Tuesday, 13 December 2016

ENGLISH LANGUAGE RHYTHM

Foreign English learners use only strong forms but English speakers use generally weak forms. This is why foreigners do not understand nor are understood.

The English Rhythm is determined by sentence stress. The lexical or content words are the ones that carry the stress (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), whereas the grammatical words (pronouns, articles, auxiliaries, prepositions and conjunctions) are generally unstressed.




The use of weak and strong forms determines rhythm. Foreigners should bear in mind that the schwa [ə] is the most common vowel sound in English. Many unstressed vowel sounds become schwa.






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