Stress – what words you choose to stress in a given sentence.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING? VS

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

WHAT VS DOING

Well, there are some patterns in a neutral way of saying things, there’s also a lot of freedom, and
of course it depends on the context, the attitude and many other things.

But you first need to know the building blocks and the basis of what words are usually stressed
and what words are not stressed for the most part.

Rhythm – is the real deal. It’s the feel of the language. It’s really about owning it once you start
American rhythm. Now, you have to understand that English is the perfect balance between the
long versus short; the high versus low; the stressed versus the effortless and when you’re able to
balance between all these things in an effortless and clear way, this is when you become a strong
speaker who is able to communicate their message in a clear and confident way.

Before we start discussing each of the elements, let’s talk about the different types of words first.

In English, the words in the language are divided into two main groups.

CONTENT WORDS

FUNCTION WORDS

Content words are words that deliver the content.

Nouns – teacher, bag, hospital

Verbs – dance, eat, think, walk

Adjectives – gorgeous, kind, clean, noisy

Adverbs – loudly, above, yesterday, immediately

The other group is

Function words – these are all the small words that connect content words. They are essential in
creating a grammatically correct sentence but when they stand alone, they don’t signify anything
and we don’t know exactly what they mean.

We’re talking about:

Prepositions – on, in, at

Verb be – am, is, are

Articles – a, an

Determiners – the, this, that

These are the words that non-native speakers like me struggle with when trying to construct a
sentence.

Is it have been? Has been? Had been?

So when we speak, there’s always a strong preference towards stressing content words. Content
words are the important words.

Had been versus Have been, the message is still going to be clear but if you say RED instead of
BLUE, that’s completely different.

Content words are always more important and that’s how we treat them when we think English
Language Intonation.

Content words are the words that stressed usually whereas function words are unstressed and not
only are they unstressed, they are reduced to a point that it’s not even clear anymore.

Example:

The glass is on the table.

Let’s talk about the three elements: melody, word stress and rhythm.

First of all stress, we need to decide what the stressed words in the sentence are.

Let’s first recognize what are the content words in the sentence.

The glass is on the table.

The content words are “glass” and “table”. These are two nouns and these are the words that we
are going to stressed in this sentence.

Note: Not every content word is stressed the same but for now let’s agree that these words are the
words that I choose to stress.

This is where melody and rhythm come to play.

Stressed words are higher in pitched and longer.

Higher in pitch so they get a higher note --- taraaaa

The first note is higher in pitch –taraaaa and they are longer

The glaaaass Is on the taaaaable

Notice that I raised the pitch for glass and table

In terms of melody, when words are stressed, they are also higher in pitch.

One more thing about melody, in every syllable receives a different note in English.

It’s not – the glass is on the table

It’s not – the glass is on the table

Not every word is going up and down

I choose the words to stress and these words are going to have a higher pitch. From there, I either
go down or I go up. Every syllable takes me one step lower or higher.

In this case:

The glass is on the table.

I keep going down because these are unstressed words

I am starting a new word that is stressed so I am going to go high in pitch

That is melody – the words I choose to stress and go high in pitch for.

We choose to shine on the content words, the words that bring the content, in this case, glass and
table, by going higher in pitch and prolonging them.

Rhythm is a result of your message or what you’re trying to say.

The words that you stress are going to be longer and louder and higher in pitch.

The words that are less important for delivering your message are going to be reduced to allow
everything else to stick out.

Example:

What are you going to do?

The “do” is the verb here and that’s the word we’re going to stress.

STRESS? Check! I know what word to stress.

In terms of melody, this word is going to be higher in pitch because that’s the word I want to
stress DO… DOOOO so I already know the ending.
The beginning is a bunch of function words, so I am going to reduce them.

“What” turns into “wh’t”

“are” turns into “r

“you” turns into “yuh”

“going” turns into “gonna”

So instead of saying WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?, we say wadaya gonna

In many languages, every syllable has the same beat. It doesn’t matter if it is a content word or a
function word, if it’s strength or unstressed, it receives the same length. A sentence like this is
going to sound “what are you going to do?”

Do is going to be super short.

What is going to have the same length.

To have the same length as “do”

It is hard to understand what is the important part in the sentence.

When we speak with a foreign accent, what we do is we simply apply patterns that we know
from our native tongue on to English. We don’t do it consciously, it comes out organically. Now,
if we do that, if the patterns of our native tongue are different from English and sometimes
contradictory to the patterns of English, the result is that the stress is not going to be clear, the
message is not going to be clear because if you are applying your external patterns and stressing
things, for example, in the beginning rather than in the end, and in English you want to stress the
ending usually, what happens is that you end up stressing the wrong words. Although you know
how to construct sentences, the words are accurate, you don’t make any grammar mistakes, but if
you don’t stress the right words, if you don’t put the emphasis on the words that are stressed the
you become unclear,people may get something that is a litte diferent from what you mean.

Understading that, recognizing your patterns, and listening how native speakers speak, really
helps understand how English should be spoken and advances you in becoming a stronger, a
more confident, and a clearer speaker