THANK YOU SO MUCH! Your video made me realise that my mother tongue, Urdu, is syllable-timed! Now, I understand why I didn't understand the intonation patterns in English! Thank you very much!!
I WANT to go for a WALK ( two stresses and two stressed syllables ). I am GOING to the SHOPS, do you WANT anything? ( three stresses with three stressed syllables ). This lesson is delightfully educational. Thanks a lot.
Hi. Thank you so much for this brilliant video! I should've found it much earlier! I've been always wondering why my English doesn't sound natural enough, and now I understand why. And I like your voice so much! I hope you'd make more videos about intonation and accent for us who eagerly want to learn English but have very little access to it. Best wishes. Hee from Korea
Hi Hee Kim, thanks for your comment. Really pleased that you're finding the videos useful. Feel free to make suggestions here: ua-cam.com/video/VVqGRzWg2ls/v-deo.html who knows, I might make a video just for you. Ashley
4:38 - I hear many native Londoners who actually speak like that here in this syllable timed example. Some deadpan English comedians, snobbish upper class Londoners and children's audiobook narrators came in mind. It doesn't sound so unnatural in British English. Maybe in American or Australian English, syllable timed rhythm may be very peculiar, since they're very 'tonal' and 'pitched' accents. But I don't see it out of place in London English.
Could you please do a video of you reading books, poems or news? Your voice is so pleasing and relaxing and i really love it! I’d love to shadow or mimick your tone and rhymth 🥰
Very helpful video. I have been doing various pronunciation exercises over the year and still could not understand why I sound as a robot. Your video gave me the answer. Thank you!!
Thank you for the teaching. The information on stress-timed vs syllable-timed languages is very useful. Now I know why some people, including me, are inclined to speak in a syllable-timed manner. Hence, making it harder to take a more natural intonation when speaking English even when we pronounce every word correctly in a sentence.
You have an incredibly soothing, clear and precise voice. It's very pleasant to listen to. I've heard many other English tutors on UA-cam who have peculiar, unpleasant, or inaccurate delivery (and some even have full-on speech impediments). It's therefore good to hear a pure, relaxed and accurate delivery for a change.
Hello! you are very clear with your explanation. I am having a hurt time with tone and prominence and Im going to have a test next week so I will tell you about it. Thanks a lot-
Great video, thank you ! Could you make more videos related to british intonation and stress? For example: how everyday conversation between two friends should look like (from the point of view of stress and intonation). Thanks a lot!
Great video! Let me point out once again that you're one of the best Standard British English (Contemporary RP) Pronunciation teachers I've ever come across on UA-cam and since I occasionally teach and translate English professionally myself, your tips will surely improve my teaching skills.
Dear Sir, I enjoyed this video, and especially your voice. I found that the closed captions that UA-cam shows with this video have a number of mistakes. Then I noticed that you already have done a nearly complete transcript in your video's "description." A lot of non-native speakers use the closed captions option on UA-cam. Since machine-generated text is sometimes messing up your wonderful video, could you please edit so it meshes. I know it would be a lot of work for you to do, but I just wanted to flag this; everything thing else is perfect!
I find your videos immensely useful. I'm an actor and have been taking RP lessons for more than a year now and didn't even know what a syllable-timed or stressed-timed language was :( Thank you! Do you teach one-to-one lessons in London?
Thank you so much for such an amazing video!! My first language is a syllable-timed one and it takes me so much efforts to adapt to the difference. I keep trying to feel the stress and utter words in a more authentic way, but sometimes it turns out that i may miss some syllables and it sounds incorrect. It’s uneasy to overcome. Could you please give me some suggestions? Thank you again!
Thanks for making this video. It's very useful but how do we know which words we should stress? I understand that content words are the ones that need to be stressed but idk I can't get that
Hi Mariano, I know you've already seen the video that I made in answer to your request for help with word stress in sentences, but just in case anyone else scrolls down and reads your question, I thought I'd include a link to that video here: ua-cam.com/video/W-KD9n393zc/v-deo.html
Hello, I'm preparing my exam of oposiciones to become a funcionario teacher in Spain. I like to learn about phonetics and phonology. I'm also in love with you. Thank you
I need to know relate intonation with language use and which data , like interview or conversation may include intonation clearly. in other words how can intonation affect the meaning of sentence ,one of scholar said that change of intonation leads to change of meaning .I want to begin from this point
I liked this video and the explanation provided ..... But I will always consider English speakers presumptuous ..... I speak English as a second language... I feel my English is quite good and I am fluent. I even worked for a while as an interpreter... And yet, I will always get the negative comment about my foreign accent, even when people understand what I am saying ... For some reason it is not good enough to learn it and even master it, but you are expected to sound like a native speaker. I would never ever set the bar so high for someone trying to learn my language.
