It's amazing how the implied meaning of the sentence "I hope you enjoyed this video" changes depending on where the accent is. *I* hope you enjoyed this video - others may wish otherwise I *hope* you enjoyed this video - I am not confident in the quality of my work I hope *you* enjoyed this video - I certainly didn't I hope you *enjoyed* this video - No other meaning implied I hope you enjoyed *this* video - have I finally made a good video? Everyone hated the other ones I hope you enjoyed this *video* - I do not normally make videos, this is a new and exiting frontier for me
I've always found with the football scores, you can tell if it's a home win, an away win, or a draw _before_ hearing the second team's score from the preceding intonation.
If you are referring to the scores as read by James Alexander Gordon, he was known for using his intonation when reading the club names to indicate whether it was a home win, away win or draw.
I am absolutely certain that there was at least once on BBC radio a quiz where you had to guess what the away team had scored based on the intonation of the away team compared to the home team and score.
@@grapeman63 I’m in the US, and of course your comment made me think of American football. There’s an interesting quirk I picked up on in that game - when a referee is making the announcement on a reviewed play, I can usually tell which way it’s about to go by his tone and cadence. Your comment made me think of that. The words are “after further review” - the tell is the way they say *review*
This drives students I've taught from Italy and Spain absolutely crazy. They sometimes flat out ask me if it's just my dialect (by which they clearly mean "my WEIRD dialect") rather than standard English. Almost as interesting is just how naturally it seems to come to students from China!
A Taiwanese lady told me she was taught to treat stressed and non-stressed syllables as if they had tones - high tone for stressed and neutral tone for unstressed - which works well.
I think maybe the neutral tone in Mandarin Chinese is a similar fenomenon (?) All syllables in Mandarin have one of the four tones, but in certain contexts, that tone might become weakened, resulting in a neutral tone, which is pronounced shorter than all of the other tones. Like four example, 子 (zi3) is normally third tone, but when it's just a suffix, then is neutral tone, in words like 杯子 (bei1zi) 椅子(yi3zi). The difficult part about the neutral tone is that it doesn't have a fixed "voice height", because it's voice height depends on the tone of the preceding syllable. So I think this concept of a syllable with a tone, becoming "weaker" is kind of similar to "deaccenting"
An often forgotten part of why Bond introduces himself that way is because moments earlier in Dr. No, the exchange between between Bond and Sylvia goes "I admire your courage, miss...?" "Trench, Sylvia Trench, I admire your luck, mister...?" leading to Bond responding in kind, "Bond, James Bond." An iconic catchphrase born out of flirty repartee.
as a native English speaker learning Japanese, the more I know about complicated English pronunciation rules I’ve never consciously thought about the better I feel about my poor grasp on Japanese pronunciation haha
As a fellow student of Japanese, it's fascinating how Japanese accomplishes contrast using は, while in English we use stress. You can often hear English speakers carrying the stress over into Japanese, which unfortunately doesn't work for the intended purpose.
I found that the first language I really worked hard to learn was extremely revelatory for me; even though, being a romance language, Catalan is relatively close to English, it was still amazing how it made me think about nuances and quirks in English that I'd never thought about before. I imagine with Japanese it would be even more so, given how different the languages are in fundamental ways.
Also note than when Luke Skywalker refers to R2D2 as simply R2 (or Artoo) for short, he accents the 2, reverting to the general rule of number-ending-phrases having the number accented.
Whoa, language is complex! slightly off-topic: Back in the days before Star Wars became a global phenomenon, I had a friend who constantly called the droid "Artie Tootie". He said it was because he pictured R2 and 3PO as characters from Italian Commedia Del'Arte. Specifically the comedy-relief servants, citing how the pronounced name "Threepio" would fit right in alongside Arlecchino or Pierrot. (apologies for the long-winded aside, but something in your post brought that memory back)
The thing is, Anakin sometimes/usually does the opposite to Luke with the nickname: *R* 2, rather than R *2*, as in "R2, stay with the ship" for instance. I think the familiarity with the nickname causes the number itself to lose meaning, so it just becomes a 2 syllable word, and in those cases (with nouns especially as opposed to verbs) I find that first syllable stress is more common.
@@AugustinSteven I'm not an expert, but I think the last word goes down in pitch at the very end (typically), but you can still stress that syllable. For example, if you just say "garage", the final syllable is stressed, but the pitch still descends at the very end.
My mind is kind of blown! I'm a native English speaker and didn't even realize these rules existed lol. This does explain why ESL speakers, even when their accent is otherwise perfect, give themselves away for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. It also explains why I never quite feel comfortable following these accent rules on the rare occasion that I speak another language. There's always something more to learn about linguistics!
Wow. The deaccenting of "this video" was eye-opening. It opens a whole new can of worms, about when information is given by context. As a stage performer, although in Swedish, I can see how to use that on stage; implying that information is given, modifies the meaning of what is said, and might be used, for example, to hint that something is known by two out of three characters on stage. Such subtlety will not be picked up explicitly, but audience members will get this uncanny hunch of something being odd.
@@Zzyzzyx Or that the speaker is Spanish, lol. I'm just joking. I can just imagine a hispanic detective in any cop show emphasizing your example the first way, but not as a hint, just an artefact of their native language. And that made me laugh lol. Cheers.
Unfortunately I don't think this would work the way you hope. The problem is that for native speakers, the meaning of this stress isn't subtle at all. If you move it around to try to hint at hidden information, you'll just confuse the audience because the character is saying something that they don't mean or that doesn't make sense. To make use of the other commenter's example, the reaction would likely be, "We need to *find* the killer? Of course we do. What else would we do with the killer that we haven't found yet?"
@@nicolab2075 You look *good* in that dress. - They look good in the dress. You look good in *that* dress. - They look good IN THAT dress *You* look good in that dress. - *They* make the dress look good. Not exactly what the OP was talking about but an example of how stress or emphasis changes implicit meaning.
I think this video highlights an essential difference between germanic and romance languages: In romance languages stress seems to be linked to long syllables. In germanic languages, including English, one can stress short or long syllables. In Italian, the "non" has short vowel, whereas the word "essere" starts with a long syllable (the double consonant makes it long). So as I understand it, stressing the "non" is not really an option. Native English speakers will have difficulties with this concept, and occasionally stress syllables that a native Italian speaker never would.
