Speak English more naturally: Using rhyme for word stress and intonation

Hi, welcome to www.engvid.com , I'm Adam.

In today's video, I want to talk to you about word stress and intonation to help you with

your listening but also with your speaking of English in a more natural way.

Okay?

I'm going to start with an example to show you what I'm talking about.

"Tom asked Lisa out."

Very simple sentence, but I want you to listen to the different ways I say it.

"Tom asked Lisa out."

"Tom asked Lisa out."

"Tom asked Lisa out."

"Tom asked Lisa out."

"Tom asked Lisa out."

Each way I said it has a slightly different meaning, because I gave different stress to

each word.

If I say, "Tom asked Lisa out", it means not Frank, not Bill, not John, Tom.

I'm stressing Tom, because that's who I want you to understand did this action.

Tom asked Lisa out, not Jane, not Kathy, not anybody else, right?

So, the word stress is actually very important.

Again, both in listening and in speaking.

Now, I did - I made a lesson about word stress a long time ago, one of my earliest lessons.

But you can catch the description - the link in the description box.

And Emma also made a very good video about word stress.

So, I highly recommend you watch those and keep those in mind with what I'm going to

talk to you about here.

Now, what I have here are poems, essentially.

This one is a nursery rhyme, and this one is rap, okay?

Both of these are very good ways to practice your listening skills in terms of word stress

and intonation.

Now, word stress is basically - basically punching on words when you land on them.

You give a little bit more emphasis to them, or you slow down on them, etc.

And this conveys a lot of meaning to the listener, okay?

And intonation is more about the speed and the flow and the pace of the sentence, okay?

Now, rhyme, before I go on - rhyme is basically a tool that you use that words and the sentence

and the word sound the same.

For example, "wool" and "full" sound the same, okay?

"Dame" and "lane", more or less, not exactly, but I'll explain that in a second.

So, we're using rhyme in order to create flow, to create stress.

Now, a good tool for you to use - and again, you can just go on Google or any search engine

and just type into the search engine "rhyming dictionary".

Now, these are very good tools in terms of pronunciation but also gives you a lot of

different words to use in terms of creating your own poems, which again, I'm going to

talk about at the end.

So, let me read this out to you first, okay?

Baa, Baa, black sheep

Have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir

Three bags full

One for the master

And one for the dame

And one for the little boy

Who lives down the lane

Okay?

Notice that I change my speed a little bit with each line.

Why?

Because I want to make sure that we match in terms of - I match them in terms of intonation.

"Baa, baa, black sheep."

I have four syllables.

"Have you any wool?"

Now here, I have five.

So, in order for them to fit together, I have to speed up a little bit on the second one

to match the pace of the first one.

"Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?"

Right?

I have to squeeze the words a little bit and go a little bit faster so they basically match

in terms of tone and intonation.

"Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full."

One, two, one, two, one, two, three, right?

Four and three.

So, I'm going shorter, faster, shorter, faster.

That gives me a lot of speed.

Now, English is a very musical language.

And a lot of meaning comes across in the music of the way you speak and what you hear.

Okay?

So, nursery rhymes are a good way to practice that.

Now, notice here, "dame" and "lane", they're not exactly the same.

This is an m, this is an n.

M and N are close enough that we consider it a rhyme.

But more importantly, I have "ay".

Let's put it like this, ay, ay.

So, the syllable sound is the same, so therefore we can consider it a rhyme.

Now, I'm sure many of you have at least heard of Eminem, the rapper.

Okay?

This is from one of his songs:

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy

There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti

He's nervous, but on the surface, he looks calm and ready

So, he has a very choppy approach to his rap, okay?

Now, I'm not a rapper.

I'm not going to do it the way that he does it exactly, but you get the idea.

I'm jumping from one word that I'm stressing - sweaty, his weak arms are heavy.

T and V obviously don't rhyme, T and V, but "swe", "he", I have the same syllable.

And the main thing I'm doing is I'm punching on this word.

His palms are sweaty, knees weak.

Very light.

Arms are heavy, right?

So, I punch on the word and that way, the listener hears it and makes the connection

automatically.

"Sweaty" is pronounced like a D, so words that end with "ty" often sound like "d", "sweady",

not "sweaty", "sweady".

And then "sweaty", I have "spaghetti", also sounds like a "d".

"Already" and "ready".

And here, I have "nervous" and "surface", right?

So, he uses a lot of rhyme to move his story along, bring the listener in with him, and

he punches on the words that he wants you to hear.

Now, rap is actually very difficult to understand.

Even native speakers can't understand a lot of rap, sometimes.

Depends how fast they are, the words they use, etc.

But still good practice.