the stressed timed word like going, shop, want, is it its intonation higher or more stressed. I mean some words sound longer than other words? what the meaning it carries anyway? thanks
Great video. But I sometimes get confused which word to be stressed. For example, "We all arrived on time, but Tom was three hours late!" I thought the stress comes on ARRIVED. Are there any good tips for that?
You might stress arrived if you want the listener to focus on that word (i.e. the action of arriving, as opposed to something else). For example, if the meeting was due to start at 5 o'clock: "The leaders all ARRIVED on time, but they didn't actually START the meeting until SIX!" Now we're directly comparing 'arrived' with 'start'. Hope that helps!
This has me wondering how this affects lyrics in music. I'm wondering if this is the reason why singers will purposely mispronounce words or lengthen syllables of words in sentences to match the tune of a song being that lyrics must match the notes available per bar. This has me wondering if old style Italian operas had to do similar as Italian is a syllable timed language. I don't speak Italian so I wouldn't know
Second language learners don't need to sound like native speakers. What they need is to understand and be understood. It's all about inteligilibility whilst keeping your own cultural background and identity. Be proud of your accent people!
You struggled with the syllable timed examples, prolly cos you're so used to your stress timed intonation. Listen to an African speak, that's the best example.
Hi Obie, thanks for your comment. In some ways you're right, although I think I demonstrate it well enough to hear the difference :-) Your suggestion of listening to an African speaker is great, thanks. Hope you enjoyed the video.
Unfortunately, this is BS. Academic research has long demonstrated that this old-fashioned theory is very pretty, but plain wrong. The theory presupposes that a "stressed-timed" language would have approximately the same time intervals between stressed syllables, regardless of the number of syllables in between (against all acoustic evidence), whereas "syllable-timed" languages are supposed to have all syllables of approximately the same length, regardless of stress (again, not true). All languages rely on both factors: stress (as long as they have stress) and syllable count in order to "time" their utterances, and the distinction between "stressed-timed" and "syllable-timed" is non-existent. What you're doing in the video, stressing every syllable in a sentence, may be how a non-native speaker can sound in English (though I seriously doubt that anyone but a robot would speak like that), but if they do, this is not because their language is "syllable-timed", it's simply because they don't know which syllables are unstressed, they haven't learn about vowel reduction in function words, lack of fluency, etc.
Whilst the guy exaggerates a bit when it comes to the differences between stress and syllable timed languages, English is still, however, very stressed timed compared to, say, French and Spanish. Only in English, and not French or Spanish, you place stress on the keyword of a sentence to convey a meaning or idea. In French and Spanish, you just change the word order, with no need of stressing. In English, word order is very fixed and inflexible. So instead, we use stress to make a point. An example will be in this sentence: "Johnny will go to the shops today". If you place stress in any of these words, the meaning will change. For instance, if you place a tonal stress on "Johnny" your point will mean that he is going to the shops, not Sally or Martin. If you place stress on "today", you are saying he is going to the shops today, not tomorrow. A stress on "shops" means that he is going to the shops, not anywhere else. You get the idea. In syllable timed languages, like French or Spanish, these "morse code-like" stresses (duh-duh-DUH-duh) will sound unnatural and odd. So instead, you just change the word order to convey your point.
@@EraJavokh Using stress to convey contrast or to emphasize a certain words or phrases in a sentence 1) does happen in Spanish and to a lesser degree in French as well as in English (a government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people / un gobierno DEL pueblo, POR el pueblo, PARA el pueblo / un gouvernement DU peuple, PAR le peuple, POUR le peuple) - languages are often not as unique as we like to think; 2) this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with a language being "stressed-timed" or "syllable-timed". I'm afraid you got the wrong end of the stick. However, what is true is that for native English speakers (and I assume you are one -- native Spanish speaker here btw) they find that many foreigners don't reduce the quality of unstressed vowels to a "colourless" schwa or KIT vowel, and because of that lack of reduction in unstressed vowels it sounds they're almost over-stressing unstressed syllables. And that's the origin of the theory in this video. It was well-intended advise for foreigners, telling them "don't give so much time to each syllable, but rather try to squeeze unstressed syllables together between stressed syllables". But "stress" is not about vowel quality, it's about pitch + loudness + duration (= prominence). Foreigners who are not taught to reduce vowel quality will always sound like they're over-stressing unstressed syllables regardless of time. Theories about how different language time their utterances differently have never been proved acoustically. Actually, they have been disproved by academic research. Your point about Spanish and French using word order more where English would rely on intonational patterns is valid, but this is totally unrelated.
