Natural British Intonation - Weak Forms

So, what are weak forms?

Well, we need to first understand what word stress is!

Let's take a word like 'Police'

There are two syllables in 'Police'

The stressed syllable is on '-lice', the second syllable,

So the first syllable is not stressed, it's a weak form!

So it sounds like a schwa!

/pə/

not /pəʊli:s/

Police /pəli:s/

So, that's one thing you need to know

it's stress in words,

which syllable is stressed.

We'll come back to that later.

But what about stress in a sentence, how does that work?

Well, English is not really an efficient language,

For example, if I say to you :

"want coffee"

it may sound like a caveman, but,

you understand, everyone understands that I want a coffee.

"I" and "a"

are not very important words, right?

So,

in a natural sentence,

those unimportant words

also have weak forms.

In weak forms, the vowel sounds

are replaced with schwa sounds.

So, for example, "I want a coffee"

"I" and "a"

Again, they're not important, so they will be reduced to schwa sounds.

"want" and "coffee"

They're the important bits of information in the sentence,

so we'll pronouce them correctly.

The whole thing should sound like this :

"I want a coffee" /ə wɒnt ə kɒfi/

Again, the vowel sounds,

they're replaced by schwa

I = /ə/

Want = /wɒnt/

A = /ə/

Coffee = /kɒfi/

"I want a coffee" /ə wɒnt ə kɒfi/

You say it with me, repeat it with me.

I want a coffee.

"I want a coffee" /ə wɒnt ə kɒfi/

Ok! But how about words with more than one syllable?

We need to think about sentence stress AND word stress.

So, how about if ‒

"Police coming"

So if I said :

"police coming", we both understand "the police are coming"

We don't need "the" and "are",

they will be weak forms.

Reducing the vowel sounds to schwa sounds, so :

"The police", remember that "police" we still got that weak syllable on "po-"

"-lice"

"The police"

"are"

reduced to /ə/

/ə/

coming.

"The police are coming"

"The police are coming"

That's where you get your sentence stress, that's where you get your intonation from.

So, for example, a question like : "Do you fancy a beer?"

could sound like "Do you (/ʤə/) fancy a (/ə/) beer?"

Again, what are the important words?

Fancy, beer.

I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Americans don't use the word "fancy", it just means "want".

So, for example :

"Fancy beer?"

The whole question : "do you fancy a beer?"

"Do you (/ʤə/) fancy a (/ə/) beer?"

"Do you fancy a beer?"

Ok, let's put all of that together,

You'll see sentences come up on the screen,

you trying to say it,

then hear me say it,

then you repeat in the correct way.

What did you do yesterday?

I went to the cinema.

What did you see?

Just a romance movie

Who did you go with?

I went with your girlfriend.

You went with my girlfriend?

So, you see, you could also stress a particular word,

depending on what you want to focus on the sentence to be.

Thanks for watching!

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English subtitles by Julie Descaves