🎵level 2 pronunciation

The Melody of English — Intonation, Rhythm and Accent

Pronunciation is not just individual sounds. Prosody — intonation, rhythm, and accent — is the "music" of English.

Word Stress — Accent in words

Every multi-syllabic word has a stressed syllable (stronger, longer, higher pitch):

Common rules of word stress:

• Words in -tion / -sion: accent on previous syllable → inforMAtion, deciSION
• Words in -ic: accent on previous syllable → fanTAStic, draMAtic
• Compound nouns: accent on first element → AIRport, FOOTball

Sentence Stress — Accent in sentences

In English, we emphasize content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and NOT function words (articles, prepositions, pronouns):

"I WANT to GO to the PARK toMORrow."

intonation patterns

English is Stress-Timed

💡 Tip: In Spanish each syllable lasts the same (syllable-timed). In English, the timing between accents is similar, so unstressed syllables are "compressed":

• "CATS EAT FISH" (3 syllables, ~1 second)
• "The CATS will EAT the FISH" (6 syllables, ~1 second)