this dudes english is perfect
Thanks.
Wait? Is he not a native?
Na, he's English.. but he has a pleasing accent/ pronunciation I guess is the point..
This bloke speaks impecable English. I hope he has the success he deserves!
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! Your video made me realise that my mother tongue, Urdu, is syllable-timed!
Now, I understand why I didn't understand the intonation patterns in English!
Thank you very much!!
I WANT to go for a WALK ( two stresses and two stressed syllables ).
I am GOING to the SHOPS, do you WANT anything? ( three stresses with three stressed syllables ).
This lesson is delightfully educational. Thanks a lot.
Your Process of Teaching and Explaining are EFFECTIVE. Thank You.
You are a great teacher! Please upload more lessons on intonation and rhythm in English ...thanks a Lot Indeed!
Hi.
Thank you so much for this brilliant video!
I should've found it much earlier! I've been always wondering why my English doesn't sound natural enough, and now I understand why.
And I like your voice so much!
I hope you'd make more videos about intonation and accent for us who eagerly want to learn English but have very little access to it.
Best wishes.
Hee from Korea
Hi Hee Kim, thanks for your comment. Really pleased that you're finding the videos useful. Feel free to make suggestions here: ua-cam.com/video/VVqGRzWg2ls/v-deo.html who knows, I might make a video just for you. Ashley
Hi mate! I just have to tell you that this video is SUPER HANDY!! Thanks a lot!
4:38 - I hear many native Londoners who actually speak like that here in this syllable timed example. Some deadpan English comedians, snobbish upper class Londoners and children's audiobook narrators came in mind. It doesn't sound so unnatural in British English. Maybe in American or Australian English, syllable timed rhythm may be very peculiar, since they're very 'tonal' and 'pitched' accents. But I don't see it out of place in London English.
Agreed. That's not a very uncommon sound in upper class London.
Could you please do a video of you reading books, poems or news? Your voice is so pleasing and relaxing and i really love it! I’d love to shadow or mimick your tone and rhymth 🥰
Very helpful video. I have been doing various pronunciation exercises over the year and still could not understand why I sound as a robot. Your video gave me the answer. Thank you!!
Thank you for the teaching. The information on stress-timed vs syllable-timed languages is very useful. Now I know why some people, including me, are inclined to speak in a syllable-timed manner. Hence, making it harder to take a more natural intonation when speaking English even when we pronounce every word correctly in a sentence.
I find your lessons very useful. You provide clear explanations and examples. THX again for your videos!
Thank you for your service.
You are saving my life. ❤ ja ja you make it sound so easy! Warm regards from Argentina.
Marvellous! Clearly explained with very good examples.
Greeting from Puebla, Mexico. I love your lessons!!! Very clear explanations. I'm glad I have found your channel.
You have an incredibly soothing, clear and precise voice. It's very pleasant to listen to. I've heard many other English tutors on UA-cam who have peculiar, unpleasant, or inaccurate delivery (and some even have full-on speech impediments). It's therefore good to hear a pure, relaxed and accurate delivery for a change.
it is very useful,thank you for teaching us~
Thank you. It is AMAZINGLY helpful.
Hello! you are very clear with your explanation. I am having a hurt time with tone and prominence and Im going to have a test next week so I will tell you about it. Thanks a lot-
thank you so much. your lessons are really useful.
King of pronunciation
This is what I had been looking for Thank you for your great help sir!!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH. IT IS REALLY HELPFUL FOR ME
Great video, thank you ! Could you make more videos related to british intonation and stress? For example: how everyday conversation between two friends should look like (from the point of view of stress and intonation). Thanks a lot!
