Hi. What's up? How are you? Hey guys, it's Hadar and this is The Accent's Way. Today
we are going to talk about American intonation. Now I know that usually in
this channel I talk about pronunciation, but don't get me wrong.
American intonation is not less important, and sometimes more important,
than pronunciation and this is why I figured it is time to talk about
American intonation. So today I'm going to open the wonders of American
intonation so you can start listening to English rather differently. When we talk
about intonation we are talking about three things. One is the melody - the music
of the language. When I go up in pitch. When I go down - "Ha-dar" - tuh-TAH. If I take
away the words and I just play it, it's just like a song or a tune that I'm
playing - Tah ta-ta-dah ta ta-ta-dah-ta-tah. So when you're listening to English
or when you're speaking English you also want to consider the melody, the notes
that you're using. We're also going to talk about stress. Stress is what words
you choose to stress in a given sentence. What are you doing? Or, what are you doing?
'What' verses 'doing'. While there are some patterns and a neutral way of saying
things, there's also a lot of freedom. 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. Now, lastly, we have rhythm. Rhythm is the real deal. Its the
feel of the language. It's really owning it once you start using American rhythm.
Now, you have to understand that English is a perfect balance between the long
versus short, the high versus low, the stressed versus the effortless, and when
you are 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. Now today, we're going to
discuss all of these elements but in the future I will release more in-depth
videos about each and every subject with many, many examples and more explanation.
Before we talk about these elements, I want to talk about the different types
of words. So, in English, actually in any language, the words in the language are
divided into two main groups: content words and function words. Content words
are words that deliver the content nouns, like 'sister', 'table', 'school'; verbs 'go', 'run'
'swim', 'think'; adjectives 'beautiful', 'red', 'clean'; and adverbs 'slowly', 'sometimes',
'beautifully' and 'fast'. The other group is function words. These are all the small
words that connect content words. They're essential to create a grammatically
correct sentence, but when they stand alone they don't signify anything. We
don't know exactly what they mean. We are talking here about prepositions like 'on',
'in', 'at'; verb be - 'am', 'is', 'are'; articles 'a', 'an'; determiners like 'the', 'this', 'that'. These
are the words that non-native speakers struggle with when they're trying to
construct a sentence because, is it "have been", "has been", "had been"? So, when we speak, there
is always a strong preference towards stressing content words. Content words
are the important words. If you say "had been" versus "have been" the message is still
going to be clear. But, if you say "red" instead of "blue", that's something
completely different. So content words are always more important and that's how
we treat them when we think about intonation because content words are the
words that are stressed usually, whereas function words
are unstressed. And not only that they're unstressed, they were reduced to a point
that it's even not clear anymore and I'll give you a few more examples in a
second. Let's take for example the sentence, and I'm going to say it broken
down a little bit, "The glass is on the table." "The glass is on the table." And now
I'm gonna talk about all three elements: melody, word stress and rhythm. So first
of all stress. We need to decide what are the stressed words in the sentence. So
let's first recognize what are the content words. "The glass is on the table."
we have 'glass' and 'table', two nouns. And these are the words that I'm going to
stress in this sentence. Not every content word is stressed the same, but
for now let's agree that these two words are the words that I choose to stress.
This is where melody and rhythm comes into play. Stressed words are higher in
pitch and longer. Higher in pitch, so they get a higher note TAH-dah. The first note
was higher in pitch - TAH-dah - and they're longer. Okay. "The GLASSs is on
the TABLE." So notice that I raised the pitch for 'glass' and 'table'. "The glass is
on the table." Okay. So in terms of melody, when words are stressed they're also
higher in pitch. Now one more thing I want to tell you about melody is that
every syllable receives a different note in English. It is not "The glass is on the
table" - ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. "The glasses on the table." It's not "The GLASS
is ON the TABLE." Its not every word is going up and down, but I choose the
stress words and then these are the words that are going to be higher in
pitch and 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" - so I keep going down because these are not stressed words - "TAY", I'm starting
a new word that is stressed so I'm gonna go high in pitch. "TAY-ble". "The glass is on
the table." So that's melody what words I choose to
stress and go high in pitch for. Now, while we choose to shine on the content
words, the words that bring the content, in this case glass and tea bowl, by going
higher in pitch and prolonging them, function words play a smaller role in
this show. They are reduced. We kind of want to hide them. We want to reduce them
to a point where they don't interfere or they don't compete with content words. So,
if we're going back to "The glass is on the table", function words are "the", "is", "on",
and another "the". We reduce the vowel in those words to a schwa. A schwa is a
really reduced vowel sound. It sounds something like this: "uh". To make the sound, we
just drop the jaw a little bit, the tongue rests on the bottom of the mouth
the lips are relaxed, and we release sound - "uh" "uh". So the vowels and the function
words reduce through this "uh" sound. Therefore the word "the", okay we don't say
"thee glass", we say "thuh glass." So the vowel there is a schwa sound - "thuh" "thuh" -
and we connected it. It feels as if it's one word "the glass". "Is" turns into "uhz".
