocks of sound or sounds.
So it could, for example, contain only a vowel sound, or it could contain a consonant and a vowel and that is considered a mora.
So an example I like to give is like how to say hello in Japanese.
Yeah, we say, say like this okay, i don't have the the, the right keyboard for it, so i'll write it in romaji, but if anyone has a japanese keyboard, please write uh, konnichiwa in um in kana, please in hiragana.
So yes, we've got konnichiwa.
If i were to say konnichiwa with syllables like English Spanish, Italian et cetera have, it would be ko-ni-chi-wa.
It would have four syllables, right?
Ko-ni-chi-wa.
However, when it comes to a mora time language, it would actually be ko-n-i-chi-wa.
Thank you, Atsuko.
Ko-n-mi-chi-wa.
So it's more like units of speech, units of...
Units of sound rather than speech.
Units of sound which usually are comprised of a vowel and a consonant and vowel.
When it comes to Japanese, you also have the sound.
I don't have the symbol, but it is this one here.
I'll just copy it from the chat.
This one.
So this is like the only consonant sound in Japanese where it is considered as a single mora.
Konnichiwa.
But in normal syllables, like English, let's say, konnichiwa.
So it's completely different.
If you don't speak Japanese, don't even worry about this.
Only worry about if you're a Japanese speaker.
All right.
Otherwise, you've got syllable time languages.
So many of you are probably syllable timed language speakers.
And this essentially means that you give each speaker syllable the same amount of time when you say it.
So i always describe this as kind of being like a machine gun.
So when you speak, it's like like every syllable has exactly the same amount of time.
Yeah, syllable timed Spanish Italian French, right.
Like everything is da da da da da.
While a stress time language like English works differently, in the sense that you have your normal sentence okay.
And then you have certain words that are more prominent and they're given more time because you put stress on these words.
So if you have a sentence, this word's important, this one isn't, this one isn't, this one is, okay?
Then the two words which are not important are unstressed and they are said weaker and quicker and quite often they are squished together, joined together and they almost sound like one word.
So let me know in the chat, when you listen to particularly native speakers okay, let me know in the chat how tricky it is?
Is it to understand them?
Or how easy is it for you to understand them?
If we put it on a scale, if we say one, as like i don't understand anything that native speakers say, which no one should write a one, because if you are watching this and you understand me and you can answer the question, then it can't be a one.
But if you say ten, like yes, i understand native speakers completely, i understand them, no problems at all, but let's say um, you know, let's put you at like a five or a six if you can understand certain strong, prominent words, but those little words in between you really struggle with understanding.
I'll give you a good situation that many of you might have been in.
Imagine you're watching something on Netflix.
Many of us probably have Netflix.
So if you're watching something on Netflix, you think, I'm gonna turn off the subtitles.
I'm gonna turn off the subtitles and listen and try and improve my listening, right?
So you turn off the subtitles, but then you realize, holy crap, I don't understand anything.
They're talking way too fast, which, They probably aren't.
They're probably talking normal speed.
Like, the way I'm talking now is normal speed.
It's not fast.
If I were talking like this, then it would be really fast, yeah?
But I'm actually talking a normal speed, yeah?
And then you put the subtitles back on and then you're like, oh, but hold on.
I understand everything they said with the subtitles.
I understand every single word.
So the problem is not the grammar.
The problem isn't vocabulary.
So what's the problem?
This this this this, this is the problem, this here, this is the problem.
And it's because you've got those certain important words and then those little words in between are all squished yeah, and they become really hard to understand, sometimes even for native speakers.
True Italian sounds like a robot.
Yeah, it can do.
Sometimes it sounds a bit mean to say it sounds robotic, but syllable time languages often do sound quite robotic because it's like this da-da-da-da-da-da-da, like machine-like way of pronouncing the syllables or producing the syllables. hmm let's see no we aren't learning japanese now it's because people asked about mora timing and if you're on another tab then that means you're not focusing on this stream so you need to focus and then you won't get confused People think English native speakers sound fast.
