Have you ever wondered why English speakers speed up and slow down a lot when they speak? It is because English is a stress-timed language. A stress-timed language is a language that has equal time between stressed sounds, like the beat of a drum. The problem is that stress can occur in many different places in a sentence.
STRESS…STRESS…STRESS…STRESS…STRESS…STRESS…STRESS
Example
- On the top of the mounttain is a big bear.
- On the top of the mount tain is a big bear .
Top and mount are far apart, but big and bear are near. To keep the space between stressed sounds the same, we have to speed up and slow down. To see this, imagine there is equal space between all the stressed sounds, like this:
top mount big bear
You have to fit all the other words in the spaces that are left over, like this:
On the top of the mount tain is a big [nothing] bear
- Between mount and big there are many sounds, so you have to speak faster.
- Between big and bear , there are zero sounds, so you have to speak slower.
Listen to the audio — can you hear the speaker speed up and slow down?
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