English Lci

How Fundamental is Tone in Relation to Accent Neutralization? The answer to this inquiry is plain and basic: very, if not the most significant element. You see; English is a stressed language, not like others that are considered syllabic languages. This means that stress is what contains most of the sense in spoken language, instead of syllables. There is an extremely useful manner of understanding this. Get hold of a phonetic transcript, this is, check a phonetic book, where you may discover lots of data written out into the International Phonetic Alphabet. If you could find a tape with the audio adaptation of the text in question, so much the better. Even if you may get puzzled at first, go sentence by sentence and try to analyze it. You will note that just a few syllables possess real vowel sound, the remainder carry that indeterminated sound named “Schwa”. This is how it is most often characterized: /?/

Now, take another glimpse: it is very simple. Only the stressed syllables carry a diverse, individual sound; the others are schwa. At present, it is valuable to make a division amid content words -stressed words that possess the real sense of a sentence, typically nouns, adjectives, and verbs-, and function words. Function words are linkers, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, habitually one-syllabic words. These words, function words, by no means, and this is crucial, by no means possess a different vowel sound other than our friend, the schwa sound. Kind of extreme? Not at all, simply try it. Now focus your attention on the consonants, and take a closer look. Try to tell apart the different consonant sounds and variants. Is it the equivalent /b/ when it is at the beginning of a sentence or stressed word, between voiced sounds, for example: between vowels, or at the end of sentence or stressed word?

Now, a small diversion. Take a phrase of the content. Now read it out loud, yet, as an alternative to employing conventional vowels, utilize the schwa sound each time. If you can offer the accurate model of modulation and emphasis, I assure you, it will sound very much like native American English. We have to deduce that excessive vowel separation is one of the most obvious foreign signs you will find in spoken English. To try an additional mini-game, experiment with these two phrases: a- I can do it. b- I can't do it. Pretty much the same, aren’t they? Only a letter and apostrophe of variation. Nevertheless, their modulation is completely different. “I can do it” holds the main stress on “do”, where “I can't do it” holds the main stress weight on “can't”. Really instructive, right? Examples similar to this pop up again and again in every day chat. Meaning is primarily carried by modulation and not vowel differentiation. Try it. Even if in the beginning it may sound to you as a bit awkward, as soon as you pay strong consideration to colloquial English -not oratorical English or poetry, for example, only individuals chatting, you will see most sounds are really the schwa sound. Dominate this, and the access will be unlocked to welcome you into a more advanced phase in your mastery of the English language. If you’re taking ESL classes, you should check out more great articles in our blog. If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to post it to your site or blog and forward this link to your friends. Have a great day!

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