This is true. However it's not that weird for us italians to put the stress on "non". It would be the case of a teacher who wants to put particular enphasis on that word in order to remark the difference. It's probably easier to hear that in a philosophy class rather than in a theatre where a Shakespeare tragedy is performed. Parmenides being and not being sound the same as Hamlet's dilemma. In introducing these concepts to students, a teacher is likely to say "Essere e NON essere". Once acquired that, he would probably go on putting the stress on "essere", though.
@cris_possible That isn't true: function words are generally inaccented (tho they are treated in isolation as accented which I guess is where the confusion comes from). For example Porque si saBEmos que TOdas las COsas SURgen. We don't like having
IKR?? 🤪 Generally we just pick up all this stuff by osmosis, so there's never an opportunity when you're actually triggered to stop and think about it! (Unless training for public speaking/acting I guess?)
What's always stood out for me is the stress difference between BrEng and AmEng for the word "weekend". In BrEng the stress is on "end" while in AmEng it's on "week". On another note, there's a phrase used in acting diction classes which demonstrates perfectly how stress changes meaning in English: "What are you talking about?" Usually said in a voice mimicking Bette Davis for dramatic effect. By stressing each word alone each time you say the phrase, the meaning changes completely for each version.
I never noticed that weekend is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable in American English. I always assumed the reason why it's on the second syllable in British English is to contrast it with "weakened".
I'm from England (and speak BrEng) and I say "wee-kend" with no schwa. I would say the emphasis is on the first syllable in my dialect, but there are certainly British dialects that emphasise the second syllable. But I think like with most rules for BrEng it isn't universal to all British accents
Hey Geoff :) Brilliant choice of examples. Although I am quite familiar with the rule itself, but your way of demonstrating it just make it is simply entertaining and equally educational.
Thank you so much for this video. I am a native Spanish speaker, I have been studying English for most of my life, more than 20 years and I never noticed this feature of the language. I always said "BOND, james BOND" and "to BE, or not to to BE". That's the way the "music" of the sentence sounded "right" to my ears.
So, in Spanish, would you say "SER o no SER"? If so, why is this more normal? Wouldn't the speaker want to emphasize the contrast or difference prominently?
@@WolfdogLinguistics That is how I have always heard it. Probably because we pay more attention to the rhyme more than the meaning, it is a famous phrase everybody knows, anyway.
In Catalan and Spanish, the contrast between old and new information is often done through word order, with the new information placed at the end. For example: Barça didn't sell the player. Barça bought him. = El Barça no va vendre el jugador. El Barça el va comprar. [lit: The Barça did not sell the player. The Barça him sold.] In the above, the subject comes first, like in English. But compare with the following: Girona didn't buy the player. Barça bought the player. = El Girona no va comprar el jugador, El va comprar el Barça. [lit: The Girona not bought the player. Him bought the Barça.]
In reading your example of Girona-didn't/Barça-did, I remembered two sentence structures in English that partly resemble Catalan/Spanish sentence structure. English 1: "Girona didn't buy the player. It was Barça who bought the player." "It was Barça," the name gets the emphasis at the end of this phrase, which in English is a complete comparative thought. We can say "It was Barça" and end the sentence here because "it" takes the place of "who bought the player," which can be implied rather than reiterated. When reiterating at the end of the comparative sentence, "who bought the player" is said without much emphasis. This leads to the second example. English 2: "Girona didn't buy the player. The one who bought the player was Barça." We use "the one who" to begin the sentence, in subject-verb-object structure, similar to the example of "it was Barça."
In just a little over six minutes, you covered a lot of aspects I was never aware of, having learned them by imitation without giving much thought to the whys and wherefores.
This is great stuff for non-native speakers to learn. I teach it a little differently, as focusing on the strong accent seems easier. I tell my students that adjectives are usually very strong, and that includes the first part of most compound words (airport, newspaper, bedroom, etc.). Also that almost all numbers should be strong (including as time, dates, and money). And that generally all words in proper names are pretty strong (New York, Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls), "Bond. James Bond" notwithstanding! Just getting adjectives stressed more than the nouns they modify can go a long way to improving sentence rhythm and being more comprehensible.
@@deyfuck Yes, your examples illustrate my point that proper names have strong accents on all words. Especially if there is a possibility of confusion with some other location, like New York State vs the city, or DC vs the state of Washington.
@@margaretgoldstein373 I don't understand? My examples have strong accents on the second YORK and the letter CEE only. "new york new YORK", "washington dee CEE", don't they?
@@deyfuck Yes, you are basically correct, but ALL the words of Proper Nouns should have fairly strong stress. The point I try to make with my students is that adjectives are USUALLY very strong. But there important exceptions: they shouldn’t say NEW york when referring to the city (or state), nor Dc, nor SAN francisco. As long as all the words of place names have roughly the same strong stress, the speaker will sound pretty good, if not exactly like a native speaker. English has so many exceptions that I find giving my students only about 10-20 rules for pronunciation goes a very long way to improving speech in a minimal amount of time.
I was reminded the other day of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Five Orange Pips." And I thought of your videos. If the story were about five pips, which were all the colour orange, then the word "pips" would be accented. But if it's about the pips of an orange, and there's five of them, then "pips" will be deaccented, as the second half of the compound "orange pips." So in this case the deaccenting makes a difference to meaning, to how the title is understood.
Great example! It's based, of course, on the ambiguity of "orange" as a noun or an adjective. We get the same with "English teacher", where "English" can be a noun or an adjective. If a noun, it's a compound; if an adjective, a noun phrase.
You accent also to distinguish, right? In order to underscore who is you're talking about of two distinguished only by that adjective. Two teachers: one is English, the other Canadian. In a conversation about the two you need to make sure it's understood you're speaking of the first/second one. Then the nationality is accented: "the *English*/*Canadian* teacher...". Same as with two sets of pips, orange and blue. The *orange* pips, is to stress you're referring only to the pips of that particular colour, whether they come from an orange or any other fruit.
