More on Word Stress and Vowels

The biggest difference between English and most other languages is the timing. In many languages stress is evenly place on each syllable of a word. Except for Chinese where each word is only 1 syllable, but this results in the same rhythm issues when speaking in English. It is hard to know where to stress a mufti-syllabic word when you have no experience with mulch-syllabic words.

English is called a stress timed language. An undescriptive term if there ever was one. It does nothing to help draw a clear picture of how the timing is different.

Other languages that stress specific syllables use accents or they use predictable patterns. For example French always stresses the final syllable.

American English uses what is known as alternating stress pattern. In a word we give primary stress to one syllable. Depending on the word we may have secondary stress, and always one syllable that is unstressed.

Look at the word banana. There are three "a"'s in this word. But only the second "a" gets a full pronunciation. The other two "a"s are reduced to a short quick schwa (uh) sound. The second "a" is longer and gets a full "a" production.

This is how we alternate stress in mulch-syllabic words. When this alternation is either placed on the wrong syllable or not made at all it has a tremendous effect on intelligibility.

Primary stress of a syllable is carried on the vowel. The vowel maybe lengthened, made longer or produced with a pitch change.

Lets look at another example "pajamas" again three "a"'s with 2 being produced as the short schwa or "uh" sound and the middle "a" getting the full pronunciation.

The verb/noun contrast can illustrate this well in this Accent Master video


Keep listening for good examples of spoken English, try to note how they are using alternating stress patterns in their speech. Can you mimic their rhythm? Try to mimic the beat in your first language and see if it feels different from your normal rhythm. This is the "feel" of spoken American English!

Lynn founder of Accent Master

Don't stress over word stress!

Word stress in English can be challenging. This is because American English incorporates words from many language backgrounds including, Indian both American Indian and from India, french, Latin, German, polish and every other language. As immigrants continue to influence our language we and they as new American create there own twist to these words, most frequently changing the stress pattern.

It is also true that we don't stick to one pattern, as in French where stress nearly always falls on the final syllable. And we don't mark the stress in our writing like in Spanish.

We do however have clues in our writing to the stress pattern. Specific word endings denote a specific stress pattern. Of course because we are talking about American English there is always to be exceptions to the rule.

One easy rule to remember is that when a word ends in -tion or -sion as in description and confusion, the stress will fall on the syllable right before the ending: description, confusion.

We stress the syllable by making it longer, louder and with a change in the tone.
I have created a podcast and posted it on the right, of the following words. Listen for the stressed syllable.

pediatrician, discussion, obligation, explanation, creation, application, section, relation, fusion, conversation, musician, observation, ration, attention, presentation, obsession, realization.

The importance of rhythm

What is the most important aspect to speaking clear English? The individual sounds? or the rhythm? I think the answer depends on how intelligible you are when you begin. Some people have a natural talent for languages, similar to that of music. In fact people who are musical do tend to have an easier time with second language acquisition. It may be that they are tuned into rhythm and aural nuances.

Though I wold have to say, that in my experience it is really the features of English that affect rhythm that has the greater impact. What features are these?

It is intonation, alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables, pausing, word stress and vowel reduction.

These features of spoken English affect the listeners ability to understand your message both the implied meaning and the spoken meaning. The other advantage is that when you use a standard rhythm, with standard reduction there is less chance of dropping information loaded word endings.

In my future posts we will take a closer look at each feature I mentioned and how to incorporate them into your speech.

If you would like to see some videos related to these topics visit my site

Thanks for reading!
Lynn