Lesson 9: Vowels, Part Three

This week we’ll do some quizzes on IPA English vowels to make sure you’ve got them down pat, then we’ll continue to work on differentiation and production.

There are a few other vowels that are sometimes used in English IPA transcription (like the schwa); most of them aren’t as common or occur only in certain American dialects. Once you get the basic long and short vowels down, your assignment for this lesson is to familiarize yourself with these other vowels as well. Then we’ll move on to consonants, and later, to reading entire sentences in IPA.

Dictionary.com has IPA transcriptions for all of its words. Just click on “Show IPA” next to each bracketed pronunciation to see the IPA transcription. (But don’t use it for Quiz 2! 🙂

IPA Long/Short Vowel Notes
1. The long “u” vowel is taught as a diphthong, /juː/, as in cub/cube and the letter u.
However, in terms of IPA, the long “u” sound in most American English words is just the /u/ sound without the /j/ consonant (which is the “y” sound, as in the word “yam”).

2. A colon featuring two triangles facing other (ː) is used to denote a long sound in IPA.
Its use varies, so what you really need to know is the relative length of sounds.
In English, vowel length usually works like this:
long vowels > short vowels
short vowels > consonants

Long/Short Vowels Quiz 1
Please identify which word the IPA transcription represents.
1. /bɪt/ – bit, bite
2. /boʊt/ – bot, boat
3. /beɪt/ – bat, bait
4. /tɪm/ – Tim, time
5. /dʌn/ – done, dune
6. /riːd/ – red, reed
7. /kæt/ – cat, Kate
8. /tuːb/ – tub, tube
9. /dɒt/ – dot, dote
10. /sɛt/ – set, seat

(adapted from Pronunciation Practice Activities, p. 52-53)
11. /stiːl/ – steal, still
12. /spɪl/ – spill, spell
13. /pleɪs/ – place, plus
14. /plæn/ – plane, plan
15. /bʌn/ – bun, boon
16. /hoʊm/ – hum, home
17. /laɪv/ – leave, live (as in “live in concert”)
18. /pɒt/ – pet, pot
19. /foʊn/ – fun, phone
20. /bɛd/ – bead, bed

Long/Short Vowels Quiz 2 (Pronunciation Practice Activities, p. 52-53)
Please transcribe the following word pairs into IPA.
Don’t worry about getting the consonants correct for now; just focus on getting the vowels correct.
1. tell, teal
2. neck, knock
3. bust, boost
4. piss, peace
5. gnat, knit
6. wheel, whale
7. must, most
8. made, mud
9. vet, vat
10. Mott, moat

Long/Short Vowels Quiz 3
In each word set, all of the words should contain the same vowel sound(s) when you transcribe them into IPA.
Please identify the word in each set that does not match, if there is one.
1. bought, lot, caught, post, cost
2. late, fret, wait, gait, freight
3. truss, dust, croon, none, flood
4. pin, ship, chin, fit, mint
5. billet, lichen, filling, millet, giblet
6. mice, nigh, jive, cry, wrist
7. best, knell, pew, check, crest
8. least, tread, peace, tree, ream
9. bough, crow, dough, flow, no
10. rule, pool, cute, boom, luck
Extra credit: dude, cute, butte, queue, muse

Other Vowels in American English
Besides the basic long and short vowels, there are other vowel sounds that you’ll want to be able to recognize by themselves and/or in diphthongs.

ʊ
book, woof, pull, should
This is pronounced halfway between /u/ and /ʌ/. You may recognize it from the /oʊ/ diphthong.

ɔ
(in some American dialects: dog, hot, coffee, caught)
The /ɔ/ sound is interchangeable with or replaces /ɒ/ in certain areas, such as the New York metropolitan area. It is also used in the /ɔɪ/ diphthong (coin, toy, ploy).

e
In American English, the /e/ sound only occurs in the diphthong /eɪ/. It is much more prominent in Australian English, where /e/ and /ɪ/ taking the place of the /ɛ/ sound in words like bet, head, and dress.