@@sternaparadisea it's confusing because of the semantic ambiguity of "English teacher' and 'orange pip' without context, but yes the stress is still on the first element if you're distinguishing between an English and a Canadian teacher ('English' here is an adjective), or a teacher of English and a teacher of Science ('English' here being a noun of course). The second element is stressed only if distinguishing between, say, an English teacher and an English nurse ('English' as adjective)
Not only that, Francis, but you use ”accented” and ”deaccented” in your post, and an English person would place emphasis on the first (or second) syllable of ”accented”, but most definitely emphasise the first syllable of ”deaccented”. The prefix is new information and is thus focused on for contrasting effect. I have found that this is less common in the United States, and it grates every time I hear an unstressed contrast!
@@DrGeoffLindsey This phenomenon trips up some translation tools. Imagine an online shop selling ironing boards. I believe in standard English the first word is accented, indicating a compound: IRONING board. The correct German translation is also a compound: Bügelbrett. But if you're an automated tool, you might not know that, producing instead "bügelndes Brett", i.e. a board that irons for you, an ironing BOARD.
I spent my early childhood in Northern Ontario, a bilingual part of Canada where speaking both English and French in the same household is common. The stress patterns of Canadian French, especially the "Franco-Ontarian" variant, are very different from Canadian English, as well as being different from those of France. The English I learned in this rather remote and frosty part of Ontario is different in some ways from what is spoken in the populous southern part of the province. One difference in the North is that when two words are used to describe a single concept or a single substance, the stress is placed on the second word, in the case of two one-syllable words, or on the penultimate syllable of the second word in the case of two two-syllable words. Thus, I say "ice CREAM" rather than "ICE cream" and "peanut BUTter" rather than "PEAnut butter". This sounds rather goofy to my friends in Toronto. It's been many years that I've been surrounded by the stress pattern used by 99% of North Americans, but it is so ingrained that I cannot relinquish this last little bit of my childhood. My subconscious mind screams "don't you realize it's only one thing?!!" when I hear the dominant pronunciation. Is this stress pattern known in the U.K.? It's closer to the stress pattern of Canadian French, but it could also come from the First Nations languages (Cree and Ojibway) that are spoken there. The Cree word for Ice Cream, at least in the Moose Cree dialect of my region, is "kâ tahkâk", stressing the last syllable, just like "crème glacée".
I love your videos on stress, compounds, and deaccenting! I am obsessed with these topics but rarely find anyone who seems to pay as much attention to them as I do.
@@DrGeoffLindsey Yes! I have noticed haha I love these unique patterns of spoken English, and I love bringing them to light in fun and creative ways...as I can see you do as well. Sometimes I feel that I am a voice crying in the wilderness because people don't seem to quite get it when I say these things are happening, and that they're important. English learners have a much easier time grasping the importance of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. But I keep talking about them anyway because they are meaningful as well as fascinating...and all happening at the subconscious level. Language is amazing.
Another thing that I find really fascinating about this topic is that some words seem to have different pronunciations by different people or even by the same person with different meanings... for example the words finance, adult, and insurance are sometimes accented on the first syllable and sometimes on the second. At least in my idiolect the word finance means the global financial system if you are emphasizing the second syllable and the personal budgeting at a micro level if you stress the first.
Interest. I wonder where you come from. I have heard 'adult' stressed on either syallable but never heard or 'insurance' or 'finance' stressed on anything but the second and first syllable respectively. I'm from the UK.
@@barrysteven5964 I have heard "insurance" pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, specifically by family members from Georgia, Louisiana, and thereabouts. (I'm American BTW) It's such subtle changes in intonation and cadence that tend to distinguish the accents of our southern states. Such as the word "envelope" spoken with the second syllable stressed, "en-VEL-ope"; or "internal" emphasizing the first, "IN-ter-nal".
How come this is the first time I'm ever learning about all of this? A lot of the things on your channel are mind-blowing, even though they seem self-evident when you explain them.
I also think we accent AIRport or PRESS conference like we do because there are other types of ports, and there are other types of conferences. It’s the same with SLEDGEhammer or PALM tree.
Finnish actually works the same way with deaccenting, as English; therefore, it’s very much natural to me, as a Finn, to deaccent given information 🇫🇮. *EDIT:* So much so, in fact, that the Italian and Spanish accenting of given information actually sounds *_UNnatural_* and wrong, to me. We would also have: _”Ollako, vai _*_ẸIKÖ_*_ olla?”_ (= ”To be or *_NỌT_* to be?”).
@@PC_Simo Sorry I realized I didn't specify what I meant with We. I mean Spanish speakers. The English would say "You say he's gone?" While stressing the last part and kinda mumbling the first part. But we would say "Gone, you say he is?" "Se fue, dices??" Maaaybe stressing the first part, but not necessary. Word order sends enough of a message. Too much stressing can actually make it sound unnatural or way too "hype" or that you're unsettled which isn't always what you want to communicate. This is more common in SPOKEN Spanish btw. In writing we try to keep certain word orders more closely than in real life. But it still happens, so we can convey emphasis. This works because Spanish has kept most declensions it inherited from Latin, so word order is mostly optional, with few exceptions. Latin got so many declensions that word order is completely 100% absolutely unimportant, and whatever there is, is a convention, not a rule. Spanish isn't that extreme, but we're still allowed to mess with word order a lot.
@@crusaderACR Yeah, I kind of figured from your username that you are probably a Spanish speaker. Thanks, anyway, for the clarification/confirmation 😅. So, you say the new/important information at the beginning? Finnish has a free word order, as well (being very inflected and agglutinative); and we call that phenomenon: _”Teema-reema -rakenne”_ (”Theme-”reme”(?) structure”), where the ”theme” refers to new/important information, and the ”reme”(?) refers to old/given information. 👍🏻
To me it makes sense that "James" is emphasized as new information. You don't care about Bond anymore, you underline what Bond, which is James. However I've never been good at hearing accent differences unless it's pitch difference. The way my brain treats the football tie is "arsenal 1, and unexpectedly, liverpool also one" and that makes the connection to the tone and accent. At the same time I also found out that my brain treats accents as what's the critical part of information or what someone is trying to imply, that there could be extra words in the sentence explaining why the accent and tone. These videos reveal very exciting things I've never paid attention to.