Now, you can also go and do a search online for lyrics, okay?

Song lyrics are a very good way to practice your listening.

A little bit of warning, don't try to learn grammar from songs, okay?

Musicians will often play with their grammar in order to fit the rhyme or to fit the music,

basically, the melody.

So, don't learn grammar, but learn pace.

Learn word stress.

Learn intonation.

Learn flow, okay?

Because the singers will want you to focus on particular words and you have to pay attention

to those words.

Now, not all songs rhyme, but they all have a certain rhyming melody, right?

One line might not rhyme with another line, but you know that these two are somehow connected

because they stressed something, right?

And they move the pace along, like "Baa, baa, black sheep/Have you any wool?"

So, obviously, focusing on sheep and wool.

"Yes sir, yes sir" Very quick, very light.

I'm not punching on anything.

"Three bags full", right?

I want you to hear, like I have a lot of wool.

The little sheep has a lot of wool.

So, this is very good for you to practice, but it doesn't have to be nursery rhymes.

Some people don't like them.

Doesn't have to be rap, some people don't like that.

Let me show you something else.

So now, another very famous rapper for you, okay?

Parting is such sweet sorrow

That I should say good night 'till it be morrow

Now, he's not actually a rapper.

He's William Shakespeare, he's a poet.

He wrote this, okay?

If you want to really study beautiful English and beautiful poetry and beautiful rhyme and

beautiful intonation, study Shakespeare.

He's the master at it.

You can learn a lot from him.

"Parting is such sweet sorrow/That I shall say good night, till it be morrow" right?

So, learn how he's playing with the intonation, how he's playing with the pace.

What words he's punching.

He is obviously going to punch the rhyming words, but he's going to - he has to basically

force the other words to reach that position where the rhyme actually works and the musicality

of it works.

And again, if you think this is not how people speak, it's very much how people speak.

They control the pace of their language.

They control what they speed up on, because they want to just - it's not that important.

They show down on what they want you to hear, and they punch the words that they really

want you to hear and focus on, okay?

Now, another good thing you can do is write your own little poetry.

It'll help you with your pronunciation, because you have to find words that rhyme.

And it'll help you create sentences or lines that basically have a matching flow, okay?

I met a girl, her name was Grace

With an angel's voice and a lovely face

So, I want to make sure that I'm falling on the same amount.

Now, a different number of syllables, but commas are also your friend.

Commas are little pauses, right?

"I met a girl, her name was Grace/With an angel's voice and a lovely face".

Because I have more syllables and I have to squeeze them in, I don't have room for a comma.

So, I have to speed it up a little bit and everything works together, right?

I asked her out to a bar called "Frank's"

She said, "You're sweet, but no thanks."

Okay?

So, this is a little poem.

I wrote it just for this lesson, okay?

I hope you guys like it.

But again, all I'm doing is just playing with the flow, playing with the words, making sure

that "Grace" and "face" and "Frank's" and "face" all work and that when you get to those

ending words, you're not tripping over the line because it's too fast or too slow.

Now, a very good thing to do also, in terms of pronunciation, if you come across a word

and you're not too sure.

Of course, you can look up in the dictionary and it will give you the phonetic spelling.

But if you don't like the phonetic spelling and you prefer a more creative or a more fun

way to find out how to pronounce words, put this into a rhyming dictionary and find out

other words that sound like it that you already know how to pronounce, and you'll figure it

out.

So, this word: wound.

There are two ways to pronounce this word.

"Wound", like the past tense of "wind".

So, for those of you who have a watch - I don't wear a watch, but if you have an old-fashioned

watch, you have to wind it every once in awhile so that it works properly.

The past tense is "wound".

Sound - wound, sound.

But if I take a gun and I shoot somebody, I will wound that person.

Tuned, like your guitar needs to be tuned, your piano needs to be tuned.

Wound - sound.

Wound - tuned.

Two different ways to pronounce the same word.

Completely unrelated meanings.

"Doubt" with a silent "b".

Doubt, out, drought.

Now, I actually made a lesson about how to pronounce words with "ough" or "augh", especially

with a "t".

You can use the rhyming to do that.

Doubt - out - drought.

Freight - great, right?

So, you can use rhymes to learn pronunciation, and then create your own little poems to practice

your speed, your intonation, your stresses, etc.

To convey a meaning that you want to convey.

Okay?

So, I hope this was a little bit helpful.

I hope it's a little bit fun for you to try to do this yourself.

If you have any questions about this lesson, please go to www.engvid.com and ask me in

the comment section there.

There's also a quiz that you can practice some of this information to make sure you

understand it.

If you like this video, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and come back for more

great videos on English.

See you then.

Bye!