ɑ
spa, calm, ramen, lager, saga, Roald Dahl, Somalia
This is another vowel that is usually lengthened (ɑː) in American English. In British English it is used for many more words than would use the “ar”, /a/ or /æ/ sounds in American English.
(Examples of /ɑː/ in British English: answer, chant, march, craft)
The difference between ɑ and ɒ is the rounding of the lips.

a
The /a/ sound often becomes /æ/ in American English when alone. It mostly occurs in the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/.

You should be able to differentiate between these different vowel sounds, especially:
– between æ and ɛ (pat and pet)
– between ɑ and ɒ (spa and pot)
– between ʌ and ʊ (putt and put)

Below are some resources with audio so you can hear and compare the different vowel sounds.

IPA Vowel Charts and Audio
IPA vowels chart with audio (Wikipedia)
IPA Vowel Symbols (Macquarie University)
IPA and English Vowels (e Learn English Language)

IPA specific to Nepalese sound system
I found a few sites that transcribe the sounds of Nepal Bhasa into IPA and thought you might find them useful.
See if you can identify which sounds exist in Nepalese but not English, and vice versa.
Nepali alphabet, pronunciation and language (Omniglot)
Nepal Bhasa – Writing systems and grammar (Wikipedia)

IPA English Vowels Practice Quiz
IPA symbol quiz (York University)
This university is Canadian, which means some of its vowels are different (for example, I would make the “o” in command a schwa), but it’s a good exercise that incorporates the vowels that you should be familiar with.

Marking stress in IPA
To denote stress in IPA, put a straight apostrophe (not a curly one!) before the main stressed syllable in the word. Example: /ˈsɪləbəl/ – SYllable

Transcription Assignment
Please transcribe the words in bold into IPA. (Again, don’t worry too much about the consonants for now.)
Within each word you transcribe, mark the main stress syllable as described above.

Excerpt from “On Deferring and Bulking Up” (Oracle Magazine) http://bit.ly/mpY4xX

By default, constraints are implemented in an IMMEDIATE fashion—integrity constraints are checked immediately after the entire SQL statement has been processed.

Since Oracle8 Database, the database program has had the ability to defer constraint checking, which can be quite advantageous for various operations. One that immediately leaps to mind is the requirement to cascade an UPDATE of a primary key to the child keys. Many people claim that you should never need to do this—that primary keys are immutable (I am one of those people)—but many others persist in their desire to have a cascading UPDATE. Deferrable constraints make this possible.

HINTS:
1. data – refer to the pronunciation of the Star Trek character Data in Wikipedia.
2. quite – “kw”
3. claim – “c” in English is usually pronounced as /k/ or /s/
4. keys – Is the “s” pronounced as /s/ or /z/?

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Answer Key

Long/Short Vowels Quiz 1
1. /bɪt/ – bit, bite
2. /boʊt/ – bot, boat
3. /beɪt/ – bat, bait
4. /tɪm/ – Tim, time
5. /dʌn/ – done, dune
6. /riːd/ – red, reed
7. /kæt/ – cat, Kate
8. /tuːb/ – tub, tube
9. /dɒt/ – dot, dote
10. /sɛt/ – set, seat

Lesson 8: Vowels, Part Two – Long vs. Short Vowels

Today I’m going to start teaching you the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as it applies to American English. Unlike English, the IPA has a 1:1 sound-to-symbol correspondence, and it is easier to ascertain the pronunciation of a given word when you see its transcription into IPA. In fact, most dictionaries have IPA transcriptions next to the words, so once you learn it you can just look up a word’s pronunciation yourself as long as you have the spelling.

We’ll be starting with vowels because most of the consonants’ IPA symbols already look like their English counterparts (e.g. the /s/ sound is an s, the /t/ sound is a t) so you already know them.

First, we’ll go over the difference between long and short vowels in American English. This difference is important, because it will help you distinguish between vowels and diphthongs.

More Information
IPA for English (Wikipedia)
Pronunciation (American Accent Training)
American English pronunciation of the five long vowel sounds (Pronuncian)

Tools
IPA character picker

Long vs. Short Vowels
In elementary school in Anglophone countries, students learn that even though there are only five main vowels– a, e, i, o, u– there are long and short versions of each vowel as well. The long vowels are pronounced exactly how their corresponding letters are pronounced, while the short vowels are pronounced much differently.

