29.Stress Patterns in English

 Syllables and stress are two of the main areas of spoken language. Pronouncing words with the stress on the correct syllables will help us improve our spoken English, make our sentences easier to understand and help us sound more like a native speaker.

English syllables are stress-timed. English is classed as a 'stress-based' language, which means the meanings of words can be altered significantly by a change in word stress and sentence stress. There are always one or more stressed syllables within a word and this special stress placement helps words and sentences develop their own rhythm.

Using the correct stressed syllables within a word is an important part of speech and understanding.

Even if you cannot hear a word well and are not familiar with the context, you can often still work out what the word is, simply from listening to which syllable is stressed.

In the same way, if a learner pronounces a word differently from the accepted norm, it can be hard for a native speaker to understand the word. The word or sentence might be grammatically correct, but if they have used the wrong  stress pattern or the wrong stressed syllables, it could make it unintelligible to a native.

Some examples

Two syllable words stress patterns:

Quiet, party

Three syllable words stress patterns:

Fantastic, energy

Four syllable words stress patterns:

Understanding

Five syllable words stress patterns:                                        

Uncontrollable, inspirational

 

-Submitted  by   Ahammed  Shabeeb   K.

**************************************************

When a word has more than one syllable one of them is spoken with more force or emphasis than the rest of the word. This force or emphasis laid on a specific syllable is called stress patterns in English. There can be main and secondary stress or unstressed sounds. Each word has it’s own stress pattern.

Eg: Take three words : politics, political and politician, they have different sounds because they have different stressed syllables. Capital letters indicate stressed syllables

POLitics

poLITical

poliTICIan

 

References:

Wikipedia.  Stress(Linguistics)

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(linguistics)

 https://learn.teacherappenglish.com/phonetics/stress-patterns/

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/knowing-subject/q-s/stress-pattern

-Submitted by  Rishwa M. Rasheed