I love this channel so much :D I'm a totally non-educated language nerd, that has always noticed and observed most of the things you talk about in English, but never really had a good explanation for them. It's crazy how many things we just learn naturally that are never talked about, but we all just do. These complicated conditional rule-sets that we all follow but no one is aware of. The whole idea of given-information makes perfect sense to me, and is one of the things that I like about English, and the languages ability to convey context and subtext, but I never had the language to really clarify what was happening. The RD2D bit was really perfect, because it just seems like the totally normal and natural way to say it, and if you changed it to R2D3, I would indeed naturally accent the 3. Numbers (almost) always getting an accent seems to feel "correct" as quantities tend to be clarifying information, and thus the more important stressed part; with the rest being context for what you're quantifying. c-THREE-pee-oh. the "pee-oh" seems to be given information; some known context or classification that's obvious; what's important is to WHICH particular "C" class he belongs. WE assume that if there's a number, then that number is either an important quantity or a part of a series, and thus important information. If there's a c3po, we can assume there was probably a c2po and maybe even a c4po; to understand which one we're talking about, we stress that number.
I just discovered this channel as a native (Midwest American) English speaker and not only is it helping my pronunciation in English, it's also helping me to better understand IPA and pronunciation for other languages too!
What a fabulous video. Even as a speaker of English of 30+ years, in your videos I always find tremendously helpful tips and stimulating angles of the language that I hadn't thought about. Your content simply goes beyond what is available on youtube. Congratulations on your Italian - your pronunciation of essere o non essere" is perfect (being Italian I feel qualified to say this!). And so glad you like Totò!
Brilliant! This is such a crucial part of effective and natural English speech but it is often so difficult to explain. The "semantic force" of inflection is such a magnificent part of clear and expressive English. Yet, language courses and study almost always neglects it, thus robbing the vitality and character of the language.
I still can't get used to how many youtubers accentuate contrasting numbers, e/g "I made five hundred, but he made six HUNDRED", instead of "I made five hundred, but he made SIX hundred"
Great brief but still quite complete lesson. Loved the every day life examples. I'm glad I've found this channel through a phonetics professor recommendation. Gonna dive into the rest of your videos. Cheers!
I may be wrong, but that seems to be the case with the band AC/DC, which is pronounced with a weak, unstressed C because it repeats. In my country, everybody says aCdC, with the accent on the C.
Thank you! I ask those I teach to go through news articles, looking for words or ideas that have already been mentioned, and which might therefore be deaccented. Then I suggest that, during spontaneous English use, they occasionally see if they can spot the same kind deaccenting opportunity - without at first worrying about actually executing the accent patterns.
3:47 Oh wow the Shakespeare example was golden. I was thinking that I deaccent just the same in my native language, thinking of how I may immitate Bond, *James* Bond, but my rendition of translated Shakespeare did very much keep the verb accented. Wonderful video!
Interesting, being a native speaker of Croatian, it is rather common sense to stress the words you're giving some new information about. I don't know for sure, but I suppose it's the same with other Slavic languages. I had no idea it wasn't the case with Italian or Spanish.
I'm always amazed, watching your videos, about the things you explain that I'd never even noticed before, as a native English speaker. And sure enough, you're right!
That's quite cool, thanks for the video. One thing that would have been helpful would be to hear you say things like "R2-D3" or "R3-D2", but I can well imagine it now.
In football scores, it is hardly 'given information'. It is different information- the score of a different team. What is amazing, given the change of meaning that stress on words gives, is that we manage written English with almost no way to do that.
You are a genius man. My first language is Arabic. I have been baffled by the way native English speakers speak. But I didn't have the vocabulary to describe the things that I find different or difficult imitate.
yes, "repeat" would be more accurate. Same with football scores. If you don't know that it was a draw before hearing the exact result in "Arsenal 1 Liverpool 1" the first 1 doesn't imply the second 1.
Wow！This might be the single best video on english pronunciation that Ive seen on youtube so far ！The empathy you have with non-native speakers when creating examples that easily demonstrate and make your points clear is unbelievable ！ I cant believe Im getting this amazing information free and on youtube, Im amazed
Brilliant! Thank you :) I'm an English teacher in Rome, I have recently found you and have begun sharing your videos with my students in the newsletter xo
This immediately made me consider when C-3P0 is talking about R2-D2 in an alien language, like when telling stories to the Ewoks, he shifts to adding emphasis to the second 2.
👍🏻 Fascinating, thanks! I've only vaguely been conscious of this device; although, speaking English all my life, I've used it constantly. I wonder what speakers of other languages think when we unconsciously apply the same rules while trying to speak their language? Or what fun can be had by deliberately transgressing these "unspoken rules" in English .. would it cause confusion? Can't wait to see!
I suppose in chemistry simple chemical compounds like H2O2 and C2H2 can follow the rule here but in organic chemistry and biochemistry molecules can get very long and complex with groups, side-chains and numbers.
As an Italian native speaker, I can confirm the whole deaccenting situation is kinda hard to understand. Before seeing this video I didn't even notice it, I thought the given information went just unstressed . Thank you
This is what I sometimes call "C3" level English, as even some of my most capable students really struggle to hear or replicate the lack of accenting at the end of phrases and compounds like this, perhaps I should call it "R2D2" English though! I find it funny how we stress the start of most compounds but then the end of almost all abbreviations, mG, bmW, iD, bbC, tV, f1, etc
I think there's an exception to this rule (it is English after all!). When the repetition is for emphasis, the 2nd instance tends to be accented. An example of this might be a teenage girl saying, "Do you like him or do you LIKE him?" (sometimes the 2nd like is repeated with the deaccented version though: "LIKE like him").
I don't think that's actually an exception. It's emphasising that the meaning of the word 'like' is different in the two cases, and the second case should be read as if it was 'new' information.
German is the same as English in that regard, so as a native speaker I never realized that this is not something all languages do. It's "SEIN oder NICHT sein" (to BE or NOT to be) for us too.