Long “a”: bake, potato, aim
Long “e”: eat, team, breeze
Long “i”:  rice, bright, fly
Long “o”: glow, own, both
Long “u”: youth, few, huge

Short “a”: apple, back, pad
Short “e”: sense, bet, dent
Short “i”: ill, trim, pick
Short “o”: stop, pot, drop
Short “u”: cup, syrup, but

Four of the long vowels are, in fact, diphthongs, or two vowels combined. Can you identify which ones?

Letter	“Short”	“Long”	Example
A a	/æ/	/eɪ/	“mat” / “mate”
E e	/ɛ/	/iː/	“pet” / “Pete”
I i	/ɪ/	/aɪ/	“twin” / “twine”
O o	/ɒ/	/oʊ/	“not” / “note”
U u	/ʌ/	/juː/	“cub” / “cube”

from Traditional long and short vowels in English orthography (Wikipedia)

There are more possible vowel sounds in English (such as the schwa), but we’ll start with these since they are the most common and cover most of the sounds I want you to be able to recognize.

Memorization Assignment
Memorize the IPA symbols for the long and short vowels in the table above.
I’ll be quizzing you on them in our next lesson.

Recording Assignment
Record yourself reading the first half of the WSJ article from Lesson 7, including the word stress corrections we went over.
Send that to me ASAP and I will read the article out myself and send you the recording for comparison.

Lesson 7: Word-initial /s/, Part Two

Our conversation on the half- vs. full- /s/ sounds in Nepalese was very interesting and useful to me, and I was excited to know that you’re thinking about sounds the way I do! As you pointed out:

1. You only have trouble pronouncing the /s/ sound at the beginning of a word when it is immediately followed by a consonant.
It’s great that you can identify these differences. It will take time to re-train your mouth so that all of this comes naturally, but being able to hear them is half the challenge!

2. You tend to pronounce the /s/ sound correctly when you have your lips pursed.
(And you tend to insert that extra vowel when you say the /s/ with the corners of your mouth spread further apart.)
Pronouncing every initial /s/ sound with your lips pursed may solve the problem of epenthesis, but this is only a stopgap solution. I encourage you to learn how to pronounce the initial s properly without having to purse your lips every time.

Here I’ve provided a list of words beginning with common /s/ + consonant combinations. They’re organized by the progression of their vowel sounds. (Once you learn the International Phonetic Alphabet you can come back here and see what I mean. 🙂 Go through them slowly, then at a rapid-fire pace, keeping epenthesis at a minimum.

This word list is followed by a few difficult /s/ + consonant sentences. Please use them as part of your daily speaking warm-up.

Initial /s/ + consonant Word List
[sk]
scan
scar
scared
skate
skid
scuttle
school

[sl]
slap
slop
slept
slim
slump
slow

[sm]
smart
smile
smack
smell
smear
smitten
smush
smooth

[sn]
snack
snake
sneer
snip
snot
snoop

[sp]
spine
spat
speck
spear
spic n span
spot
spoon

[st]
star
stat
stent
stint
steer
stunt
stoop

[sw]
swap
swept
sweep
swim
swore
swoon

Word-Initial /s/ Exercises
Stan swore Steve slipped and snapped his spine, so he stopped skating to school in the street and stuck to the sidewalk instead.
He saw the scar Steve said was from the surgery.
Please steam the snap peas and stir the soup stock.

Reading Assignment
Warm-up: Use the /s/ phrase exercises from Lesson 6 before beginning.
Then record yourself daily reading the Lesson 6 excerpts from “Starbucks CEO: Can You ‘Get Big And Stay Small’?” http://n.pr/gWkMg9

Stress Assignment
Read “New Strategies to Revive Victims of Cardiac Arrest” (WSJ) http://on.wsj.com/ljhrI5
And identify the main stresses in each multisyllabic word.

