When someone first starts learning to speak a new language, pronunciation is usually the first place to start. This is understandable because pronunciation of the sounds of a language must be close enough to standard pronunciation that any listener can identify the sound. This is also why the rule “speak slowly and clearly” is good advice when someone is first learning a language or first putting what they have learned into practice.
Once a learner is comfortable with pronunciation, it makes sense to think more and more about intonation. Speaking “slowly and clearly” is an excellent starting goal. But a natural next step, as one begins to speak more frequently and in longer sentences, is to gain a thorough understanding of intonation.
It’s also a good idea not to delay too much in learning about intonation. While pronunciation could be considered the priority, it’s a good idea to incorporate at least some rules of intonation into your speaking as soon as possible. If we were to work only on pronunciation for a very long time, never considering intonation, we might develop certain speaking patterns that could make our speech less efficient and harder to understand. These patterns could certainly be changed later, but it would be ideal to learn the correct patterns from early on. Basic intonation is integrated into pronunciation, as we see in the example of syllable stress of a word. When learning the pronunciation of a word, it’s good to realize that intonation is being put into practice as well.
Intonation can be more challenging to grasp since the rules are looser and more abstract than the rules of pronunciation. There is a great variety of intonation patterns among different speakers. Intonation can be affected by many factors, such as emotion. However, there are some good basic rules of intonation that make natural starting points.
One basic concept to get familiar with is the rising and falling tones. The most obvious example of these tones is the way the same group of words can be delivered as a statement or as a question. We can even see this in a single word.
Let’s take the word “yes” as an example. If we say the word, starting at a slightly higher pitch, and then coming down in pitch, “yes” is a statement. This is the way we usually hear the word. But if instead we start on a slightly lower pitch and raise the pitch as we say the word, “yes” becomes a question. “Yes?”
Certainly this word is said frequently as both a statement and as a question. The proper pronunciation of the word alone is not always enough to communicate our intention to the listener. The circumstances of the situation may make the meaning clear, even if our intonation is not exactly right.
A slight rising tone can also indicate uncertainty (accidentally or intentionally), or could be used to let the listener know that we have more to say. If you’ve ever experienced a situation in which the answer “yes” doesn’t seem to satisfy the listener, you may have experienced a miscommunication based on intonation. If the listener interprets the slight upward intonation as uncertainty or as an indication that the speaker has more to say, they might ask “What?” or “Are you sure?” Or they might just stand there, starting blankly, and waiting.
Another important intonation concept to be familiar with is the subtle differences of tone in individual syllables. In my book “Accent Reduction The Eric Thal Way: Course One – Sound and Word Drills” I call these tones “Short Flat,” and “Long Drop.” You should know that it’s possible that you are already making these tones correctly. Being comfortable hearing and saying these tones naturally right from the beginning has a lot to do with what someone’s first language is. Anyone can learn these tones if they’re not already using them correctly, but the work will seem easier and come more naturally for some. If getting used to saying these tones is a challenge for you, take your time. Stick with it, and you will get it.
Most native speakers of English have no idea that they are using different tones, for example when they say the words “cap,” or “cab.” As a second language speaker, if you notice people are sometimes not understanding individual words you are saying, and mixing them up with a similar word, you might want to learn more about these different intonations, and of course practice drilling words with different tones out loud. (If this is the case for you, you probably want to spend time drilling the Long Drop in words with voiced endings. Do people misunderstand you and think you’re saying “half” instead of “have,” “bet” instead of “bed,” “cap” instead of “cab,” “race” instead of “raise,” or “H” instead of “age”? If so, your natural assumption might be that you’re not pronouncing the last consonant clearly enough. But, counter-intuitively, it’s most likely the pitch tone of the vowel that is confusing the listener, and keeping them from understanding you.)
Let’s keep things simple and start by looking at one-syllable words. The length and pitch of the vowel will be different if the word ends with an unvoiced sound, compared to if it ends with a voiced sound or a vowel.
The “short flat” simply means the vowel is a bit shorter, and there is not much of a change in pitch. You can think of the pitch as being quite flat. Let’s take the word “cap” as an example. You make the sound “kuh” and then you don’t need to say the vowel “AE” very long before you end the word with the sound “puh.” The final sound made by the letter P is an unvoiced sound (also called a whispered sound).
The “long drop” means the vowel is sounded longer and drops slightly in pitch. In the word “cab,” you make the sound “kuh,” and then the vowel “AE” is spoken longer and with a slight drop in pitch before you make the sound “buh.” The final sound made by the letter B is a voiced sound.
All vowels are voiced. If a word ends with a vowel, the vowel will be spoken with a “long drop.” Examples are the words “be,” “why,” and “show.”
Keep in mind that we are talking about the final sound, not just the final letter, of a word. In a word like “cloth,” the final sound “th” is written with the two letters “th,” but it is a single sound. (This will be obvious if you already know the IPA.) Because “th” is unvoiced, the vowel will use a short flat tone. In a word like “sigh,” the letters “gh” are silent. The final sound is the vowel “IY” and will be spoken with a long drop tone. The word “oh” is made only with the vowel “OH” and is spoken with a long drop tone.
The whispered (unvoiced) sounds in English that can occur at the end of syllable are p, t, k, f, s, sh, ch, and th. Words that end with these consonants will be spoken with a short flat tone.
Words that end with other consonant sounds or with vowels will be spoken with a long drop tone.
VOWEL NEUTRALIZATION (REDUCTION)
The next concept to look at in intonation is vowel neutralization, which is also called reduction. If we’re not careful, it’s easy in learning English as a second language to get into a pattern of overpronouncing syllables that should be unstressed.
Most ( >90%) two-syllable nouns stress the first syllable. It’s great practice to speak nonsense syllables, such as “DA-d” (this is the stressed nonsense syllable “DA,” followed by a very short, lower-pitched sound “d.”), and then practice saying a noun, trying to keep the same ratio of sounds. Try not to over-pronounce the second syllable: “reason,” “table,” “action,” “sugar,” “April.”
Most ( >70%) two-syllable verbs stress the second syllable. You can take the same approach as you did in practicing two-syllable nouns. Practice saying “d-DA,” and then practice verbs that stress the second syllable, trying to keep the same ratio of sounds.
Here are some words to practice: “apply,” “compute,” “connect,” “protect,” “polite.”
Let’s look at examples of the following three words and see how syllable stress can change the sound you might expect a letter to make:
CONSTANT
STANDARD
CONNECT
Over-pronunciation means that a word that should sound like DA-d or d-DA would instead sound like DA-DA. (Note that there are some words in English that have similar syllable length. The best example is compound nouns – words formed from two existing words, such as: notebook, baseball, and background. But right now our focus is on avoiding any tendency to overpronounce typical two-syllable English words, which have the pattern DA-d or d-DA.)
Practice saying these 3 words, alternating them with DA-d, DA-d, and d-DA.
DA-d
CONst’nt
DA-d
STANd’rd
d-DA
c’nNEKT
Notice how the same spelling CON sounds completely different when it is in a stressed or unstressed position. The same is true of the syllable spelled STAN. This is an example of vowel neutralization in the unstressed syllable of a word. The same written syllables CON and STAN make the sounds AH and AE in the stressed syllables of the words above. But when they are used in an unstressed position in a word, the vowel used is the sound “uh,” also called the schwa.