Great video! Let me point out once again that you're one of the best Standard British English (Contemporary RP) Pronunciation teachers I've ever come across on UA-cam and since I occasionally teach and translate English professionally myself, your tips will surely improve my teaching skills.
This video is really helpful!
Thanks a lot. I'm definitely using this with my students
very helpful, thank you very much
this is very important thank you very much, can you make more videos like this one?
Dear Sir, I enjoyed this video, and especially your voice. I found that the closed captions that UA-cam shows with this video have a number of mistakes. Then I noticed that you already have done a nearly complete transcript in your video's "description." A lot of non-native speakers use the closed captions option on UA-cam. Since machine-generated text is sometimes messing up your wonderful video, could you please edit so it meshes. I know it would be a lot of work for you to do, but I just wanted to flag this; everything thing else is perfect!
Very useful!!!
Thank you!
I realised why the others Latins can't understand my European Portuguese! All are silabic except Portuguese. Great... thanks 😊
I find your videos immensely useful. I'm an actor and have been taking RP lessons for more than a year now and didn't even know what a syllable-timed or stressed-timed language was :(
Thank you! Do you teach one-to-one lessons in London?
Thank you so much for such an amazing video!!
My first language is a syllable-timed one and it takes me so much efforts to adapt to the difference. I keep trying to feel the stress and utter words in a more authentic way, but sometimes it turns out that i may miss some syllables and it sounds incorrect. It’s uneasy to overcome. Could you please give me some suggestions? Thank you again!
Your accent is awesome
crazy helpful
Thanks for making this video. It's very useful but how do we know which words we should stress? I understand that content words are the ones that need to be stressed but idk I can't get that
Hi Mariano, I know you've already seen the video that I made in answer to your request for help with word stress in sentences, but just in case anyone else scrolls down and reads your question, I thought I'd include a link to that video here: ua-cam.com/video/W-KD9n393zc/v-deo.html
Well done
thank you
happy birthday💐💐💐💐💐
Ow... Great video. I'm subscribe and follow you in blog. Thanks.
Hello, I'm preparing my exam of oposiciones to become a funcionario teacher in Spain. I like to learn about phonetics and phonology. I'm also in love with you. Thank you
i ALmost underSTAND what you're TRYing to SAY HERE➘. PLEASE➚, MAKE more VIdeos on WORD-STRESS and SENtence-STRESS for us➘. THANK you➘.
I need to know relate intonation with language use and which data , like interview or conversation may include intonation clearly. in other words how can intonation affect the meaning of sentence ,one of scholar said that change of intonation leads to change of meaning .I want to begin from this point
How do you know which phrase is syllabus timed or stress timed?
Great
Perfect
Thanks, great videos! I'm subscribing! and checking your blog too!
Great, I'm glad to help you. Our blog is here: englishpronunciationroadmap.com/blog/
Can you also give examples for syllable-timed languages?
Youre great
great job, do you mind to make a video about feet diagram and clarify it , thank you at all :)
I liked this video and the explanation provided ..... But I will always consider English speakers presumptuous ..... I speak English as a second language... I feel my English is quite good and I am fluent. I even worked for a while as an interpreter... And yet, I will always get the negative comment about my foreign accent, even when people understand what I am saying ... For some reason it is not good enough to learn it and even master it, but you are expected to sound like a native speaker. I would never ever set the bar so high for someone trying to learn my language.
I just watched David Cameron video on BBC and you sound like him.
Viet Lequoc exactly what I wanted to say!
the stressed timed word like going, shop, want, is it its intonation higher or more stressed. I mean some words sound longer than other words? what the meaning it carries anyway? thanks
Do you know if german is a stress-timed languae?
how could I determine which words to be stressed in my speech ?
Hi Sherif, hopefully this video will help: ua-cam.com/video/W-KD9n393zc/v-deo.html
Great video. But I sometimes get confused which word to be stressed. For example, "We all arrived on time, but Tom was three hours late!" I thought the stress comes on ARRIVED. Are there any good tips for that?
You might stress arrived if you want the listener to focus on that word (i.e. the action of arriving, as opposed to something else).
For example, if the meeting was due to start at 5 o'clock:
"The leaders all ARRIVED on time, but they didn't actually START the meeting until SIX!"
Now we're directly comparing 'arrived' with 'start'.
Hope that helps!
English Pronunciation Roadmap I see! Got it. Thank you for your help :)
I wonder what intonation does Hugo weaving speak in the film V Vendetta? I know it is an Received pronunciation but is it stressed or syllable?