Interesting that when Luke Skywalker originally shortened “R2-D2” to “R2”, the digit syllable was accented (ArTOO), which is the normal way for that to be pronounced as a standalone phrase. But in later Star Wars, R2's name is almost always pronounced like “ARtoo” with the accent shifted, to reflect the semi-stress on that syllable of the full name (/ˌaɹtuwˈdijtuw/ → /ˈaɹtuw/)
Whoa. I only speak German and English; it never occurred to me that many (let alone most) languages do not leverage emphasis (accenting) as a means of hinting at the new/important bit of information. Except for tonal languages, of course. I don't remember the terminology, but is there a connection between this import/novelty-focused (de)accenting and aspects of rhythm (like stress-timed/syllable-timed)?
I remember noticing the different pronunciation of R2-D2 vs R5-D4 (the red one in the original film - we all had the toy so we knew its name). First time I've ever heard someone bother to come up with an explanation.
4:22 Although, interestingly, when characters in Star Wars films refer to R2-D2 by its abbreviated moniker, the emphasis is on the second syllable: "Artoo". Ar-TOO.
also interesting how much staying power these particular stress rules have across dialects. The examples mentioned here are consistent across British (RP) and standard American, as well as the vast majority of other English dialects. The differences in stress instead tend to come from foreign loan words; e.g. alum*I*nium vs al*U*minum, oreg*A*no vs or*E*geno, etc. probably not coincidental that the actual phonemes used on foreign words also differs between these two predominant dialects, as you addressed in another video, with the American accent tending (but not always) to be a bit closer in pronunciation *and* stress to the original borrowed word, especially if borrowowing came from a Romance language.
Thanks, Geoff - fascinating as always! Two questions/remarks: 1. I don't think it was said explicitly in the video, but it is my impression that deaccentuation of given information is especially strong at the end of phrases, and less so in the beginning. For example, if Bond were to introduce himself as "James, James Bond" (which I think he actually does on one occasion in film? I'm not sure), we wouldn't witness the same deaccentuation in the second James as we do in the second Bond of "Bond, James Bond", right? 2. The explanation of the pronunciation of R2D2's name sounded quite compelling, but then I thought that that does not account for the stress pattern in the name of his friend C3PO - but I guess I was wrong to assume the O at the end was the number zero (I thought C3-P0 somehow paralleled R2-D2) , and that it is in fact the letter O (and hyphenated C-3PO), so it's just the number that gets the stress (not in the end).
@@thebigmacd Would you really deaccent the second James? And to the same extent as you would the second Bond in 'Bond, James Bond'? To me that sounds rather strange. As for C-3PO, if it was C3-P0 (divided this way, and with a zero - possibly pronounced 'oh'), then I'd definitely not deaccent the 3 and the 0 (ending up accenting all four parts, much like in 'Liverpool 1 - Arsenal 2').
@@ytbqiqayon yes you would deaccent the second James if we’re following our normal speaking rules. I think for this example specifically we’re so used to hearing it one way that deaccenting the second James sounds odd to the ear. If there were any other noun pairs like this we would follow the ‘rule’ naturally. It doesn’t work for adjective+noun though, for example, as repeated adjectives are usually there for emphasis and therefore every word is emphasised.
Love the video! I'm wondering if you are making specific distinctions between terms like "stress", "accent", and "intonation". They all seem related to me, but I'm not sure which words mean what to a linguist.
What an awesome content! Just found your channel and I'm amazed. I have hope now. Maybe one day I can learn and speak correctly, things that until now were a mystery to me. Thank you.
R2D2 is more "That's how it the movie pronounces it." In the book (at least in the paperback in the 90s), R2D2 and C3P0 were spelled "Artoo Deetoo" and "See Threepeeo" as if the civilization didn't realize they were acronyms. And the Russian paperback turned them into Эрдва Дедва ("Erdva Dedva", Р2Д2) and Эс Трипео ("Es Tripeo", С3ПО).
I live in Melbourne, Australia. We have a BOURKE Street but a Burke ROAD. Why the shift in accentuation? Could it be because all streets are assumed to be 'streets' unless otherwise specified? If so, why, since there are surely more roads in Anglophonia then streets? Ideas anyone?
Hi. Yes, 'street' is default for addresses. Roads traditionally connect places, including towns (Roman roads, road movie, road trip). A 'London Road' may well head towards London (at least historically). But streets have buildings and therefore addresses. There are lots of ancient streets (like Fleet Street in London), whereas using 'road' in addresses came later. The classic US address has street, city, state, zip. So streets get basic compound stress, FLEET Street. Everything else follows the name + NOUN pattern: Burke ROAD, Sunset BOULEVARD, Melbourne ZOO, Mickey MOUSE, Hubble TELESCOPE. There are some other defaults of the 'street' type. Most 'constituent' compounds are late/double stressed, brick WALL, leather BELT, tomato SOUP, but 'juice' and 'cake' get early/single stress, like 'street': ORANGE juice, CARROT cake. Compounds are fascinating and I could go on all day.
Dear Geoff, Just the other day, I came across you channel, and I am very happy to have found it, since it provides me with a lot of additional insight, sometimes confirming my own little pet theories, sometimes countering them, sometimes just surprising me. When I read the title of this video, however, I expected quite the opposite of what it actually contained. Being German, I have no trouble with the concept of "given information" and adjusting the accent of the following phrase accordingly. To me, this seems rather natural (other languages seem to work differently, though, as I learned from your video). Anyway, What I had hoped for was instead an explanation for all the cases which display the exact opposite of deaccenting in the way you described it and which puzzle me to this day. It's laying the emphasis on the given information, not on the new one. For example, the phrase "inside or outside". Every non-native speaker will be compelled to emphasize "out" in outside in opposite to "in"side, because this bit is the new information. In contrast, any native speaker I have ever heard utter this phrase emphasized the already given information "side". Same with "upstairs and downstairs" and similar phrases. I wonder if this is to do with regionality (although I am pretty sure that I hear this from English speakers as well as American speakers), or the fact that it puts opposites right next to each other? To me it sounds particularly "native" to emphasize phrases like this. So is it typical? A linguistic fashion? Or an aberration? I would very much appreciate if you could let me (us) know your thoughts on this (maybe one of your videos?), since I feel that little things like this present big obstacles in my personal "deaccenting efforts", that is to say, my efforts to get rid of (most of) my foreign accent. Kind regards, Martin
I recommend the video on weak forms he's just released a few hours ago. Both of the examples you gave contain words that start with prepositions, so I suspect that the weakening of the prepositions is countering the devoicing. That said, it feels more natural to me not to emphasise "side", as my natural choice is to emphasise the syllable that differentiates the words.