Lesson 6: Epenthesis of Word-Initial /s/

Your assignments from last week were satisfactory. However, I noticed that you seem to be inserting extra vowels into some words. Extra vowels add extra syllables to a word, which can throw off your word stresses and confuse your listener. As such, we’ll be working on minimizing that effect this week, beginning with words that start with the “s” sound.

Epenthesis
The addition of an extra sound in a word is called epenthesis. (To be more specific, the addition of an extra vowel sound is called anaptyxis.)
In your case, when you say a word that begins with the “s” sound, you tend to insert a schwa-like vowel before the “s”. For example, you tend to say “estories” instead of stories. Fortunately, you are able to hear this extra sound, so it will be easier for you to catch yourself doing it and eventually reduce its occurrence.

The /s/ Sound
You are already familiar with the “s” sound, which involves:
– drawing the corners of your mouth apart (smiling!)
– lightly touching your upper and lower teeth together
– keeping the tip of your tongue against the back of your lower teeth
– letting air escape through the space between your upper front teeth and tongue

You’re able to produce “s” normally when it occurs in the middle or at the end of a word, but have trouble going into the “s” when it occurs at the beginning of a word. So we’ll start with some words that have “s” in positions that are comfortable for you, then gradually use word liaisons to trick your brain into correctly producing an initial “s”.

(By the way, I got the idea for this lesson from a game called Mad Gab, which makes good use of word liaison tricks.)

Word List – lls
These words all contain an “lls” consonant cluster, which is cut into two in last week’s “baseball stories to football stories to basketball stories…”

Say them one at a time.
allspice
hillside
gallstone
millstone
millstream
mudsill
pollster

ballstory
ballstories
baseballstories
footballstories
basketballstories

Phrase Exercises (Pronunciation Practice Activities, p. 71)
Say each phrase slowly, elongating the “s” in each “this” so it sounds like a hiss.
Example: Thisssssscar. Ssssscar.
This car. – Scar.
This can. – Scan.
This cot. – Scot.
This kid. – Skid.
This kin. – Skin.
This ledge. – Sledge.
This low. – Slow.
This pace. – Space.
This pan. – Span.
This park. – Spark.
This peak. – Speak.
This pin. – Spin.
This pine. – Spine.
This port. – Sport.
This top. – Stop.
This trip. – Strip.
(Now speed up!)

Sentence Exercises
I’m going toos kotlund.
I have us car.
Let’s meet at thus portsbar.
Wait at thabuss teishan.
Tell me the holes tory.
I’m at thus paw.

I’m going to Scotland.
I have a scar.
Let’s meet at the sports bar.
Wait at the bus station.
Tell me the whole story.
I’m at the spa.

Sentences Assignment
Record yourself saying this sentence from last week’s reading 4-5 times.
“We’ve gone from writing baseball stories to football stories to basketball stories…”
Be fast!

Reading Assignment
Record yourself reading the following excerpts from “Starbucks CEO: Can You ‘Get Big And Stay Small’?” http://n.pr/gWkMg9
Read it twice.
For the first reading, focus on getting the right word stresses.
For the second, focus on smoothly pronouncing the words that begin with “s”.

You don’t want to re-steam milk when you’re making a perfect shot of espresso. You want to make a perfect shot of espresso, steam the milk, and if you have anything left over, just pour it out and make another great cappuccino or cafe latte. That’s an example. And I think we were doing things like that, which produced a higher yield or higher profitability, but I just felt it wasn’t consistent with the commitment we’ve always had about making the perfect shot of espresso.

The breakfast sandwiches were selling extremely well, but at the time, there was an aroma in the stores that I felt was kind of diluting the integrity of the coffee romance and the aroma of coffee.

I think you bring up a good point. And the question I think you have to ask yourself is: Can something get big and stay small? And I would submit that over the years, we’ve demonstrated, really, an unusual ability to create intimacy with both our people and, most importantly, our customers. And unlike McDonald’s, Starbucks is not in the fast-food business, and we’re not a franchise system. We own and operate our stores.

(And don’t forget to record last week’s Identification Assignment 1!)

