Hi, welcome to www.engvid.com , I'm Adam. In today's video, I want to talk to you about
word stress and intonation to help you with your listening but also with your speaking
of English in a more natural way. Okay? I'm going to start with an example to show
you what I'm talking about. "Tom asked Lisa out." Very simple sentence, but I want you to listen
to the different ways I say it. "Tom asked Lisa out." "Tom asked Lisa out." "Tom asked Lisa out." "Tom asked Lisa out." "Tom asked Lisa out." Each way I said it has a slightly different
meaning, because I gave different stress to each word. If I say, "Tom asked Lisa out", it means not
Frank, not Bill, not John, Tom. I'm stressing Tom, because that's who I want
you to understand did this action. Tom asked Lisa out, not Jane, not Kathy, not
anybody else, right? So, the word stress is actually very important. Again, both in listening and in speaking. Now, I did - I made a lesson about word stress
a long time ago, one of my earliest lessons. But you can catch the description - the link
in the description box. And Emma also made a very good video about
word stress. So, I highly recommend you watch those and
keep those in mind with what I'm going to talk to you about here. Now, what I have here are poems, essentially. This one is a nursery rhyme, and this one
is rap, okay? Both of these are very good ways to practice
your listening skills in terms of word stress and intonation. Now, word stress is basically - basically
punching on words when you land on them. You give a little bit more emphasis to them,
or you slow down on them, etc. And this conveys a lot of meaning to the listener,
okay? And intonation is more about the speed and
the flow and the pace of the sentence, okay? Now, rhyme, before I go on - rhyme is basically
a tool that you use that words and the sentence and the word sound the same. For example, "wool" and "full" sound the same,
okay? "Dame" and "lane", more or less, not exactly,
but I'll explain that in a second. So, we're using rhyme in order to create flow,
to create stress. Now, a good tool for you to use - and again,
you can just go on Google or any search engine and just type into the search engine "rhyming
dictionary". Now, these are very good tools in terms of
pronunciation but also gives you a lot of different words to use in terms of creating
your own poems, which again, I'm going to talk about at the end. So, let me read this out to you first, okay? Baa, Baa, black sheep Have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir Three bags full One for the master And one for the dame And one for the little boy Who lives down the lane Okay? Notice that I change my speed a little bit
with each line. Why? Because I want to make sure that we match
in terms of - I match them in terms of intonation. "Baa, baa, black sheep." I have four syllables. "Have you any wool?" Now here, I have five. So, in order for them to fit together, I have
to speed up a little bit on the second one to match the pace of the first one. "Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?" Right? I have to squeeze the words a little bit and
go a little bit faster so they basically match in terms of tone and intonation. "Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full." One, two, one, two, one, two, three, right? Four and three. So, I'm going shorter, faster, shorter, faster. That gives me a lot of speed. Now, English is a very musical language. And a lot of meaning comes across in the music
of the way you speak and what you hear. Okay? So, nursery rhymes are a good way to practice
that. Now, notice here, "dame" and "lane", they're
not exactly the same. This is an m, this is an n. M and N are close enough that we consider
it a rhyme. But more importantly, I have "ay". Let's put it like this, ay, ay. So, the syllable sound is the same, so therefore
we can consider it a rhyme. Now, I'm sure many of you have at least heard
of Eminem, the rapper. Okay? This is from one of his songs: His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are
heavy There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's
spaghetti He's nervous, but on the surface, he looks
calm and ready So, he has a very choppy approach to his rap,
okay? Now, I'm not a rapper. I'm not going to do it the way that he does
it exactly, but you get the idea. I'm jumping from one word that I'm stressing
- sweaty, his weak arms are heavy. T and V obviously don't rhyme, T and V, but
"swe", "he", I have the same syllable. And the main thing I'm doing is I'm punching
on this word. His palms are sweaty, knees weak. Very light. Arms are heavy, right? So, I punch on the word and that way, the
listener hears it and makes the connection automatically. "Sweaty" is pronounced like a D, so words
that end with "ty" often sound like "d", "sweady", not "sweaty", "sweady". And then "sweaty", I have "spaghetti", also
sounds like a "d". "Already" and "ready". And here, I have "nervous" and "surface",
right? So, he uses a lot of rhyme to move his story
along, bring the listener in with him, and he punches on the words that he wants you
to hear. Now, rap is actually very difficult to understand. Even native speakers can't understand a lot
of rap, sometimes. Depends how fast they are, the words they
use, etc. But still good practice. Now, you can also go and do a search online