You could have added foreign speakers' habit of the opposite: deaccenting non-given information at the end of a phrase, where a native speaker will give clarity and usually emphasis to the new information.
with R2-D2 I think it's just because it's following the usual English stress pattern of putting the stress on the penultimate syllable. (Very few words in English stress the final syllable; verbs such as "record" or "enjoy" are the main exceptions.) Of course for some words we put the stress on the anti-penultimate syllable, e.g. in the name "C-3PO" where it's on the 3.
Try saying R2-D2 in the usual way and then again replacing the final number with a different one. To my ear at least it sounds wrong to say for example R2-D4 without an accent on the 4. Also, you may have meant this, but it's worth pointing out for others that in fact a lot of two syllable verbs stress the final syllable 'arrive, berate, collude, debate, begin, decide, compute, insert' etc.
My wife, who is not a native speaker, has nearly flawless English but is still occasionally tripped up by this. She says Joshua TREE national park, for example, which makes me laugh because it makes it sound like a person’s name.
This is amazing! I would love it if you would do another one on how we use intonation to break this convention. That is, this is the rule, but I notice that when I want to emphasize a particular concept in a sentence, I will emphasize it specifically, and of course, it can totally change the meaning. I could just never explain this to non-native speakers, but of course, I did not have this foundation to start with. But the ability to specifically choose the accented syllable allows you an incredible amount of power to make distinctions.
Something that blew my mind was when a teacher demonstrated that the (example) sentence "I didn't say you stole that money" can mean seven different things depending on which of the seven words you stress.
I’m not a linguistics student, but I’ve learned a couple of languages to B.A level; it seems to me that the given information is deaccented when the previous word is a qualifier, functioning as an adjective. So “Bond, James Bond,” because he wants you to acknowledge that it is he, *James* Bond, standing before you, not unimportant Harry Bond, your old English prof. all togged up. The same for Facebook; it’s the qualifier that’s accented, because the qualifier is important. It’s “Face book,” not “paper book” or “big book.” I think it’s trickier with R2-D2. There’s a make-and-model thing happening there. So the full name is R2-D2, accenting the D because the drone is distinct from the earlier R2-A2, R2-B2, & R2-C2 models and the later R2-E2 model. (I work for an office electronics distributor; I deal with model numbers and SKUs all day long 😂). Anyway, it gets tricky because when Luke is talking to it, he shortens the name to R2, accenting the 2. So presumably there was an R1 model in the series at some point? (disclaimer: I only watched the first three episodes and that was when they were first released) Or it’s just Luke’s way of making a pet name for the thing because it’s so cute 🥰. Anyway, that’s enough amateur pedantry from me for one day. 😅. It’s probably coffee time. I love this channel 👍
There's a strange version of this in Glaswegian where place names get de-accented "CORNwall" but if it's a street name it gets emphasis at the end, "cornwALL street" no idea why though
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Your videos are like getting to see the behind-the-scenes footage of how my own brain works
The highest compliment
This is exactly why I love watching these videos
It's amazing how the implied meaning of the sentence "I hope you enjoyed this video" changes depending on where the accent is.
*I* hope you enjoyed this video - others may wish otherwise
I *hope* you enjoyed this video - I am not confident in the quality of my work
I hope *you* enjoyed this video - I certainly didn't
I hope you *enjoyed* this video - No other meaning implied
I hope you enjoyed *this* video - have I finally made a good video? Everyone hated the other ones
I hope you enjoyed this *video* - I do not normally make videos, this is a new and exiting frontier for me
Is the exiting frontier the final frontier?
@@matthew.wilson Edge of the Earth.
The classic one is
You look good in that dress.
@@Fnargl99 oh, wow
This video deserves part 2 on this perspective.
I've always found with the football scores, you can tell if it's a home win, an away win, or a draw _before_ hearing the second team's score from the preceding intonation.
Descending cadence when the second team loses, ascending cadence when they win, and deaccenting on a draw.
If you are referring to the scores as read by James Alexander Gordon, he was known for using his intonation when reading the club names to indicate whether it was a home win, away win or draw.
I am absolutely certain that there was at least once on BBC radio a quiz where you had to guess what the away team had scored based on the intonation of the away team compared to the home team and score.
@@part-slimer We used to play this at home as kids, and it's surprising (perhaps) how often you can get it spot-on.
@@grapeman63 I’m in the US, and of course your comment made me think of American football. There’s an interesting quirk I picked up on in that game - when a referee is making the announcement on a reviewed play, I can usually tell which way it’s about to go by his tone and cadence. Your comment made me think of that. The words are “after further review” - the tell is the way they say *review*
This drives students I've taught from Italy and Spain absolutely crazy. They sometimes flat out ask me if it's just my dialect (by which they clearly mean "my WEIRD dialect") rather than standard English. Almost as interesting is just how naturally it seems to come to students from China!
Chinese is basically the quintessential example of an inflected language, so I suppose this is inevitable.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug What do you mean by this? The Chinese languages are all analytic and have virtually zero inflections.
@@Lunariant They probably mean tonal, not inflected
A Taiwanese lady told me she was taught to treat stressed and non-stressed syllables as if they had tones - high tone for stressed and neutral tone for unstressed - which works well.
I think maybe the neutral tone in Mandarin Chinese is a similar fenomenon (?)
All syllables in Mandarin have one of the four tones, but in certain contexts, that tone might become weakened, resulting in a neutral tone, which is pronounced shorter than all of the other tones.
Like four example, 子 (zi3) is normally third tone, but when it's just a suffix, then is neutral tone, in words like 杯子 (bei1zi) 椅子(yi3zi).
The difficult part about the neutral tone is that it doesn't have a fixed "voice height", because it's voice height depends on the tone of the preceding syllable.
