Category Archives: Sentence Stress

Sentence Stress Part 2

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Sentence Stress is the combination of strong and weak words in a sentence which create a sort of rhythm. This rhythm is explained in Sentence Stress Part 1. But, which words are strong and which words are weak? Here are the categories with some examples.

Strong words

Nouns: book / capacity / Tom / melody / justice / group / chair / storm / potato
Main verbs: walk / think / sing / expect / prepare / wait / jump / remember / indicate
Adjectives: beautiful / green / small / angry / round / active / old / fresh / good / several
Some adverbs: quickly / never / always / often / usually / nervously / softly / carefully
Negatives: no / never / not / can’t / shouldn’t / doesn’t / won’t / isn’t / aren’t
Question words: who / what / when / where / why / how

Weak words

Auxiliary (helping) verbs: can / could / may / might / would / will / be / do / have
TO BE: am / is / are / was / were / be / been
Linking verbs: got / seem / feel / become / turn
Pronouns: I / me / my / you / he / him / his / she / it / they / them
Prepositions: in / on / under / over / by / for / with / from / at / through
Some adverbs (at ends of phrases): soon / now / yet / well / here / there / still
Conjunctions: and / but / if / either / because / nor / yet / for
Articles: the / a / an

These categories make the basic pattern and the foundation of sentence stress. However, sometimes a weak word gets used as a strong word, but a weak word should only be stressed when there is an appropriate reason to do so. Otherwise, it can cause some confusion in the conversation.

Examples of how weak words can become strong words are in Sentence Stress Part 3.

A final note: DO and HAVE

Are the verbs “do” and “have” main verbs, or helping verbs? The answer is: both.
Here are some examples to illustrate.

DO as a main verb: She will do it tomorrow.
DO as a helping verb: I do not like chocolate.
HAVE as a main verb: They have a new baby.
HAVE as a helping verb: We have finished early.

So, when “do” and “have” are main verbs, they are strongly stressed words, but when they are helping verbs, they should be weak words for normal sentence stress.

Sentence Stress Part 1

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What is sentence stress?

In English, some words are spoken more strongly and are easier to hear, and some words are spoken quickly, or weakly, and can be hard to hear clearly. This combination of weak words and strong words in a sentence, makes a kind of rhythm which is called sentence stress.

Here is a sentence to demonstrate: We have to put all the bags in the car now.

Now, I will say that same sentence without sentence stress (as best I can): We have to put all the bags in the car now. It doesn’t sound natural that way, even though I said all of the vowels and consonants correctly.

Normally, that sentence would have 3 strong words: “put”, “bags”, and “car”. Those words are clear and easy to hear. The other words are spoken quickly, and may be reduced, so that they can be said more easily. This is why “have to” sounds like “hafta”: We have to put all the bags in the car now.

This combination of weak and strong words, gives English a special kind of rhythm. Linguists call this “stress-timing.” Sometimes the strong words can form a series of beats that you can clap with: We have to put all the bags in the car now.

The basic rule of sentence stress, is that the strong words should be the ones that are the most important for the meaning of the conversation. Therefore, nouns and verbs are the primary strong words, and the foundation of sentence stress.

Phrasal Verbs — The Good News (The Pronunciation)

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The pronunciation pattern of phrasal verbs is less complicated than the grammar. Phrasal verbs have a stable, predictable stress pattern, which is: the 2nd word gets the stress. That means that the 2nd part is said more strongly (or, it sounds louder, longer and higher).

Some examples:
call OFF
pass aWAY
run INto
make UP
hang ON to
look UP to
drop IN on

This stress pattern holds true whether the phrasal verb is un-separated, or when separated by just one or by several words.
They called OFF the meeting.
They called it OFF.
They called all of the remaining sessions OFF.

LISTENING
Listening for the stress can help you distinguish between a normal preposition and a phrasal verb. Prepositions are normally weak, unstressed words in a sentence, but as part of a phrasal verb, they are stressed clearly. The following two sentences show the difference.

We turned on the wrong street.
In this sentence “on” is a preposition. It is pronounced weakly and can be hard to hear because prepositions are not normally stressed.