They use connected speech.
Exactly.
But we don't.
English, actually, you know what?
Maybe I can show you.
It would be a bit of a pain to set up.
But there is a chart where you can see a number of different languages and the speeds at which the languages are.
So there are two ways of counting it in these charts.
There is the number of syllables per second.
And English falls very, very low down.
Japanese and Spanish are right at the top.
The fastest is japanese, the second is uh spanish, then it goes down down down, down down, and then english is right at the bottom.
I think english only just overtakes german, but not by much.
And then you've also got the amount of information that's conveyed per.
I can't remember if it's per syllable or per second, but English is quite high in that regard.
So...
We speak slower, but actually per second, we can transmit more information than other languages.
It's so weird.
It's much more difficult to understand American native speakers.
I agree and disagree at the same time.
I think it completely depends on the variants that you're used to.
So for me, I understand American English absolutely fine, and it's absolutely nothing to do with me being native.
It's simply just because I grew up with a lot of American TV, American children's cartoons, things like that.
But let's say, for example, you asked me to listen to, I don't know, a very strong Southern Irish accent.
I'm not as exposed to Southern Irish accents so sometimes I find it a little bit trickier to follow Like, for example, I'm from Yorkshire originally.
And for me, of course, it's my accent.
I understand people from Yorkshire absolutely fine.
But when I was at university in Yorkshire there were people, like other students um studying with me, who really struggled with the yorkshire accent and they were native speakers from the south of england.
So it's not necessarily because you're native or non-native, it's simply because you're not exposed to that accent enough.
So i always encourage people like learn different accents, expose yourself as much as you can.
If you can watch a movie without subtitles and you understand, then your language is perfect.
I would say it's impressive.
Yeah, it's definitely impressive.
But then I try my favorite TV series.
Yeah, I understand Alberto.
I'm the same.
I'm the same.
Like with Spanish, I listen to my boyfriend.
I'm like, I understand every word.
And then I'll put on like Casa de Papel and I'm like, ah, what?
They just don't articulate in that show, it's frustrating.
Scottish accent sounds like a machine gun.
Interesting, interesting observation what accent do i have?
My accent is a bit of a mix.
I'm a bit of a bit of a mixed bag um, but my um.
So i focus mostly on teaching modern received pronunciation.
But there are some parts of my accent which are definitely uh, more northern.
So, for example, i don't say path grass bath, i say path grass bath, um.
But pretty much everything else i say is a modern rp, Though sometimes my Yorkshire-ness slips through.
Yes, very good.
Okay, so people are quite confident with that.
Let me show you an example of what I mean with sentence stress with some actual real life examples.
I'm gonna move myself up here to give us some space.
And then you can see the text.
So if we just focus on the first section here, I'd like you to listen and repeat.
All right.
So make sure you're in an environment where you can listen and repeat.
So we have drink water.
Drink water.
Now the second one.
Listen to what I do.
Drink some water.
Drink some water.
Drink some water.
And then the last one.
Drink some of the water.
Drink some of the water.
Drink some of the water.
So, notice something.
I am not clapping on every single word in the second and third sentences, yeah?
I clap on drink and water.
Why is that?
Because drink and water are important words, okay?
I'm going to talk more about which words are considered important and not important in a moment, but here drink and water are important, right?
Drink, water.
So we stress them drink some water.
Now, if i spoke a syllable timed language like spanish okay, let's imagine we are speaking english, but with uh, with uh, like a spanish kind of syllable timed elements to it, sentence two would sound like drink some water.
Drink some water.
Drink some water.
It's really strong right, but because it's english, let me also just uh, grab the comments here and move that across a little bit.
There we are So here, instead of saying some which can I make that a bit thicker?
Ooh, nice, okay.
So, if it was strong, like drink some water, drink some water, then I would use the uh sound.
It would be strong.
However, we are speaking English, yeah?