So I think this concept of a syllable with a tone, becoming "weaker" is kind of similar to "deaccenting"
An often forgotten part of why Bond introduces himself that way is because moments earlier in Dr. No, the exchange between between Bond and Sylvia goes "I admire your courage, miss...?" "Trench, Sylvia Trench, I admire your luck, mister...?" leading to Bond responding in kind, "Bond, James Bond." An iconic catchphrase born out of flirty repartee.
as a native English speaker learning Japanese, the more I know about complicated English pronunciation rules I’ve never consciously thought about the better I feel about my poor grasp on Japanese pronunciation haha
As a fellow student of Japanese, it's fascinating how Japanese accomplishes contrast using は, while in English we use stress. You can often hear English speakers carrying the stress over into Japanese, which unfortunately doesn't work for the intended purpose.
I found that the first language I really worked hard to learn was extremely revelatory for me; even though, being a romance language, Catalan is relatively close to English, it was still amazing how it made me think about nuances and quirks in English that I'd never thought about before. I imagine with Japanese it would be even more so, given how different the languages are in fundamental ways.
Also note than when Luke Skywalker refers to R2D2 as simply R2 (or Artoo) for short, he accents the 2, reverting to the general rule of number-ending-phrases having the number accented.
Holy crap you're right
Whoa, language is complex!
slightly off-topic:
Back in the days before Star Wars became a global phenomenon, I had a friend who constantly called the droid "Artie Tootie". He said it was because he pictured R2 and 3PO as characters from Italian Commedia Del'Arte. Specifically the comedy-relief servants, citing how the pronounced name "Threepio" would fit right in alongside Arlecchino or Pierrot.
(apologies for the long-winded aside, but something in your post brought that memory back)
Are TOOOOOOO!
Also, other droids without repeated numbers have the last number accented: IG-88, BB-8, etc.
The thing is, Anakin sometimes/usually does the opposite to Luke with the nickname: *R* 2, rather than R *2*, as in "R2, stay with the ship" for instance.
I think the familiarity with the nickname causes the number itself to lose meaning, so it just becomes a 2 syllable word, and in those cases (with nouns especially as opposed to verbs) I find that first syllable stress is more common.
In the R2-D2 thing you can easily demonstrate the deaccenting of the 2, by saying R2-D4 (or whatever other number you want at the end)
If you were a true fan, you would have used the example R5-D4. 😉
Doesn't the last word of a sentence always decend anyway which would be the same as de-accenting. So which one is it?
@@AugustinSteven I'm not an expert, but I think the last word goes down in pitch at the very end (typically), but you can still stress that syllable. For example, if you just say "garage", the final syllable is stressed, but the pitch still descends at the very end.
My mind is kind of blown! I'm a native English speaker and didn't even realize these rules existed lol. This does explain why ESL speakers, even when their accent is otherwise perfect, give themselves away for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. It also explains why I never quite feel comfortable following these accent rules on the rare occasion that I speak another language. There's always something more to learn about linguistics!
Note that R2-D2 is the same stress pattern as "AC-DC", for the same reason.
For those about to deliver the stolen plans, we salute you.
Wow. The deaccenting of "this video" was eye-opening.
It opens a whole new can of worms, about when information is given by context.
As a stage performer, although in Swedish, I can see how to use that on stage; implying that information is given, modifies the meaning of what is said, and might be used, for example, to hint that something is known by two out of three characters on stage.
Such subtlety will not be picked up explicitly, but audience members will get this uncanny hunch of something being odd.
Hi! This is an interesting idea, but as an English speaker, I can't think of how this would work, or any example.
Perhaps you can think of one?
@@nicolab2075 "We need to *find* the killer" in place of "We need to find the *killer* " would be a hint that the speaker knows who the killer is.
@@Zzyzzyx Or that the speaker is Spanish, lol. I'm just joking. I can just imagine a hispanic detective in any cop show emphasizing your example the first way, but not as a hint, just an artefact of their native language. And that made me laugh lol. Cheers.
Unfortunately I don't think this would work the way you hope. The problem is that for native speakers, the meaning of this stress isn't subtle at all. If you move it around to try to hint at hidden information, you'll just confuse the audience because the character is saying something that they don't mean or that doesn't make sense.
To make use of the other commenter's example, the reaction would likely be, "We need to *find* the killer? Of course we do. What else would we do with the killer that we haven't found yet?"
@@nicolab2075
You look *good* in that dress. - They look good in the dress.
You look good in *that* dress. - They look good IN THAT dress
*You* look good in that dress. - *They* make the dress look good.
Not exactly what the OP was talking about but an example of how stress or emphasis changes implicit meaning.
I think this video highlights an essential difference between germanic and romance languages: In romance languages stress seems to be linked to long syllables. In germanic languages, including English, one can stress short or long syllables. In Italian, the "non" has short vowel, whereas the word "essere" starts with a long syllable (the double consonant makes it long). So as I understand it, stressing the "non" is not really an option. Native English speakers will have difficulties with this concept, and occasionally stress syllables that a native Italian speaker never would.
This is true. However it's not that weird for us italians to put the stress on "non". It would be the case of a teacher who wants to put particular enphasis on that word in order to remark the difference. It's probably easier to hear that in a philosophy class rather than in a theatre where a Shakespeare tragedy is performed. Parmenides being and not being sound the same as Hamlet's dilemma. In introducing these concepts to students, a teacher is likely to say "Essere e NON essere". Once acquired that, he would probably go on putting the stress on "essere", though.
@@mauriziomogno9270, that's very interesting; thanks for clarifying!
In Spanish every single word is stressed
@cris_possible That isn't true: function words are generally inaccented (tho they are treated in isolation as accented which I guess is where the confusion comes from). For example
Porque si saBEmos que TOdas las COsas SURgen. We don't like having
We don't like having a long string of unaccented syllables, so the POR of porque would get a secondary accent
(In another comment bc my yt bugs)
Fascinating! I’ve only spoken English my entire life and only learn this now.
IKR?? 🤪 Generally we just pick up all this stuff by osmosis, so there's never an opportunity when you're actually triggered to stop and think about it! (Unless training for public speaking/acting I guess?)