Lesson 5: Vowels, Part One – The Schwa

Your speaking assignments sounded great — you elongated your vowels in Sonnet 18, and the paragraph from “Preparing for a Warmer Planet” was at a nice, even tempo.

We’ll go over your ‘Robot Journalist’ listening assignment on Skype before you use it as your speaking assignment this week. I’d like to focus on the use of repetition as a rhetorical device and in poetry, and how it changes word stress (you stress each new element, e.g. “baseball stories to football stories to basketball stories…”).

Now that we’ve covered word and sentence stress, let’s move on to pronunciation. (Finally!) We’ll work on vowels first, starting with the “schwa” I’ve told you about before.

The Schwa – ə
The schwa is spelled with an upside-down “e”. It represents the lazy “uh” sound that often replaces unstressed vowels in American English.

Schwa can replace any vowel. For example:
The a in about
The e in synthesis
The i in president
The o in harmony
The u in succeed
Keep in mind that any vowel can sound like a schwa when it occurs in an unstressed syllable.

More information
The Vowel Sound Schwa [pdf] (D.W. Cummings)

Identification Exercise (Pronunciation Practice Activities, p. 206)
Where would the schwa be in these sentences?
1. It was a beautiful day.
2. I’d seen her before.
3. Can you get some tomatoes?
4. He’s Japanese.
5. I gave him some flowers.
6. She’s unemployed.
7. Just relax.
8. Do you want a banana?
9. I don’t understand.
10. When do they arrive?

Speaking Exercise
Remember this exercise? Now that you know where the stressed syllables are for each key word, replace the vowels in the weakest syllables with schwas. Then say them out loud.
InVEST in a good inVESTment.
It’s nothing PERsonal, it’s just your persoNAlity.
Would you like a ciGAR or cigaRETTE?
The ESsence is esSENtial.
PerSOnify the PERson.
Are you a DEmocrat in this deMOcracy?
I’d like to preSENT my PREsent.
Is it CApable of that capaBILity?

Speaking Assignment
Record yourself theatrically reading last week’s excerpt from “‘Robot Journalist’ Out-Writes Human Sports Reporter” http://n.pr/eW5qur at 3:02 – 3:55.
Don’t forget to pace yourself!
Use the word stresses that we went over. They are underlined below.
The slashes are included as a guide for where to insert a natural pause in the middle of the sentence. Even in the absence of commas or periods, natural pauses exist. Take advantage of them!

Mr. HAMMOND: That puts us in a position where we can now grow.  And in that year,/ we’ve gone from / writing baseball stories / to football stories / to basketball stories / to stock reports / to earnings reports / to market reports for real estate,/ descriptions of metro areas. And / we’re looking to a world in which / we’re going to be able to / tell the story / whenever there’s data out there.

So I have a bet with somebody that / within five years,/ a machine is going to win a Pulitzer Prize,/ and it’ll either do so by / doing a genuine exhaustive analysis / of a dataset that no human being could ever go through / and find the nuggets / of information / and give voice to those nuggets.

Identification Assignment 1
Identify the schwas in these sentences, and record yourself saying them.
1. She’s an engineer.
2. I’ve got a new timetable.
3. I’m doing chemistry.
4. I bought some trousers.
5. It’s out of control.
6. He wants to be a detective.
7. They want to learn Hungarian.
8. She needs a vacation.
9. Let’s meet at five o’clock.
10. He’s all about the end result.

Identification Assignment 2
Listen to “Starbucks CEO: Can You ‘Get Big And Stay Small’?” http://n.pr/gWkMg9
List thirty words in which Howard Schultz or Linda Wertheimer use the schwa, and record yourself saying them.

Identification Exercise Answers
1. It was a beautiful day.
2. I’d seen her before.
3. Can you get some tomatoes?
4. He’s Japanese.
5. I gave him some flowers.
6. She’s unemployed.
7. Just relax.
8. Do you want a banana?
9. I don’t understand.
10. When do they arrive?

Lesson 4: Sentence Tempo and Flow

Let’s work a bit more on reducing your speed and improving your speaking flow. Here we’ll review word stress and go over the placement of pauses in sentences. Then I’ll have you do a few exercises which will force you to stay aware of your speaking speed.

