STRONG AND WEAK FORMS

Unit 10. Strong forms & weak forms.

• Strong forms: stressed forms (Stressed words in a sentence)

• Weak forms: unstressed forms (Unstressed words in a sentence)
 Strong Forms and Weak Forms

• Kategori kata yang tergolong ke • Kategori kata yang tergolong ke

dalam Strong Forms/Words dalam Weak Forms/Words
(Content Words atau lexical words) (Function Words atau grammatical
adalah: words) adalah:

1. Articles: a, an, the

1. Nouns: car, happiness
2. Conjunctions: and, but, or
2. Verbs: run, visualize
3. Prepositions: in, off, over
3. Adjectives: happy, careful 4. Pronouns: your, us, their
4. Adverbs: now, calmly 5. Auxiliaries: can, might, is, was

Lazimnya, kategori kata-kata di Lazimnya, kategori kata-kata di atas

atas mendapatkan stress dalam tidak mendapatkan stress dalam
normal speech. normal speech.
Grammatical words are words
that help us construct the
sentence but they don't mean
anything: articles, prepositions,
conjunctions, auxiliary verbs,
etc.
These words have no stress,
and so they are weakened. That
weakened form is called "weak
form" as opposed to a "strong
form", which is the full form of
the word pronounced with
stress.
The strong form only happens
when we pronounce the words
alone, or when we emphasize
them.
Weak forms are very often
pronounced with a schwa (/ә/),
and so are very weak and
sometimes a bit difficult to hear
properly.
Sometimes weak forms are
easy to spot, because we use
contractions in the spelling to
show it:
I am French (strong form) I'm French (weak form)
But usually there is no change of spelling, only the pronunciation is different:
But strong form: /bʌt/ weak form: /bət/

Tell him to go strong forms /hɪm/ /tu:/ weak form: /tel əm tə gəʊ/
As you can see, the grammatical words "him" and "to" are unstressed and have a weak form
when pronounced inside a sentence.

another example: I would like some fish and chips

strong forms /aɪ wʊd laɪk sʌm fɪʃ ænd tʃɪps/ This version sounds unnatural and, believe it or
not, more difficult to understand for a native speaker.

weak forms /ɑ wəd laɪk səm fɪʃ ən tʃɪps/ and we can use weaker forms sometimes: /ɑd laɪk
səm fɪʃ ən tʃɪps/ so we can see that the auxiliary verb "would" has two weak forms /wəd/
and /d/
Students who are learning English usually use only strong forms, and
they sound very unnatural.

English speakers use weak forms all the time, every single sentence is
full of them, and students find it difficult to understand because they are
not used to them, and very often they don't even know they exist.

Why do grammatical words weaken the way they do. It's all about
rhythm. The way English is pronounced makes it necessary to weaken
function words so you can keep the rhythm.

You can find more about rhythm here or simply watch this introduction
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2JZICF2uH8
• Contoh: My baby walks to the door and stands there

Strong forms (stressed words) kalimat di atas adalah:

baby (noun), walk (verb), door (noun), stands (verb), there (adverb).

Weak Forms (unstressed words) kalimat di atas adalah:

My (pronoun), to (preposition), the (article), and (conjunction)
•THANK YOU
Exercise: Strong and Weak Forms