And English is, as we know, a stress-timed language, okay?
So, we're going to weaken this to a schwa. drink some not some some some with a schwa drink some water drink some water same here i don't say drink some of the water yeah drink some of their water hmm sounds very very robotic and it's quite hard to say it's quite like a workout on the mouth if you do it like that so notice what I do drink some of the water some of the some remember last lesson we looked at connected speech in the previous workshop if you haven't seen it it's linked in the description it is part two okay we're going to take this ma we're going to move it over here to the start of the next word it's terrible arrow try again so it's summer summer So it sounds like the word summer, like, you know, spring, summer, autumn, winter, yeah?
Summer.
Here, we're going to remove this, alright?
When it comes to some of the words that are not considered important, we can cut some of the sounds in them.
Of its strong form would be of okay, strong form.
Don't worry if you're not familiar with strong and weak forms yet, because you will be by the end of today's workshop.
You will know exactly what uh, strong and weak forms are of.
Is the strong form of is the weak form?
And now you're thinking, ah, but hold on, Emma, you said uh.
Yes, that's also another weak form, uh.
So this one here sorry, this one here, with a some other tends to come when the next word starts with a consonant sound.
Put that like that yeah, it's usually when the next word starts with a consonant sound, so some other.
So the this sound here, of course, is a consonant sound, the yeah, some other, some other?
We can cut it because of is not considered important.
Some of the Drink, some of the water.
So you can see how sentence stress, not word stress, how sentence stress works.
Now, if you're thinking, which words do we stress and which ones don't we stress?
I will show you now.
I'm gonna put myself down here So we can divide words in English into two categories our content words and our function words.
Our content words carry the meaning.
So going back up here, drink water, okay?
If I say to you drink water, you know I want you to drink water right, no questions asked, nothing is ambiguous.
You know what i want.
But if i remove drink and water and i just say some of the, you'll be like some of the what?
Or let's imagine i remove some and i say drink of the water.
Yeah it's, it's weird, it's not correct, it's a very weird sentence.
But the key elements are there drink water.
You know i want that to happen.
The same, if i remove the article, or if i removed of, if i say drink some of the um, some the sorry drink, some the water, You'll be like hmm, that's weird.
Sounds weird.
Not grammatically correct, but okay, I will drink water, right?
You understand?
So these little words here are not important.
So they're always stressed, meaning no matter where they are in a sentence, no matter what context, they will always be stressed and there will only be one form in the dictionary of them, unless they have alternative pronunciations.
But the stress doesn't change.
And these tend to be verbs adjectives adverbs nouns, negative modals and negative auxiliary verbs right.
So they're all your really important content carrying words.
Your function words, on the other hand, are the ones that are not as important.
So exactly what I explained here with some of the, yeah?
Some of the water.
I can remove those words and nothing has changed, yeah?
But if I remove water and I say, drink some of the...
You'd be like, drink some of the what, Emma?
Okay, because it's important, right?
It's an important word.
With function words, we have strong and weak forms.
So as I mentioned here with of, of, you've got the strong form here.
Let me move myself again.
So with of, strong form of, here, right?
Of is a weak form.
Of is a weak form.
Sometimes words have more than one weak form, yeah?
The, so we've got the, which is a strong form, yeah?
But you've also got the, which is sometimes used, and then you've got the, the water yeah, the water.
Some, as I said, the strong form would be with this vowel, some, so, so, some, and some, some.
So this one, my jaw drops more, yeah?
Some, some, drink some, drink some, yeah?
It's very fast and very weak.
So two forms there, strong and weak.
These tend to be pronouns, the verb to be.
So even if the verb to be is used as a main verb in a sentence like they are happy, let's say, it would still be weak.
Like they're instead of they are happy they're.
They are happy.
Prepositions, articles, connectives, modal verbs and auxiliary verbs.
So notice this.
This is super important.
You've got negative modal verbs and then you've got modal verbs here.