Word Stress Exercises
A: Dad, I crashed the car. / B: You WHAT?!
[Did you notice that “Dad I crashed the car” uses the same stress pattern as “The mouse ran up the clock”?]
A: I thought that was impossible. / B: Oh, really? (Inquisitive, sarcastic)
Way to go. (Sarcastic, happy)
Do that one more time (?) / Do that one more time… (Request, anger)
Yes. / Yes? / Yes!
No. / No? / No!

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Speaking Rate
Speaking quickly can decrease one’s fluency because errors in speech are more likely to occur at high speeds. Additionally, the speed can make those errors more pronounced to other people. As such, finding and maintaining a comfortable rate of speaking is important for others to understand you.

Three easy ways to reduce your speaking rate:
– Focus on elongating vowels in stressed syllables
– Pause at punctuation: commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes
– Take a deep, slow breath and chill out!

More information: Speed
All About Public Speaking: Rate (PBS.org)
Quick and Easy Effective Tips for Speaking Rate (Write Out Loud.com)
Lesson 2: Rate of Speech (Clearly Speaking)

More information: Punctuation and Pausing
Punctuation (English Online)
Quick and Easy Effective Tips for Using Pauses (Write Out Loud.com) – You will find this reference useful for the speaking assignment.

Speaking Exercise
Theatrically read the excerpt from “Preparing For a Warmer Planet” http://n.pr/gV8PoI at 1:35 – 3:11 again. This time, on your keyboard, point to or lightly tap the first letter of every word you say.

Listening Assignment: Sentence Stress
Listen to “‘Robot Journalist’ Out-Writes Human Sports Reporter” http://n.pr/eW5qur
For each sentence in the following excerpt:
1. Highlight the main words that are stressed.
2. In those words, highlight the syllable that is stressed.
(If the word is one syllable, you can highlight the whole word.)

[3:02 – 3:55]
Mr. HAMMOND: That puts us in a position where we can now grow. And in that year, we’ve gone from writing baseball stories to football stories to basketball stories to stock reports to earnings reports to market reports for real estate, descriptions of metro areas. And we’re looking to a world in which we’re going to be able to tell the story whenever there’s data out there.

So I have a bet with somebody that within five years, a machine is going to win a Pulitzer Prize, and it’ll either do so by doing a genuine exhaustive analysis of a dataset that no human being could ever go through and find the nuggets of information and give voice to those nuggets.

Speaking Assignment
Record yourself theatrically reciting Shakespearean Sonnet 18. (Don’t forget to go slow!)
Memorize all of it, including word stresses and pauses, for next week.
(Here is a good reference for the sonnet’s stresses and pauses, albeit in a British accent: http://youtu.be/geWkR7nFZ4c)
The language is archaic, but poetry often exaggerates pauses and induces speed reduction. Plus, this is one of the most famous romantic poems of the English language, so once you memorize it you can recite it to your wife. 🙂

Lesson 3: Sentence Stress

We’ll be reviewing syllables and stress in individual words. Then we’ll move on to sentence intonation in questions, contradictions and contractions.

Review

Listening Quiz
I will say the word out loud, and you must note whether the stress is correct or not.
1. tes-TI-fied
2.  prob-LEM
3. ar-GUE
4. par-a-DIGM
5. AT-mos-phere
6. BA-sic-ally
7. ar-GU-ment
8. re-DUCE
9. e-CON-o-my
10. E-miss-ions
(Errors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10)

Word Stress Quiz
BBC English Quiznet – Stress patterns http://bbc.in/dQ4hD5

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Sentence Stress

Generally, stress in English sentences is placed on content words, while grammar words are unstressed.
As explained previously, you stress a word by making it longer, louder, and higher in pitch.
Content words: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, etc.
Grammar words: prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc.

Speaking Exercise 1: “Preparing for a Warmer Planet”
How do we stop it?
Is it real?
What do we do?
Who pays?

