Natural British Intonation – Weak Forms

so what a weak forms well we need some
first understand what word stresses
let’s take a word like police there are
two syllables in police the stressed
syllable is on lease the second syllable
so the first syllable is not stressed
it’s a weak form so it sounds like a
schwa / not police police so that’s one
thing you need to know is stress in
words which syllable is stressed we’ll
come back to that later but what about
stress in a sentence how does that work
well English is not really an efficient
language for example if I said to you
want coffee it may sound like a caveman
but you understand everyone understands
that I want coffee I an app and not very
important words right so in a natural
sentence those unimportant words also
have weak forms in weak forms the vowel
sounds are replaced with schwa sounds so
for example I want a coffee I an a again
they’re not important so they would be
reduced to schwa sound want and coffee
they’re the important bits of
information in the sentence so we would
pronounce them correctly the whole thing
would sound like this r1 to coffee again
the vowel sounds they replaced by shut
up what up coffee once a coffee you say
it with me repeats it with me a 1 a
coffee a 1 a coffee okay but how about
words with more than one syllable we
need to think about sentence stress and
word stress so how about if
police coming so if I said police coming
we both understand the police are coming
we don’t need bourbon are they would be
weak forms reducing the bell sounds to
to our sound so the police
remember that police we’ve still got
that weak syllable on police the police
are are reduced er up a-coming the
police are coming
the police are coming that’s where you
get your sentence stress that’s where
you get your intonation from so for
example a question like do you fancy a
beer
could sound like Joe fancy a beer again
what are the important words fancy beer
I think correct me if I’m wrong I think
Americans don’t use the word fancy it
just means what so for example fancy
beer the whole question do you fancy a
beer Geoff ANSI a beer Joe fancy a beer
do you fancy a beer okay let’s put all
of that together you’ll see sentences
come up on the screen you try and say it
then hear me say it then you repeat it
in the correct way
what’d you do yesterday
I went to the cinema
what you see just a romance movie who’d
you go with
a web with your girlfriend you went with
my girlfriend so you see you could also
stress a particular word depending on
what you want the focus of the sentence
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