for lyrics, okay? Song lyrics are a very good way to practice
your listening. A little bit of warning, don't try to learn
grammar from songs, okay? Musicians will often play with their grammar
in order to fit the rhyme or to fit the music, basically, the melody. So, don't learn grammar, but learn pace. Learn word stress. Learn intonation. Learn flow, okay? Because the singers will want you to focus
on particular words and you have to pay attention to those words. Now, not all songs rhyme, but they all have
a certain rhyming melody, right? One line might not rhyme with another line,
but you know that these two are somehow connected because they stressed something, right? And they move the pace along, like "Baa, baa,
black sheep/Have you any wool?" So, obviously, focusing on sheep and wool. "Yes sir, yes sir" Very quick, very light. I'm not punching on anything. "Three bags full", right? I want you to hear, like I have a lot of wool. The little sheep has a lot of wool. So, this is very good for you to practice,
but it doesn't have to be nursery rhymes. Some people don't like them. Doesn't have to be rap, some people don't
like that. Let me show you something else. So now, another very famous rapper for you,
okay? Parting is such sweet sorrow That I should say good night 'till it be morrow Now, he's not actually a rapper. He's William Shakespeare, he's a poet. He wrote this, okay? If you want to really study beautiful English
and beautiful poetry and beautiful rhyme and beautiful intonation, study Shakespeare. He's the master at it. You can learn a lot from him. "Parting is such sweet sorrow/That I shall
say good night, till it be morrow" right? So, learn how he's playing with the intonation,
how he's playing with the pace. What words he's punching. He is obviously going to punch the rhyming
words, but he's going to - he has to basically force the other words to reach that position
where the rhyme actually works and the musicality of it works. And again, if you think this is not how people
speak, it's very much how people speak. They control the pace of their language. They control what they speed up on, because
they want to just - it's not that important. They show down on what they want you to hear,
and they punch the words that they really want you to hear and focus on, okay? Now, another good thing you can do is write
your own little poetry. It'll help you with your pronunciation, because
you have to find words that rhyme. And it'll help you create sentences or lines
that basically have a matching flow, okay? I met a girl, her name was Grace With an angel's voice and a lovely face So, I want to make sure that I'm falling on
the same amount. Now, a different number of syllables, but
commas are also your friend. Commas are little pauses, right? "I met a girl, her name was Grace/With an
angel's voice and a lovely face". Because I have more syllables and I have to
squeeze them in, I don't have room for a comma. So, I have to speed it up a little bit and
everything works together, right? I asked her out to a bar called "Frank's" She said, "You're sweet, but no thanks." Okay? So, this is a little poem. I wrote it just for this lesson, okay? I hope you guys like it. But again, all I'm doing is just playing with
the flow, playing with the words, making sure that "Grace" and "face" and "Frank's" and
"face" all work and that when you get to those ending words, you're not tripping over the
line because it's too fast or too slow. Now, a very good thing to do also, in terms
of pronunciation, if you come across a word and you're not too sure. Of course, you can look up in the dictionary
and it will give you the phonetic spelling. But if you don't like the phonetic spelling
and you prefer a more creative or a more fun way to find out how to pronounce words, put
this into a rhyming dictionary and find out other words that sound like it that you already
know how to pronounce, and you'll figure it out. So, this word: wound. There are two ways to pronounce this word. "Wound", like the past tense of "wind". So, for those of you who have a watch - I
don't wear a watch, but if you have an old-fashioned watch, you have to wind it every once in awhile
so that it works properly. The past tense is "wound". Sound - wound, sound. But if I take a gun and I shoot somebody,
I will wound that person. Tuned, like your guitar needs to be tuned,
your piano needs to be tuned. Wound - sound. Wound - tuned. Two different ways to pronounce the same word. Completely unrelated meanings. "Doubt" with a silent "b". Doubt, out, drought. Now, I actually made a lesson about how to
pronounce words with "ough" or "augh", especially with a "t". You can use the rhyming to do that. Doubt - out - drought. Freight - great, right? So, you can use rhymes to learn pronunciation,
and then create your own little poems to practice your speed, your intonation, your stresses,
etc. To convey a meaning that you want to convey. Okay? So, I hope this was a little bit helpful. I hope it's a little bit fun for you to try
to do this yourself. If you have any questions about this lesson,
please go to www.engvid.com and ask me in the comment section there. There's also a quiz that you can practice
some of this information to make sure you understand it. If you like this video, please subscribe to
my YouTube channel and come back for more great videos on English. See you then. Bye!