We turned on all the lights.
In this sentence “on” is part of a phrasal verb. It is strong and easy to hear because the second word of phrasal verbs do receive stress.

SPEAKING
When speaking it is important to say phrasal verb stress correctly because you could accidentally say something you didn’t intend. Let’s use the sentence “I ran into the store” for an example. The meaning will be different if you change the stress pattern.

“Into” as a preposition
As a preposition, “into” should be unstressed, and the words “ran” and “store” are both strongly stressed, which gives: I ran into the store. You would say it this way if you were in a hurry or if you wanted to get out of the rain.

“Into” as part of a phrasal verb
As part of a phrasal verb, “into” should be stressed, making “into” and “store” the two strongest words in the sentence. That would give: I ran into the store. Now, I hope that you don’t ever need to say it that way, because that would mean that you crashed — if you walked without looking where you were going, or if you had a driving accident and hit the store with a car.

So, the good news is, knowing about the stress pattern of phrasal verbs can help you improve your pronunciation, and also help you with figuring out a little bit of grammar.

(There are so many phrasal verbs in English that it might help to study them a bit — here are some books that I would recommend.)

Phrasal Verbs — The Bad News (The Grammar)

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The topic of phrasal verbs includes a little grammar and a little pronunciation. Since the grammar part is more complicated than the pronunciation part, this introduction to phrasal verbs covers the “bad news”.

First, what is a phrasal verb?
In order to speak in English, it is important to know about phrasal verbs. They are used very frequently in spoken English — much more than in written English — and so students who have studied English mostly through reading and writing are sometimes not be aware of them.

Phrasal verbs are also sometimes called two-word verbs or three-word verbs, because they use two or three parts to make up one verb. In a two-word verb, the first part is a basic verb, and the second part looks like a preposition. Here are some examples:

“pass away” which means: to die. For example: His grandfather passed away last year.
“make up” means: to invent. She had to make up a story for drama class.
“call off” means: to cancel. The meeting was called off at the last minute.
“run into” means: to meet by chance. I ran into an old friend last week.

For three-word verbs the third part also looks like a preposition.
“hang on to” means: to keep. I think I’ll hang on to this, it might be useful later.
“look up to” means: to respect or admire. It’s hard to look up to someone who is not honest.
“drop in on” means: to make an unexpected visit. Let’s drop in on Joe to see if he wants to join us.

Here are some important things to know about the grammar of phrasal verbs.

1. Are they separable or non-separable?
Some phrasal verbs can be separated and some cannot. If they are separable, other words can be in between the two parts.

An example of a separable phrasal verb is “call off”. It can be used together or separated.
They called off the meeting.
They called the meeting off.

But if a pronoun is used in place of the noun, then the phrasal verb must be separated.
They called it off.
It is not correct to say: ! They called off it.

An example of a non-separable phrasal verb is “run into”.
I ran into an old friend.
It is not correct to say: ! I ran an old friend into.

2. Some phrasal verbs have more than one meaning.

“make up” can mean…
invent: She had to make up a story for drama class.
compensate: We can make up the lost time if we hurry.
reconcile: They were angry with each other all day, but finally decided to make up.

Phrasal verbs can be confusing because there are thousands of them, some have several meanings, some are separable, and some are not. The bad news is that you can’t easily predict which ones are separable and which are non-separable. So you need to be aware of them, and watch out for them. They are used all the time in spoken English.

(Note: There are workbooks and dictionaries available just for phrasal verbs — here are a few that I would recommend.)

A tongue-twister: Fuzzy Wuzzy

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Here is a good tongue-twister to try:


Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he?

There are 2 keys to pronoucing this well:
1. “Wuzzy” and “was he” should sound the same.
This happens often in spoken English: the “H” of the word “he” gets lost in conversational speech due to the rhythm (or stress-timing) of the sentence. (This is also known as sentence stress: some words are pronounced more strongly than other words.)
2. Use the Short U sound to say “fuzzy”, “wuzzy”, “was”, “a”, and “wasn’t”.

To pronounce Short U:
1. Lips are NOT rounded.
2. The tongue is in the middle (not high, not low, not in front or in back)
3. The tongue should be very relaxed.
(If you are familiar with the “schwa” vowel sound, it sounds the same.)