How To Speak American English: VERBS

When you're speaking English, the way you stress  words matters a lot. I am often working with  

my students on word stress. This leads to my  students hearing “I'm sorry what?” a lot less.

Today we're going to work on word  stress with verbs and I'm going to  

give you a few tweaks that you can  use to sound more natural speaking  

American English and I'll also show you  how you can see your voice like this.

I'm Rachel and I've been teaching the American  

accent and English here on YouTube for over  15 years. Please visit Rachelsenglish.com/free  

to get my free course the top three  ways to master the American accent,  

yes we do talk about word stress in that  course and you'll have audio to train with.

In American English we have two different kinds  of syllables: Stressed and unstressed. Stressed  

syllables, words that can be stressed are usually  nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. So today  

we're focusing just on verbs, those are almost  always going to be stressed. If there's more  

than one verb in a sentence they probably won't  all be stressed but I can almost guarantee you  

in 99% of sentences that you will hear, a verb  will be stressed. Let's head to the computer.

We're going to study some real English  conversation, I'm with my in-laws here and we've  

just made flan. Let's start by listening to one  phrase and thinking about the stress of the verbs.

Know everybody let's just see.

The verb is see. Let's just see. And  see has an up down shape of stress in  

the melody of the voice and it has more  length, it also has a little bit more  

volume than an unstress word like the  word before just which was just, just,  

just see. So the most important thing for you  to think about with your verbs is this up down  

shape of the voice we don't want it flat,  that makes it really hard to understand.

See. So try that with me now.

See. Doing it in slow motion you can really  feel that up down shape of the voice.

See.

Also I want you to hear how much the  pitch comes down. It's not see, It's see  

and it keeps heading down especially at the  end of a phrase, that's a very American way  

to shape the melody, the music of a phrase.  We want the syllable to be long enough so  

we get time for that pitch change, see. We  don't want see, see, see, see. Same sounds,  

S and E but the pitch is flat and the length  isn't very long. See not as clear as see, see,  

a little longer up down shape of stress. Now  we're going to analyze it, I've used an app  

called voice analyzer, it did cost me $10 but I  use it pretty regularly and I do find it useful  

to think about how we use the voice and to  see smoothness to see pitch, to see volume.

Know everybody, let's just see.

Know everybody, know everybody. First  of all, the word everybody so fast.  

Know everybody. And then we have a  little bit more length, let's just  

see. Let's look at what happens  to the pitch on that word see.

On the top you see pitch, and on the bottom  you see volume. The pitch, the last word see,  

look at it down here. The pitch comes all the way  down at the end of the phrase. It starts higher,  

see, ee, ee. But it ends low in  pitch. Know everybody let’s just see.

The line here that shows the volume,  you'll see that know everybody let's  

just see. Both of those, all of those  words have a little bit of a peak,  

more volume and then the volume tapers off at  the end of the phrase. Just as the pitch falls.

This shaping of the stress, up down in  shape, up down in volume is part of what  

really makes English clear. So you're  going to want to have that pitch change,  

a pitch difference on your stress words  and verbs are often going to be stressed.

This reminds me of an analysis I did with  a colleague of mine who speaks Chinese. I  

said the same thing that she said in  translation and in American English I  

had much more pitch change than she did  in Chinese. And I'm often working with  

my students on higher highs and lower lows  to have more of a differential when they're  

speaking because it's this difference  that really makes stress words clear.

You'll see here, we have my voice and where  most of my range happens is a little bit lower,  

the general American pitch is lower than other  languages but also I have more contrast between  

my highest pitch and my lowest pitch  and that's what's really important.

Now let's look at some more sentences.  So, think about the verbs and think about  

what you expect to hear. A little bit more  length and a little bit more up down shape.

See if you can scrape and drizzle maybe.

Scrape and drizzle maybe. So we actually had  three verbs there. See, scrape and drizzle.  

See if you can, see if you can. So, see wasn't  as stressed as scrape and drizzle which had a  

lot more of that up down shape of stress,  the word and in between those two words,  

so fast. See, see, see. There was still  some pitch change there but scrape and  

drizzle had a little bit more length.  Let's listen to that one in slow motion.

See if you can scrape and drizzle maybe.

Scrape and drizzle maybe. I love slowing down  speech this much because you can't help but hear  

how each pitch moves smoothly to another one. We  don't have jumps, we don't have separation this  

smoothness is a big part of the characteristic  of American English. See if you can scrape and  

drizzle maybe. If you're wondering why  there's not a solid line for the pitch,  

it's because unvoiced sounds don't get picked  up it's hard to show speech as frequencies like  

it is here so it's not a perfect program but  it can give us an overview and we see that on  

both of these lines. We have pitch coming down.  That's really what I want you to focus on with  

a stressed syllable. So we had scrape a pitch  change we had drizzle. Dri, ih, pitch change.

Scrape and drizzle. I didn't want to let  any of that good caramel go to waste. So,  

in this sentence I'm going to  ask my brother-in-law a question.

So Jeff your mom has made this for  you like hundreds of times right?

So the main verb there was made.  Did you notice there was also has?

So Jeff your mom has made this for  you like hundreds of times right?

That's a helping verb and I'm going to do  another video on that because word stress  

with helping verbs is totally different than word  stress with main verbs. So the word here is made.

Let's listen in slow motion, do we  hear a pitch change up and then down?

So Jeff your mom has made this for  you like hundreds of times right?

Made, made this, made. Yes, it is up and down.

Guys, if you can find slow motion audio or if you  can take a favorite podcast or a YouTube video,  

take the audio into a program and slow it down.

I think I used Final Cut Pro here because it  

was video but you can also slow stuff  down in lots of free audio programs.

I just really encourage my students to do  this because the way you hear stress is so  

different. You start to really feel it. And you  also really feel that connection between words,  

I like to think of it as pulling  Taffy. It's really stretchy,  

it doesn't break. So your voice is like Taffy,  stretching from one syllable into another.

Let's listen to another  sentence where the verb is made.

I'm sure whoever made it was very legit.

Made it. Made it. Up down shape of stress it was a  

little bit longer a little bit louder  than some of the other syllables.

My in-laws are very passionate, they're very  loud people. And here my sister-in-law had  

an opinion that she was saying very  loudly close to my head and I said:

This girl is yelling in my ear.

Now let's look at that. Let's look at our verb.

This girl is yelling in my ear.

Is yelling. Yelling. That's our main verb,  

it had that up down shape of  stress, let's listen in slow motion.

This girl is yelling in my ear.

Yelling in my ear.

Do you love slow motion audio as much as I do?  

Doesn't it really reveal to you  the nature of American English?

Thank you so much for studying with  me. Keep your learning going now with  

this video and don't forget to  subscribe with notifications on,  

I love being your English teacher. That's it  and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.