Definitely stressed.
Ethan DeMent Thank you, I'm quite interested in RP English..
This has me wondering how this affects lyrics in music. I'm wondering if this is the reason why singers will purposely mispronounce words or lengthen syllables of words in sentences to match the tune of a song being that lyrics must match the notes available per bar.
This has me wondering if old style Italian operas had to do similar as Italian is a syllable timed language. I don't speak Italian so I wouldn't know
Hi! Is it too much to ask you which part of Englandd do you live ? Thank you.
American English is stressed timed language as well...
nice
Intonation
Білянська рулить
АХАХАХ
Second language learners don't need to sound like native speakers. What they need is to understand and be understood. It's all about inteligilibility whilst keeping your own cultural background and identity. Be proud of your accent people!
You struggled with the syllable timed examples, prolly cos you're so used to your stress timed intonation. Listen to an African speak, that's the best example.
Hi Obie, thanks for your comment. In some ways you're right, although I think I demonstrate it well enough to hear the difference :-) Your suggestion of listening to an African speaker is great, thanks. Hope you enjoyed the video.
Unfortunately, this is BS. Academic research has long demonstrated that this old-fashioned theory is very pretty, but plain wrong. The theory presupposes that a "stressed-timed" language would have approximately the same time intervals between stressed syllables, regardless of the number of syllables in between (against all acoustic evidence), whereas "syllable-timed" languages are supposed to have all syllables of approximately the same length, regardless of stress (again, not true). All languages rely on both factors: stress (as long as they have stress) and syllable count in order to "time" their utterances, and the distinction between "stressed-timed" and "syllable-timed" is non-existent. What you're doing in the video, stressing every syllable in a sentence, may be how a non-native speaker can sound in English (though I seriously doubt that anyone but a robot would speak like that), but if they do, this is not because their language is "syllable-timed", it's simply because they don't know which syllables are unstressed, they haven't learn about vowel reduction in function words, lack of fluency, etc.
Whilst the guy exaggerates a bit when it comes to the differences between stress and syllable timed languages, English is still, however, very stressed timed compared to, say, French and Spanish. Only in English, and not French or Spanish, you place stress on the keyword of a sentence to convey a meaning or idea. In French and Spanish, you just change the word order, with no need of stressing. In English, word order is very fixed and inflexible. So instead, we use stress to make a point.
An example will be in this sentence: "Johnny will go to the shops today". If you place stress in any of these words, the meaning will change. For instance, if you place a tonal stress on "Johnny" your point will mean that he is going to the shops, not Sally or Martin. If you place stress on "today", you are saying he is going to the shops today, not tomorrow. A stress on "shops" means that he is going to the shops, not anywhere else. You get the idea.
In syllable timed languages, like French or Spanish, these "morse code-like" stresses (duh-duh-DUH-duh) will sound unnatural and odd. So instead, you just change the word order to convey your point.
@@EraJavokh Using stress to convey contrast or to emphasize a certain words or phrases in a sentence 1) does happen in Spanish and to a lesser degree in French as well as in English (a government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people / un gobierno DEL pueblo, POR el pueblo, PARA el pueblo / un gouvernement DU peuple, PAR le peuple, POUR le peuple) - languages are often not as unique as we like to think; 2) this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with a language being "stressed-timed" or "syllable-timed". I'm afraid you got the wrong end of the stick. However, what is true is that for native English speakers (and I assume you are one -- native Spanish speaker here btw) they find that many foreigners don't reduce the quality of unstressed vowels to a "colourless" schwa or KIT vowel, and because of that lack of reduction in unstressed vowels it sounds they're almost over-stressing unstressed syllables. And that's the origin of the theory in this video. It was well-intended advise for foreigners, telling them "don't give so much time to each syllable, but rather try to squeeze unstressed syllables together between stressed syllables". But "stress" is not about vowel quality, it's about pitch + loudness + duration (= prominence). Foreigners who are not taught to reduce vowel quality will always sound like they're over-stressing unstressed syllables regardless of time. Theories about how different language time their utterances differently have never been proved acoustically. Actually, they have been disproved by academic research.
Your point about Spanish and French using word order more where English would rely on intonational patterns is valid, but this is totally unrelated.
Recently I've started to watch your videos and they are so useful , thanks .
Thank you