So modal verbs like normal modal... Normal modal...
Normal modal verbs, that's a tongue twister.
Normal modal verbs are considered just function words, so they tend to have a weak form as well as a strong one.
But your negative modal verbs, for example shouldn't couldn't don't, et cetera, they only have a strong form.
All right.
Negative auxiliary verbs as well and auxiliary verbs, same rule applies, right?
So your modal verbs and auxiliary verbs.
So your auxiliary verbs in English are have, do and be okay.
So if these are used as an auxiliary verb like, for example, i have been to spain yeah, i wouldn't say i have been to spain, i would say i have been, I have been to Spain.
I have been to Spain.
So the been would be stressed because been is the verb, the main verb, the important bit.
But the modal verb, the auxiliary verb, what am I talking about?
The auxiliary verb have is not important.
So that's that.
Let's have a practice with a text together, unless anyone has any questions.
So today we are going to have a look at another text.
This one is the goose and the golden egg.
Let me talk about any questions.
Firstly though um, it's like a cup of tea, exactly yeah yeah.
So we don't say a cup of tea, i'd like a cup of tea.
You'd say i like a cup of tea, and this is why it also gets shortened down to cuppa.
So you'd say, like can I have a cuppa?
Yeah.
Do you want a cuppa?
Some as well.
Yes.
Why do you pronounce the V in of?
Drink some of the...
Because you can pronounce it.
So with some of the, you can say drink some of the water or you can say drink some of the water.
You can cut the the if you want.
It's not important.
We tend to cut it because as I said, where was it?
Yes.
So with this one, the of is the strong form.
Of is weak, but a is also weak, but a tends to come before a consonant sound.
The is a consonant sound, yeah?
So it's quite normal for us to cut the the and just say a the, a the.
Some other.
Drink some other.
Drink some other water.
Yeah?
Quite normal to do.
Any other questions?
Of is a function word used to transcribe of.
It depends, Sonia.
As I said, it has two ways to transcribe it.
You can transcribe it as of, or you can transcribe it as a A is when there's a consonant sound after it.
There are two different ways to say it.
Do you speak Spanish?
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Any other questions?
Why can't I hear negative sound in fast speech?
Then you probably just need to work on practicing more because it's definitely there.
Can and can't are hard to tell the difference when it's connected speech.
I wouldn't say this is to do with connected speech, Andres.
I would say that this is to do with stress and recognizing vowel length.
So you've got can.
If you pronounce can in a sentence in the strong form, let's say, I can't, sorry, I can go, yeah?
Maybe you mishear me and I say, no, no, no, I said, I can go, I can go.
Then you know I'm saying can, yeah?
I can't go, I can't go.
But if I were to say it just normally okay, without the sentence stress, with the positive can, then it would be weak, right?
It would be with a schwa.
I would say, I can go.
I can go, i can go, i can go, i can't go.
So you notice here that when i just speak normally and i use can, it's very weak.
You can actually hardly hear it because the focus is not on the can, the focus is on the go.
Right, the focus is on the verb, not the modal verb, But on the negatives we put the stress.
So really listen for that.
How can we cut off the consonants in fast speech?
I talked about that in the previous workshop.
Can you please go and watch that one?
How do you read some other, some of, well, you would never say some of other water.
You would never say that sentence.
So don't worry about it.
Don't worry about trying to say sentences that are not even grammatically correct and that you're never, ever going to use in your life.
You're never ever going to say that.
So don't even worry about it.
I can hear rather peculiar pronunciation of the oo in goose.
Goose?
Well, it's not goose.
Goo.
Oo.
Yeah.
Oo.
Keep the tongue flat, yeah?
Mouth round, tongue flat.
Oo.
Goose.
Goose and the golden egg um yeah, with the as well, can be found in dictionaries.
So with of yeah, it can be found as like, but usually it's with the.
Yeah, if it's the weak form, you might see it as like.
Let me grab this one here.
So, going back to of well, that's really big, never mind.