Speaking Exercise 2: Contradictions
I heard you speak German. – No, I speak English!
It’s snowing outside! – No, it’s sunny outside!
Christmas is in July. – No, it’s in December!
I heard you have ten brothers. – What? I have ten cousins!
He lives two miles away. – No, he lives two thousand miles away!

Speaking Exercise 3: Contractions
When contractions aren’t used in speech, stress is usually placed on them for affirmation or emphasis.
I’m a guy. – I am a guy!
I don’t care. – I do not care!
She’s a handful. – She is a handful!
It’s a problem. – It is a problem!
It isn’t a problem. – It is not a problem!

Speaking Exercise 4: Rhythm in nursery rhymes (Well Said)
Anglophone children learn rhymes that are typical of the stress patterns in English.

Hickory dickory dock
Do it according to plan.
Give me a burger with cheese.
Who is the man I should see?

The mouse ran up the clock
I’d like to cash a check.
He’d rather take the bus.
I’ll have her call you back.

Twinkle twinkle little star
Let me help you find your keys.
Don’t forget to leave a tip.
Thanks a lot for all your help.

Reading Assignment
Record yourself reading this article twice.
Focus on reducing your speed without pausing in the middle of a sentence.
Happy? Statisticians Aren’t Buying It http://on.wsj.com/fheiMm

Speaking Assignment
Record yourself theatrically reading last week’s excerpt from “Preparing For a Warmer Planet” http://n.pr/gV8PoI at 1:35 – 3:11.
Use the word stresses you identified in your last assignment.
(Don’t worry about feeling silly– the whole point of this assignment is to have you get used to speaking in a way you’re not used to!)

Lesson 2: Syllables, Word Stress 2 – Phrases and Sentences

I’m going to give you a refresher on how to split a word into syllables to make sure you have that down pat before moving on to word stress in phrases and sentences.

More Information
Syllable Rules (Phonics on the Web)
Pronunciation: Changing Meaning through Word Stress (About.com)

Syllable Exercise: Words
Indicate whether the two words have the same number of syllables.
worried – greatest
disaster – situation
domestic – government
relative – remember
advanced – hiring
estimates – consequences
surprisingly – disruptive
economical – redundancy
timetable – afternoon

Syllable Exercise: Sentences
Indicate whether the two sentences have the same number of syllables.
They’re inside. – Absolutely.
She wasn’t there. – Nobody cared.
That’s pretty awesome. – Can you hold on?
Hang on a minute. – Wait just a second.
Save it for later. – Put it in the fridge.
I’d like a cup of coffee. – What were we talking about?
I need to take a vacation. – Tell them you’re not going.

Reading Material
Happy? Statisticians Aren’t Buying It http://on.wsj.com/fheiMm

Word Stress Speaking Drill 1
“Do you like singing and dancing?”
DO you like singing and dancing? (Are you sure?)
Do YOU like singing and dancing? (Because *she* certainly does!)
Do you LIKE singing and dancing? (Are you sure you don’t just tolerate it?)
[Do you like SINGING and dancing?] (You could just dance.)
Do you like singing AND dancing? (Really, both?)
[Do you like singing and DANCING?] (You could just sing.)

Word Stress Speaking Drill 2
“How satisfied are you with your life?”
HOW satisfied are you with your life? (Exactly how much?)
How SATISFIED are you with your life? (As opposed to unsatisfied, happy, content…)
How satisfied ARE you with your life? (Are you sure?)
How satisfied are YOU with your life? (We just talked about someone else’s satisfaction with theirs.)
How satisfied are you with YOUR life? (We just talked about someone else’s life.)
How satisfied are you with your LIFE? (As opposed to your job, your marriage…)
Discussion: Why didn’t I bother stressing WITH?

Listening Assignment
Listen to “Preparing For a Warmer Planet” http://n.pr/gV8PoI
For each underlined word:
1. Break the word into syllables.
2. Highlight the syllable that is stressed.
For each sentence, color the word(s) you think contain the main stress.

[1:35 – 3:11]
Mr. HERTSGAARD: I say that, Ira, because, you know, I’ve covered climate change since 1989, and throughout the first era, which began in actually – the first era began in 1988, June 23, when NASA scientist Jim Hansen went to the United States Senate and testified that man-made global warming had begun, and if we didn’t do something about it, we risked the habitability of this planet, at least for our species.

