Word Stress – Why it’s important – Part 10

Speak Global English Series
Part 10 of 22:
Why word stress is Important

I know, we all have enough stress in our lives, right? But have you ever thought about word stress??

Word stress refers to how we choose to emphasize different parts of our words. Every word can be broken into syllables (or beats).

If we take the word computer, we can break it into 3 parts: com-pu-ter.

Then we need to decide which part takes the stress (the emphasis). Do we say 1. COM-pu-ter, 2. com-PU-ter or 3. com-pu-TER?

Hopefully number 2 sounded the most natural to you!

There are many words in Singapore English, for example, that are stressed differently than other varieties of English. It’s important to be aware of these differences because if you’re ever speaking to a native English speaker, this will be the number one reason why he/she doesn’t understand.

For example, I often hear:
PHOtograph, PHOtoGRAPHer, PHOtoGRAPHy
instead of PHOtograph, phoTOGrapher and phoTOGraphy

I hear
colLEAGUE instead of COLLeague
and
purCHASE instead of PURchase

And in the financial hub which is Singapore, I even hear eCONomy and eCONomic instead of eCONomy and ecoNOMic. You’d be surprised how many CFOs I’ve worked with who needed help with that one.

Remember, the word stress used in non-native varieties of English is fine as long as you’re speaking with other people who use the same English variety, but the minute you have a native speaker on that conference call or in your audience, it makes sense to adjust your speech if you want to be understood.

Learn more about word stress by signing up for my free, 8-part pronunciation short course at http://bit.ly/free8-partproncourse

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http://facebook.com/globalspeechacademy

http://facebook.com/englishpronunciationlab

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