I don't think you can see it.
Yes you can.
So, like with of, if you say, for example, of and off, this one tends to be off.
Yeah well, this one will be of.
These are the strong forms.
Yeah strong strong right, these will be the strong ones of.
Yeah, this will be the week of of or uh, this should be the week of of.
Yeah, makes sense.
So these two are two different ones.
Yeah Hopefully, that makes sense.
I don't want to dedicate a whole lesson to the word of.
It's not that important.
Don't worry about it.
But yes.
Which form to use in relation with a consonant in the next word.
Which weak form to use...
I'm not sure what you mean.
There should only be one weak form of words.
As I said, if it's one like of, I don't know why everyone's so obsessed with this word of.
It's not that important.
Don't worry about it.
We just say of or uh.
And as I said, of.
Oops.
Of is the weak form.
Uh tends to be when the next word has a consonant sound.
This one can be when there is a vowel or a consonant sound.
Yeah?
This would be for of.
Yeah?
Do not get too hung up on this.
Like the word of is not that important, right?
You're focusing on the wrong things here.
Focus on this as a whole, right?
Don't focus on this as like one thing, just one word, okay?
Sometimes we can become like too fixated on things that are not super significant, when we should be looking at the thing as a whole.
Don't worry about it.
Can you explain why we sign as the H in he and his in the previous workshop?
Because it's not important.
You know, if we go back to this, pronouns are not important, right?
So because they're not important, we can cut some sounds.
So is usually one of the sounds that goes if is at the start of a word, we'll cut it off.
If it's um, if it's in a weak word, so for example, like he uh him her his, etc.
We can cut them.
So he becomes e yeah, um.
If i say, for example, he left early, i could say he left early, i went with him, i went with him, I went with her.
I went with her.
This is his.
This is his.
Yeah?
So we can cut the H's in these ones.
They're not important.
Yeah?
Same with hers as well.
I miss hers.
Yeah?
This is hers.
This is hers.
You can cut it.
Some accents tend to cut them a lot more than others, but it's quite normal in um just normal speech to cut them them as well.
Yeah, we cut to um with them.
I was with them yesterday, so i was with with them.
Anyway, i'm gonna leave questions in until the end right now, because i really want to focus on this text.
So what i've done is i've highlighted the key words here.
I'm just gonna make my face a little bit bigger um, and then you can see my face, Not that I'm super egotistic, but just so you can see for pronunciation.
So we're just gonna focus on this part here.
Okay, any questions you have, I'll answer them at the end of the stream, But I really, really just want to get through this text and we're just gonna have a look at the first paragraph together okay, so What I'm going to do is read through this natural speed.
And what you can see is I very kindly highlighted where the stress would be.
So all of these, there are a few missing.
Give me a second.
Oh, I just saw one.
Yes, this one is stressed.
The L as well.
And I think that should be it.
Yes.
Okay, so I'll read through it and then I'd like you to really listen to how I stress the words that are highlighted, okay.
Once upon a time, a farmer and his wife lived on a farm in the beautiful countryside.
They owned a goose who laid a single golden egg every single day.
The farmer took the egg every day to the market in town to sell.
The money which they made from the egg supported them and over time they were able to make a lot of money and become fairly rich.
So you can see, every time i landed on one of the highlighted bits of the word, my intonation went up And it was clearer right.
I pronounced that syllable a lot clearer and the word in general a lot clearer.
Once upon a time.
Once upon a time.
There you see?
Once upon a time, a farmer and his wife.
A farmer and his wife.
So you see with this one, and his, we're cutting this one, yeah?
Because his is a pronoun, we can cut the H at the beginning.
Yeah, this also happens, so I mentioned it with pronouns, but you can use it for relative pronouns as well.
So ones like who, right?
I could say, this is the man who did it, for example.
If I say, this is the man who did it, as a relative pronoun, I can cut the H at the beginning here.
And I can just say this is the man who did it.