And throughout the intervening years, the basic argument was about: How do we stop it? Is it real? What do we do? Who pays? But it was always a distant, far-off problem, a very dangerous problem, but one that could still be prevented, and it wasn’t going to happen for a very long time.

And we’re now in the second era, I would argue, because of a paradigm shift in the problem, which is that global warming triggered outright climate change, and it did so 100 years sooner than most scientists expected. And of course the big problem there is that the inertia of the Earth’s climate system means that once climate change has begun, you can’t turn it off very quickly.

Carbon dioxide stays up in the atmosphere a long time. Oceans expand over centuries when they get heated up. And so we’re basically looking at at least now 50 more years of rising temperatures.

Even if we do everything right to reduce greenhouse emissions and to get onto, you know, leave fossil fuels and other carbon activities behind and create a genuinely green economy, we’re still locked in to 50 more years of rising temperatures and, of course, the climate impacts that come along with that.

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Exercise Answers

Syllable Exercise: Words
worried (2) – greatest (2) [Yes]
disaster (3) – situation (4) [No]
domestic (3) – government (3) [Yes]
relative (3) – remember (3) [Yes]
advanced (2) – hiring (2) [Yes – but ‘hiring’ could also be pronounced with 3 syllables]
timetable (3) – afternoon (3) [Yes]
estimates (3) – consequences (4) [No]
surprisingly (4) – disruptive (3) [No]
economical (5) – redundancy (4) [No]

Syllable Exercise: Sentences
They’re inside. (3) – Absolutely. (4) [No]
She wasn’t there. (4) – Nobody cared. (4) [Yes]
That’s pretty awesome. (5) – Can you hold on? (4) [No]
Hang on a minute.  (5) – Wait just a second. (5) [Yes]
Save it for later. (5) – Put it in the fridge. (5) [Yes]
I’d like a cup of coffee. (7) – What were we talking about? (7) [Yes]
I need to take a vacation. (8) – Tell them you’re not going. (6) [No]

Lesson 1: Word Stress

Improving your prosody in English can greatly help others understand you. Even if your pronunciation isn’t perfect, it’s easier for other people to follow your speech when it adheres to the basic patterns of English intonation that English speakers are used to hearing.

For my lessons I’ll be using American English, but you’ll find that if you learn and use any other intonation pattern (British English, for example), users of that intonation pattern (British people) will better understand you.

The most important part of prosody is word stress. You can stress a syllable by saying it longer, louder, and/or in a higher pitch. In English, most words only have one main stressed syllable, but there are some exceptions.

More Information
Rules of Word Stress in English (EnglishClub.com)
Regularities Based on Suffixes (Well Said)

Reading Material
Money Rushes Into Social Start-Ups http://on.wsj.com/e00YeB

Speaking Exercises
Invest in a good investment.
It’s nothing personal, it’s just your personality.
Would you like a cigar or a cigarette?
The essence is essential.
Personify the person.
Are you a Democrat in this democracy?
I’d like to present my present.
Is it capable of that capability?

Listening Assignment
Listen to “Q&A: The Economic Impact Of The Crisis In Japan” http://n.pr/hSXbVh (Transcript: http://n.pr/eDeZld) and choose one paragraph to annotate.
For all words that are more than one syllable long, underline or highlight the syllable on which they are stressed.

Review
For each word, please identify the number of the syllable that should be stressed.
Example: Accentuate – 2
Word Stress A-M (49 words) http://bit.ly/hCVmW5
Word Stress N-Z (47 words) http://bit.ly/evtWGf

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Exercise Answers

Speaking Exercise
InVEST in a good inVESTment.
It’s nothing PERsonal, it’s just your persoNAlity.
Would you like a ciGAR or cigaRETTE?
The ESsence is esSENtial.
PerSOnify the PERson.
Are you a DEmocrat in this deMOcracy?
I’d like to preSENT my PREsent.
Is it CApable of that capaBILity?