Improve your English - Pronunciation

Word Stress

Syllables Small words such as 'cup', 'red' and 'now' each consist of only one syllable. Every syllable contains a single vowel or vowel sound (with a few rare exceptions). So words such as 'raining' (rain - ing), 'harder' (har- der) and 'foggy' (fog-gy) each have two syllables, and 'impressive' (im-press-ive) and 'partition' (par-ti-tion) each contain three syllables.

What is Word Stress? Word stress is the emphasis given to a particular syllable within a word in order to allow rapid and accurate communication. In short a stressed syllable is louder than an unstressed syllable, but it has other features too, in fact there are five features in total applied to a stressed syllable:

1) Louder (imPRESSive)

2) Longer (im p-r-e-s-s ive)

3) Change in Pitch (usually higher than surrounding syllables)

4) Clearer - the stressed vowel sound is more pure.

5) Uses larger facial movements (particularly the jaw and lips)

Why is Word Stress important? Not all languages use word stress, in French for example every syllable is given equal emphasis. In English, because we use stress, even if we dont hear the word clearly we can still understand the word because of the position of the stress within the word. By placing the stress on the wrong syllable we make the words difficult to hear and understand.

Suppose you are talking to a friend over the telephone, and they say 'the cloth was very expensive'. The word 'expensive' is stressed as follows; 'exPENsive'. If they had stressed a different syllable you may not be able to tell whether they were saying 'expensive' or 'extensive' and as such you dont know if the cloth cost a lot of money, or if there was lots of cloth.

Rules We now know what word stress is, and why it is important, but how do we know where to place the stress in the words we use. Most native English speakers do not even know the rules which apply, and yet they are still able to stress each word correctly. This is because we all learn how to use our language from 'experts' (parents, grandparents, teachers) and we can hear how they use stress, it is then simply a case of reproducing the sounds they make. This is by far the best way for you to improve your word stress, but there are some simple rules to help you understand the process:

1) One word has only ONE stress, if you hear two stresses then you hear two words.

2) We stress vowels and not consonants.

Homophones

Homophones are words that have exactly the same sound (pronunciation) but different meanings and (usually) spelling.

For example, the following two words have the same sound, but different meanings and spelling:

hour
our

In the next example, the two words have the same sound and spelling, but different meanings:

bear (the animal)
bear (to carry)

Usually homophones are in groups of two (our, hour), but very occasionally they can be in groups of three (to, too, two) or even four. If we take our "bear" example, we can add another word to the group"

bare (naked)
bear (the animal)
bear (to tolerate)

"Our bear cannot bear to be bare at any hour."

The following list of 70 groups of homophones contains only the most common homophones, using relatively well-known words. These are headwords only. No inflections (such as third person singular "s" or noun plurals) are included.

air heir

aisle isle

ante- anti-

eye I

bare bear bear

be bee

brake break

buy by

cell sell

cent scent

cereal serial

coarse course

complement compliment

dam damn

dear deer

die dye

fair fare

fir fur

flour flower

for four

hair hare

heal heel

hear here

him hymn

hole whole

hour our

idle idol

in inn

knight night

knot not

know no

made maid

mail male

meat meet

morning mourning

none nun

oar or

one won

pair pear

peace piece

plain plane

poor pour

pray prey

principal principle

profit prophet

real reel

right write

root route

sail sale

sea see

seam seem

sight site

sew so sow

shore sure

sole soul

some sum

son sun

stair stare

stationary stationery

steal steel

suite sweet

tail tale

their there

to too two

toe tow

waist waste

wait weight

way weigh

weak week

wear where

'The...'

When we write the word 'the' in English it will always be the same, but when spoken the pronunciation is different depending on the word which follows it. There are two pronunciations of the word 'the' used in English; 'thuh' and 'thee'.

Normally, we pronounce "the" with a short sound (like "thuh"). But when "the" comes before a vowel sound, we pronounce it as a long "thee".

vowel sound	we write	we say
A	the apple	'thee' apple
E	the egg	'thee' egg
I	the ice-cream	'thee' ice-cream
O	the orange	'thee' orange
U	the ugli fruit	'thee ugli fruit'

It is important to understand that it is what we say that matters, not what we write. It is the sound that matters, not the letter used in writing a word. So we use a long "thee" before a vowel sound, not necessarily before a vowel. Look at these cases:

we write	consonent/vowel	we say	sound type
the house	consonent (h)	'thuh' house	consonent sound
the hour	consonent (h)	'thee' our	vowel sound
the university	vowel (u)	'thuh' youniversity	consonent sound
the umbrella	vowel (u)	'thee' umbrella	vowel sound

Emphatic the [thee]
When we wish to place emphasis on a particular word, we can use "emphatic the" [thee], whether or not the word begins with a consonant or vowel sound. For example:

A: I saw the [thuh] President yesterday.
B: What! The [thee] President of the United States?
A: Yes, exactly.

"...ed"

The past simple tense and past participle of all regular verbs end in -ed. For example:

base verb (v1)	past simple (v2)	past participle (v3)
work	worked	worked

In addition, many adjectives are made from the past participle and so end in -ed. For example:

"I like painted furniture."

The question is: How do we pronounce the -ed?

The answer is: In 3 ways - / Id/ or / t/ or / d/

If the base verb ends in one of these sounds:		*example base verb:**	example with -ed:	pronounce the -ed:	extra syllable?
unvoiced	/t/	want	wanted	/Id/	yes
voiced	/d/	end	ended	/Id/	yes
unvoiced	/p/	hope	hoped	/t/	no
	/f/	laugh	laughed
	/s/	fax	faxed
	/S/	wash	washed
	/tS/	watch	watched
	/k/	like	liked
voiced	all other sounds, for example ...	play	played	/d/
		allow	allowed
		beg	begged

* note that it is the sound that is important, not the letter or spelling. For example, "fax" ends in the letter "x" but the sound /s/; "like" ends in the letter "e" but the sound /k/.

Exceptions

The following -ed words used as adjectives are pronounced with /Id/:

aged	blessed	crooked
dogged	learned	naked
ragged	wicked	wretched