Yeah, if it's who as a question, who did it?
For example now, who is important because it's our question word, now it's a content word.
Yeah, it's not a little grammatical word, because if i remove the who here and i just said did it, you'll be like what, who did what?
Who, what?
It makes no sense.
But if i say this is the man did it, it's wrong.
Right, it sounds weird, but you understand what i'm saying.
Okay, and that's because it's just not important.
So here, Once upon a time, a farmer and his wife lived on a farm, lived on a farm.
Farm in the beautiful countryside.
Farm in the beautiful countryside countryside, countryside in the beautiful countryside yeah, so notice the stress i'm using with countryside.
They owned a goose.
They owned a goose, a goose who laid a single leg, single golden egg.
A goose who laid a single golden egg.
Laid a single golden egg.
Laid a single golden egg.
A single golden egg.
No, a single golden egg.
A single golden egg. every single day.
They owned a goose who laid a single golden egg every single day.
Notice the stress, yeah?
A goose who, a goose who laid, yeah?
They owned, we're gonna link that with the ya, talked about that yesterday.
They owned a goose who laid a single golden egg every single day.
The farmer took the egg.
The farmer took the egg.
So here we're linking with a R. I forgot to mention that.
The farmer took the egg.
Linking with a Y.
The farmer took the egg.
Took the egg.
Not took the egg.
Took the egg.
Took the egg every day.
Every day.
Notice as well I'm not saying every.
Every day.
Huh?
Every.
Every.
Every day.
Every day to the market.
Not every day to the market.
Da, da, da, da, da.
Yeah, stress.
Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress.
Yeah.
Every day to the market.
Day to the market.
Day to the market.
Market in town.
Not market in town.
Market in town.
Market in town.
Town to sell.
Town to sell.
Not town to sell.
Every day to the market in town to sell.
Not too strong.
Every day to the market in town to sell.
The money which they made.
The money which they made.
Made from the egg.
Made from the egg.
Linking here again with the ya, the money which they made from the egg.
The egg supported them, the egg supported them, and over time and over time, so not, and over time and over time they were able, they were able.
A very straight line and they were able.
And over time they were able, and over time they were able.
Not, and over time they were able, and over time they were able, they were able to make, they were able to make, Make a lot of money.
Make a lot of money.
So notice again, I'm not saying make a lot of money.
Definitely not money.
I hear money a lot.
Money money, money.
Yeah, with the dot at the top yeah, able to make a lot of money, able to make a lot of money and become fairly rich and become so we become.
The stress goes on.
The second part we don't say become and become fairly rich and become fairly rich.
And over time they were able to make a lot of money and become fairly rich.
Once more, I'm going to read through it all, okay?
Once upon a time, a farmer and his wife lived on a farm in the beautiful countryside.
They owned a goose who laid a single golden egg every single day.
The farmer took the egg every day to the market in town to sell.
The money which they made from the egg supported them and over time they were able to make a lot of money and become fairly rich.
Yeah, so all of these i stressed, i think i still pronounce the h in who, but that's simply because i do that.
So yeah, hopefully that is um, that is a lot clearer.
So, any questions, any questions.
English is not melodic.
English has a very particular rhythm.
I disagree.
English definitely has um, a rhythm.
Why do we stress lot?
Because uh, we have a particle yes, an article sorry particle, i'm thinking japanese.
We have an article, and then lot Yeah, a lot of.
It's important, right?
It's important.
More melody is needed.
Yeah, you don't want to be like, once upon a time.
You don't want to be like singing it.
But yeah, so your intonation as well needs to go up on those stressed words, those stressed syllables.
This is good stuff.
Thanks, Alan.
Happy New Year.
So any questions?
Any questions?
We should kill the schwa sound because it's the only reason... I disagree.
I 100% disagree.
Because if you killed the schwa sound then you would be making English so much more difficult for yourself.
English is a very relaxed language.
It feels like me saying about your language, oh, we should take away this vowel.
