English Pronunciation (5)

Stress in sentences

 

Syllable stress. On the Stress in Words page, we said that most English words with two or more syllables have stress on one of the syllables.

The syllable that is stressed becomes heavier and longer. It is emphasized.

The syllables that are not stressed become shorter and lighter. Their vowel sounds (a, e, i, o and u) often become so short and so light that they all sound the same. This is called a schwa sound. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a symbol for the schwa sound, which looks like this: ə. Click here for more about the schwa.

Word stress. Extra stress and schwa sounds appear when you put words into sentences.

  • “Anna, could you answer the telephone” becomes “Anna, c’d y’ans' th’ telephone”.
  • “What do you want to do today?” becomes “What d’y’ want t’do t’day?”
  • “We could go to the beach, it’s a lovely day” becomes “We c’d go t’ th’ beach, 's’a lovely day.”

    • It's the important words that are stressed. The unimportant words become shorter and weaker.

    Let's look at two more examples, this time with the IPA ə symbol:

  • “Cən yə tell me thə time?”
  • “Də yə have ə pen?”
    • Time and pen are stressed, but can you and do you become shorter and lighter.

    Which words are important? Imagine that you are having a conversation by text message on your mobile phone, and you're in a hurry, so perhaps you don’t write all the words. The words you text are the important ones. They're the ones we will stress when we say the sentence:
  • “John says he can come back at 5 o’clock.”
  • “Sarah says Anna’s working but Andrea is free at 7 o’clock.”

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    Using stress to change meaning

    Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.

    It’s possible to change the meaning of a sentence by using a heavy stress to emphasize one part of it.

    Let's take a simple sentence (“Do you want me to walk to the supermarket?”) and give it six different meanings:

    “Do you want me to walk to the supermarket?”
    This means “Do you, or don’t you? Have you decided yet? Make your mind up!”

    “Do you want me to walk to the supermarket?”
    This means “Is it you that wants me to go to the supermarket, or is it somebody else that wants me to do this?”
    Possibly it means “I’ll go if you want me to, but if it’s my idiot sister who wants me to go, I’m going to watch television instead!”

    “Do you want me to walk to the supermarket?”
    This means “..because if you do, you'd better start being nice to me!”

    “Do you want me to walk to the supermarket?”
    This means “Why must I go? I have the flu! I'm off sick from work! Why can’t John go instead?”

    “Do you want me to walk to the supermarket?”
    This means “I don’t want to walk, I want to go in the car”.
    Or possibly “It’s raining, it’s dark, it's two miles away, if you think I'm going to walk you're crazy!”

    “Do you want me to walk to the supermarket?”
    And this means “Are you sure you mean the supermarket? Not the little 7-11 shop in our road?”

     

    Back to the banana:

    So, we can give at least six different meanings to a simple sentence of nine words.

    How many different meanings can we give to one word? Just by changing the way we say it? Banana, for example?

    Graphic of bananas

    Let's tell a story, using only the word banana, but saying it in lots of different ways. Here's the plot of the story. You can say banana, or banana banana, or banana banana banana. There are two people. One is blue and the other is red:

    (1) Bored... (2) Exciting idea!!! (3) What did you say?
    (4) Explains exciting idea (5) Are you crazy? (6) No, I think it's a great idea!
    (7) No. And let me explain why. (8) Just because it's not your idea. (9) No, it's just a bad idea.
    (10) It wasn't like this in the old days... (11) Yes, it was. (12) I'm so depressed!
    (13) We must be patient. (14) I don't want to be patient... (15) Look - cute guy/girl/dog!

     

    And something more advanced

    Say these sentences with exactly the right stress and intonation:

  • "Oxford is really nice, but Cambridge is an amazing place."
  • "In my opinion, this part of the project is significantly more important."
  • "The way you present a proposal is often more important than the proposal itself."
  • "We have to be realistic, and the only realistic solution is to do more research."
  • "'Environmental services' are things the environment gives us, especially clean water and clean air."
  • "Peter is the site manager; Sara is the production assistant. Together, they make a great team."
  • "Product safety regulation is inevitable. It's just as important as occupational health and safety"."
  • "Wildlife has the right of way. If wildlife is in the road, vehicles must stop and wait for it to move." (Canadian Coast Guard, visitors' guide to Sable Island)

    • And some aphorisms. Say it like you mean it!

  • "Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has." (Freya Stark, adventurous traveller)
  • "We don’t see things as they are, but as we are." (Anaïs Nin, erotic writer. Also said by many other people before and since)
  • "We have learned nothing in 12,000 years! None of us can paint like this. After Altamira, everything is decadence." (Picasso)
  • "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." (Aristotle)
  • "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident." (Arthur Schopenhauer)
  • "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." (Upton Sinclair, investigative writer)
  • “All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening." Alexander Woollcott (journalist)
  • "But it does move.” (Galileo Galilei, “Eppur si muove”).
  • "I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." (Galileo Galilei)
  • "I don't believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them." (Marie, marquise du Deffand)
  • "At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies." (P G Wodehouse)
  • “I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I considered invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.” (Colette)

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