"On" turns into "uhn", and again we have another "thuh". So it's not "is on the", its
"zun-thuh", "zun-thuh". We reduce the vowel and we connect the words together - "zun-thuh", "zun-thuh".
"Th'glass z'n'th table". "The glass on the table." "The glass on the table."
Now notice what happens, the "is" merges with "the glass" - "the glass'z".
"On" becomes 'mm' - "the glass'z'm". The N and TH connect - "the glass'n'th". Okay? So we can like
took these three words and squeeze them into one utterance "zun-thuh" "zun-thuh".
"The glass on the table." So you get a sentence that is a perfect balance between the high
and the low - "glass is on the" - between the long and the short - "glass is" - right? "Glass"
is long, although it's one syllable, and "is" is really reduced and also the stress. So
I invest more energy and I say a little louder - "GLASS z'n'th" - to be able to connect
the words and to reduce them I have to say the consonants softer - okay? It's
not enough so I have to invest less energy in those function words to be
able to go through them smoothly and then be ready for the next content word
where I'm gonna go higher pitch and I'm gonna prolong them. Let's look at another
example, what if I told you that five words can be shorter than one word with
one syllable. Five words are going to be shorter than one word with one syllable.
How? Let's look at the next example: What are you going to do? The "do" is the verb
here and that's the word that I'm going to stress, okay?
Stress? Check! I know what word I'm stressing. Then, I know that in terms of
melody, this word is going to be higher in pitch because that's the word I want to
stress - "do" "do". So I already know the ending. The beginning is a bunch of
function words, so I'm going to reduce them. "What" turns into "wh't". "Are" turns into
"r". "You" turns into "yuh". "Going" to turns into "gunna" "gunna". So instead of saying
"what are you going to", we say "wadaya gonna" "wadaya gonna". "Wadaya gonna do?"
"Wadaya gonna do?" "Wadaya gonna do?"
"Wadaya gonna do?" "Wadaya gonna do?" So the "do" is longer than the entire
first part of the sentence. It's longer than the entire sentence because five
words versus one, one word with one syllable is longer than the first five,
and this is why it's important to remember that rhythm is a result of your
message - 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. In many languages, every syllable has the same beat. It doesn't
matter if it's a content word or a function word, if it's stressed or
unstressed, it receives the same length. So a sentence like this is going to
sound something like "what are you going to do", "what are you going to do." Okay? So "do" is gonna be super short. "What" is going to have the same length.
"To" have the same length as "do" - "what are you going to do" - and then it's hard
to understand what is the important part here. Okay, of course it's a simple
sentence but if we're talking about more complex sentences and there is no
hierarchy between the words, it's really hard to get your point. "What are you
gonna do" "what are you gonna do" "what are you going to do" "what are you gonna do".
Let's take a look at a sentence with several content words: There are three
coins in the box. "There are three coins in the box" Here, I chose to stress "coins"
and "box", so these words are high in pitch. "There are three COINS in the BOX." "There are"
"there are" "there are" - that's reduced - "there'r three coins in the box."
"N-thuh" "N-thuh" "N-thuh" - also reduced. "There are three coins in the box." I can also say "There
are THREE coins in the box." And when you hear that you know that maybe someone
else thinks that there are five coins. No, there are three coins in the box. Why are
you confusing me? There are three coins. Why did you say there were
five? Okay, so it's the same sentence but stressing a different word means
something slightly different. Now, I want you to listen up here, and this is really
important. When we speak with a foreign accent, what we do is we apply patterns
that we know from our native tongue on to English. We don't do it consciously, its
just that's what 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're applying external intonation
and stressing things, let's say at the beginning rather than the end, and in
English you want to stress the ending usually, then what happens is that you
end up stressing the wrong words. although you know how to construct the
sentence,, the words are accurate, you don't make any grammar mistakes. But if
you don't distinguish the right words, if you don't stress the right words, if you
don't put the emphasis on the words that are stressed then you become unclear
then people may get something that is a little different from what you mean. So
understanding that, recognizing your patterns, and listening to how native
speakers speak, really helps you understand how English should be spoken
and advances you in becoming a stronger, a more confident and a clearer speaker.
Now I want to ask you - what, from everything that I discussed today, melody,
rhythm, stress, is the most challenging for you? What are you still struggling
with? Please let me know in the comments below and don't forget to tell me where
you're from and what is your native tongue and I
will do my best to create more content and lessons that will help you resolve
all the issues that you're facing. Thank you so much for watching. Please share
the video with your friends if you liked it and you think that they may benefit
from it. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and click on the bell
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a new video. Have a wonderful week and I will see you next week in the next video.