Hints for learning to hear stress

• Repeat only the vowels of the word, leaving out the consonants: e.g., Manitoba --> [æ ə o ə].


• Start practising with material where the stress is especially clear: nursery rhymes, song lyrics, Shakespearian blank verse.
  
  • a ROSE by ANy OTHer NAME would SMELL as SWEET


• Deliberately try to get the stress wrong and listen to the results:
  • A rose BY aNY oTHER name WOULD smell AS sweet
  If it sounds wrong, that's not where the stress is.


• Hum words rather than speaking them. The pitch you hum with will tend to correspond to the level of stress:
  • highest pitch=primary stress
  • medium pitch=secondary stress
  • lowest pitch=unstressed


• Speak the words through a kazoo, emphasizing the pitch contours and the loudness differences between the syllables. (Pretend you're the teacher in Charlie Brown TV shows.)


• Exaggerate the intonation contour of a phrase. Give extra strong emphasis to a word and listen for which syllable gets most of the extra loudness and pitch. (Or use the surprised-disbelief intonation contour and listen for which syllable has the lowest pitch.)


• Do listen for pitch as a useful cue for stress, but don't automatically assume that the syllable with the highest pitch is also the most strongly stressed. Remember that there are several other reasons why a syllable might have high pitch (e.g., it's the last syllable in a phrase that has rising question intonation or "list" intonation).


• Exaggerate the length of one syllable at a time.
  • MAAAAAAAnitoba
  • ManIIIIIIIItoba
  • ManitOOOOOOOba
  • ManitobAAAAAAAA
  If the word still sounds (sort of) normal, that syllable probably has at least secondary stress. If the word sounds stupid, that syllable is probably unstressed.


• Tap once as you say the word. If you're a native speaker of the language, when you tap will tend to coincide with the primary stress. For the less inhibited, bang on the table instead of tapping.

  -- --  |   Stress  |   Transcription  |   Home