Description
Communicate more naturally and confidently in English—it’s not just about vocabulary and grammar. We express a lot of meaning by the way we say something as much as what we say. In this lesson, I show you how stress and pauses can completely change the meaning of a sentence in spoken English. I demonstrate how a simple sentence like “I wouldn’t say it’s his fault” can express very different ideas depending on which word you stress, and how even a pause can have meaning. I will guide you through exactly what to listen for and how to practice these features in your own speech. https://www.engvid.com/speak-english-naturally-stress-pauses
More of my videos about speaking:
PHRASAL VERBS: How pronunciation changes their meaning https://youtu.be/6hw9NI2DCHA
Listening and Speaking: Self Study Tips https://youtu.be/ik2XT19W0yM
In this lesson:
0:00 Stress changes meaning!
2:18 Pauses have meaning too!
3:37 Full Example
Transcript
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video, I want to talk to you about communication. Now, of course, we're talking in English and we're thinking about how to express ourselves and understand people in English, but what I want to stress in specific today are stresses and pauses when we're speaking. Because when we speak, a lot of the things we say are communicated without even using words. They're communicating by stressing certain words or taking certain pauses that give a hint or a cue or a signal to the listener that we are meaning something else. So, it's very important to understand how the stresses and pauses work in terms of the ideas that they represent.
So, I'm going to give you a couple of examples. Look at this sentence. "I wouldn't say it's his fault." I'm just going to make this a capital. "I wouldn't say it's his fault, but..." So, if I say it very neutrally, without stressing any particular word or any part of the clause, it doesn't really say much. But if I stress different words, each time I use a different stress, it's a different meaning. So, if I say, "I wouldn't say it's his fault", somebody else might say it, right? So, if I stress the word "I", that's what you have to focus on and understand that it's not me who's saying this. Somebody else, or I'm hinting at somebody else. But, if I move the stress and put it here, "I wouldn't say it's his fault", means you think that I would say it's his fault, but I wouldn't say it. I'm negating your idea. I'm saying it's the opposite of what you're thinking, right? So, I'm stressing the negative, and then that's the idea there. "I wouldn't say it's his fault", if I'm stressing the "say", that has a different meaning, right? I wouldn't say it out loud, I would just think it. And maybe you'll understand, maybe you won't, but I would never say it out loud and offend someone. And then, again, I can keep going with every word, putting the stress on every word, and each time I change the stress, I change the sentence.
Now, another thing I want you to notice is the three dots, here. "I wouldn't say it's his fault, but", now, that big pause that I took, here, between "fault" and "but", already suggests to you that there's something else involved beyond the words, here. "I wouldn't say it's his fault, but" means, yeah, it's his fault, right? Even though I wouldn't say it, even though somebody else might not say it, everybody understands it's his fault. And that's what that pause suggests. Obviously, the word "but" shows that there's going to be a contrast, but I don't need to go on. As soon as I take that pause and use the word "but" together, it's very clear what's coming next and I don't need to continue speaking. Now, if you're just learning English and you hear the word "but", you're expecting something else to come. It's not coming, and it doesn't need to come. You need to understand the pause says everything you need to know. And that's where you have to pay a lot of attention, not only to the words people use when they speak, but how they use them. How they use their sentences, how they use clauses, how they stress certain words and take pauses between words.
So, here's another example. You could say that. Very neutral, you could say that. I'm not stressing any word, I'm not changing my inflection at any point throughout the sentence. Now, if I say, "You could say that", I'm not allowed to. I'm the boss, I can't say anything that takes sides, but you can say that. Right? So, I'm stressing that you have the power, I don't. You could say that, means it's possible, but maybe not. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You could say that, you could say that, right? Every word I stress, different meaning. Now, let me say how sometimes it might be heard. […]