No, why?
Why are you trying to change it?
This is good stuff, but by no means easy for foreigners.
Yeah.
This would be so much easier if it were taught from the beginning, but it's not.
People focus on grammar and vocabulary.
If you were taught this stuff from the very beginning, when you started learning English, it would make things so much easier, wouldn't it?
Yeah, so lot of becomes loadser, but loadser is different, yeah?
So a lot of, you can say loads of, but loads of can also be said like loadser, yeah?
So it's a different word.
Do stress determiners.
We can, we can.
I think usually they are.
Usually they're stressed, their determiners.
This cat.
I'd like this cat, please.
I'd like this cat.
Yeah.
Though we could also be unstressed thinking about it.
Depends how important it is.
The yeah before reg, good advice.
Yes.
I talked about connected speech.
Please explain the link in yeah.
I explained that in the workshop from yesterday, so please go and check that one out.
Should we include WH questions in the list of stress words?
Yes yes yes, yes.
Anything important that carries meaning goes in the stressed section.
How to sound normal in sentence with a lot of stress words?
Oh, kind of hard to do.
You're not going to get a sentence in english where nearly every single word is stressed.
This one here is actually quite a tricky one for me to do as a native speaker of English, because it's like stress stress stress stress, stress.
So my poor English brain is like oh, thank God that there's a schwa and a schwa and a schwa and a schwa and a schwa.
Yeah, so someone earlier was saying we need to remove the schwa.
Right no, because if we remove the schwa it would be very, very difficult to pronounce laid a single gold and egg every single day.
It's really hard to say when it's all strong strong strong strong, strong.
It's really hard.
This is why, when you hear, for example, English people speaking Spanish, where every single vowel is strong, it's a lot of effort.
When I speak Spanish, honestly, my mouth hurts.
And I've been speaking it for nearly 10 years because I'm not used to this stress stress stress stress stress stress stress, stress.
Stress vowel.
Stress vowel, stress vowel, stress vowel.
Yeah, I need to add like a schwa in there to give myself a break.
Yeah um, about the intonation.
So in this case, just to keep the intonation explanation simple, every time a word is stressed, our intonation goes up, so once upon a time.
So you see, I hummed that part and every time it was a stress word.
Okay, I hummed it and you can see that my intonation goes up every single time.
And then at the end, to keep it simple, the intonation just goes down, yeah?
So it'll go to the market in town to sell, sell.
So it will go up and then it will glide down, yeah?
Sell day countryside.
Countryside's a bit different because you've got more syllables to play with, so can will go up and then tree side will go down countryside And then day sell rich.
They will go down, yeah?
They'll like glide down.
Support them, support them.
This goes down as well, yeah?
All are the same.
You're loving the Schwoz.
You've got to, yeah?
Because they make it so much easier to pronounce English.
Do you use weak forms in your daily life?
100%, Jesus, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
If I spoke using only strong forms, I would sound like this, okay?
I'm gonna read the same text, but only in the strong forms, right?
Once upon a time, a farmer and his wife lived on a farm in the beautiful countryside.
They owned a goose who laid a single golden egg every single day.
The farmer took the egg every day to the market in town to sell.
The money which they made from the egg supported them and over time, they were able to make a lot of money and become fairly rich.
If i stressed every word, that's how it would sound it.
You see how it sounds very robotic.
Yeah, sounds very, very robotic, And that's because we need the stress there.
Yes.
Stress is a shortcut.
It is.
It is.
Yeah.
It is, Sonia.
100%.
100% agree.
So the way you pronounce who is like pronouncing ooh and not ooh.
It depends.
You can cut it to like ooh, or you can say like a goose who laid, or a goose who a goose who laid.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
You can say the goose who, the goose who, the goose who.
It doesn't matter.
Don't worry, a robot speaking, i feel like a siri like, once upon a time, a farmer, and his wife like i am a robot.
That's how i feel, but yeah, so that's that Amen.
