English Pronunciation: Syllable Stress in English Sentences - Word Stress

Welcome back to the English Danny  channel and my series on pronunciation.  

In the first two videos I introduced the  concepts of syllables and stress and then  

in the third video I showed a little bit about how  we use stress to indicate key words in sentences.  

In today’s video I want to show two more keys to  using stress in English sentences. In the example  

sentences used in this video, stressed words will  be marked in the text with ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

First tip: In general, we don’t usually  stress words in sentences that are there for  

purely grammatical reasons. Examples of words  like this include prepositions like OF, OR,  

FROM, TO and articles like A, AN,  THE and helping verbs like ARE, WAS,  

DO. Let’s look at a good example sentence.  This sentence is the beginning of a famous  

English novel, “A Tale of Two Cities.” Notice  where the stressed words are in this sentence.

It was the BEST of TIMES,  it was the WORST of TIMES;  

it was the AGE of WISDOM, it was the AGE  of FOOLISHNESS; it was the EPOCH of BELIEF,  

it was the EPOCH of INCREDULITY; it was the  SEASON of LIGHT, it was the SEASON of DARKNESS.

That sentence was about opposites like BEST and  WORST, WISDOM and FOOLISHNESS. So I stressed the  

opposite words. It was also about the time period  of the novel’s setting, so I stressed the time  

words like TIME, AGE, EPOCH, and SEASON.  Other words didn’t need to be stressed.

Now, let’s look at another example.  

I’ll introduce myself and tell you a little  bit about me. Notice the stressed words.

HELLO, my NAME is DON and I’m a  PROFESSOR of ENGLISH in KOREA. I’ve  

BEEN at the UNIVERSITY for FIVE YEARS, and  I’ve been TEACHING on YOUTUBE for TWO years.

See how we don’t stress little words like my,  

is, a, in, and, at, the? You can practice  this on your own as well. Write your own  

introduction using mine as a model and stress  the same key words in your introduction.

Second tip: let’s have a simple tip  with when to stress CAN and CAN’T.  

Can’t is often stressed. Can is often unstressed. Can YOU speak ENGLISH? YES, I can SPEAK ENGLISH.  

YES, I CAN. (since CAN is the only  verb here we stress it in this context)  

NO, I CAN’T speak ENGLISH. Can you HELP  me? YES, I can HELP you. YES, I CAN.  

SORRY, I CAN’T HELP you right now. WHEN can  you COME? I can COME at EIGHT. I CAN’T COME  

today. HOW LONG can you STAY? I can STAY  for an HOUR. I CAN’T STAY for very LONG. 

In Part 4 of this video I’ll give some examples  of using stress in LONGER sentences. And in later  

videos I’ll get into more complicated issues  of pronunciation like emphasis and intention.  

Keep watching this series and  I’ll see you in the next video.