Relating pronunciation and intonation

Learning a few rules of pronunciation and intonation can help people understand you if you are new to English. These rules can also help if you come from a region where English is spoken, but where it exists along with other languages. Many from India or Nigeria, for example, have spoken English since childhood, and they understand English history and literature as well as Americans or Europeans. But Canadians or Americans often cannot understand people from India or Nigeria, who speak the same English. The principles that I explain can help everyone consider the confusion.

Stress-timed speech

North Americans stress the peak syllable of a content word, for example ba–na–na. We say con-fig-u–ra–tion, with stress on ‘fig’ and more stress on ‘ra‘. When a North American listener hears these stresses, the change in stress helps identify the word she is hearing. The vowels stressed syllables are slightly longer and clearer than the vowels in unstressed syllables.

Stress works in a similar way when we speak a phrase or sentence. In a scheme similar to the pattern of stress and unstressed syllables. In a thought group, or in a sentence, some syllables in content words are stressed clearly, while syllables in grammatical words, the words that create the grammar relationship among content words, are usually not stressed.

Consider this sentence:

On cold mornings, she drinks a cup of strong coffee.

Consider the sentence as thought groups:

On cold mornings / she drinks / a cup / of strong coffee.

Now consider a typical stress pattern for this sentence:

On cold morn – ings / she drinks / a cup / of strong co – ffee.

The vowels in the unstressed syllable are quickly and softly pronounced, while the vowels in the stressed syllable are pronounced clearly and somewhat slowly.

The sentence also has a focus word, the word the speaker considers the most important part of the sentence’s meaning.

On cold morn – ings / she drinks / a cup / of STRONG co – ffee.

North Americans use the pattern of stressed and focused words to let listeners know which words we think relate to the meaning. We use thought groups to tie our words to their function in the sentence structure. By stressing syllables, we identify and recognize important meanings for the idea. By using through groups, we group words around the content words they create relationships with. Using stressed words and thought groups allows us to see how the relationships among words point to the focus word for that sentence.

A path to adapt speech to a North American communities

When a North American does not hear stress pattern in someone’s speech, the listener might be unsure of the meaning, or might not understand the sentence at all. Speaking in this stress-timed style allows people to understand and trust your speech. In coming posts we will take concrete steps toward understanding speech in North American language contexts.