I was about to say the same thing. We just do it automatically without even thinking about it, and I had no idea that we even did it!
I find most people aren't really aware they're doing it.
You seem familiar with ancient Greek, or am I mistaken, Paul?
@@DavidSmith-vr1nb isn't greek alphabet still widely used?
What's always stood out for me is the stress difference between BrEng and AmEng for the word "weekend". In BrEng the stress is on "end" while in AmEng it's on "week".
On another note, there's a phrase used in acting diction classes which demonstrates perfectly how stress changes meaning in English:
"What are you talking about?" Usually said in a voice mimicking Bette Davis for dramatic effect.
By stressing each word alone each time you say the phrase, the meaning changes completely for each version.
I never noticed that weekend is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable in American English. I always assumed the reason why it's on the second syllable in British English is to contrast it with "weakened".
Also see:
No, **I** am your father.
vs.
No, I **am** your father.
@@Pining_for_the_fjords For me, weakened has a schwa while weekend has an e
@@BryanLu0 Why isn't the schwa called a 'schwuh'??
I'm from England (and speak BrEng) and I say "wee-kend" with no schwa. I would say the emphasis is on the first syllable in my dialect, but there are certainly British dialects that emphasise the second syllable. But I think like with most rules for BrEng it isn't universal to all British accents
Hey Geoff :) Brilliant choice of examples. Although I am quite familiar with the rule itself, but your way of demonstrating it just make it is simply entertaining and equally educational.
Hi Ben. I really appreciate your kind words!
Thank you so much for this video. I am a native Spanish speaker, I have been studying English for most of my life, more than 20 years and I never noticed this feature of the language.
I always said "BOND, james BOND"
and "to BE, or not to to BE". That's the way the "music" of the sentence sounded "right" to my ears.
So, in Spanish, would you say "SER o no SER"? If so, why is this more normal? Wouldn't the speaker want to emphasize the contrast or difference prominently?
@@WolfdogLinguistics That is how I have always heard it. Probably because we pay more attention to the rhyme more than the meaning, it is a famous phrase everybody knows, anyway.
In Catalan and Spanish, the contrast between old and new information is often done through word order, with the new information placed at the end. For example:
Barça didn't sell the player. Barça bought him.
= El Barça no va vendre el jugador. El Barça el va comprar.
[lit: The Barça did not sell the player. The Barça him sold.]
In the above, the subject comes first, like in English. But compare with the following:
Girona didn't buy the player. Barça bought the player.
= El Girona no va comprar el jugador, El va comprar el Barça.
[lit: The Girona not bought the player. Him bought the Barça.]
Good example, but you missed the use of the preposition "a"
@@kire929 not sure but it might be catalan lol
@@martinacuna9556 Yes, it's Catalan
In reading your example of Girona-didn't/Barça-did, I remembered two sentence structures in English that partly resemble Catalan/Spanish sentence structure.
English 1: "Girona didn't buy the player. It was Barça who bought the player."
"It was Barça," the name gets the emphasis at the end of this phrase, which in English is a complete comparative thought. We can say "It was Barça" and end the sentence here because "it" takes the place of "who bought the player," which can be implied rather than reiterated. When reiterating at the end of the comparative sentence, "who bought the player" is said without much emphasis. This leads to the second example.
English 2: "Girona didn't buy the player. The one who bought the player was Barça."
We use "the one who" to begin the sentence, in subject-verb-object structure, similar to the example of "it was Barça."
In just a little over six minutes, you covered a lot of aspects I was never aware of, having learned them by imitation without giving much thought to the whys and wherefores.
As a palace fan, 5:28 was a very unexpected and welcome reminder of a fantastic day.
This is great stuff for non-native speakers to learn. I teach it a little differently, as focusing on the strong accent seems easier. I tell my students that adjectives are usually very strong, and that includes the first part of most compound words (airport, newspaper, bedroom, etc.). Also that almost all numbers should be strong (including as time, dates, and money). And that generally all words in proper names are pretty strong (New York, Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls), "Bond. James Bond" notwithstanding! Just getting adjectives stressed more than the nouns they modify can go a long way to improving sentence rhythm and being more comprehensible.
Speaking of place names, what about "New York, New YORK" or "Washington Dee CEE"?
@@deyfuck Yes, your examples illustrate my point that proper names have strong accents on all words. Especially if there is a possibility of confusion with some other location, like New York State vs the city, or DC vs the state of Washington.
@@margaretgoldstein373 I don't understand? My examples have strong accents on the second YORK and the letter CEE only. "new york new YORK", "washington dee CEE", don't they?
@@deyfuck Yes, you are basically correct, but ALL the words of Proper Nouns should have fairly strong stress. The point I try to make with my students is that adjectives are USUALLY very strong. But there important exceptions: they shouldn’t say NEW york when referring to the city (or state), nor Dc, nor SAN francisco. As long as all the words of place names have roughly the same strong stress, the speaker will sound pretty good, if not exactly like a native speaker. English has so many exceptions that I find giving my students only about 10-20 rules for pronunciation goes a very long way to improving speech in a minimal amount of time.
@@margaretgoldstein373 Okay I don't think we understand one another. Thank you for trying anyway!
I was reminded the other day of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Five Orange Pips." And I thought of your videos.
If the story were about five pips, which were all the colour orange, then the word "pips" would be accented. But if it's about the pips of an orange, and there's five of them, then "pips" will be deaccented, as the second half of the compound "orange pips." So in this case the deaccenting makes a difference to meaning, to how the title is understood.
Great example! It's based, of course, on the ambiguity of "orange" as a noun or an adjective. We get the same with "English teacher", where "English" can be a noun or an adjective. If a noun, it's a compound; if an adjective, a noun phrase.
You accent also to distinguish, right? In order to underscore who is you're talking about of two distinguished only by that adjective. Two teachers: one is English, the other Canadian. In a conversation about the two you need to make sure it's understood you're speaking of the first/second one. Then the nationality is accented: "the *English*/*Canadian* teacher...". Same as with two sets of pips, orange and blue. The *orange* pips, is to stress you're referring only to the pips of that particular colour, whether they come from an orange or any other fruit.
@@sternaparadisea it's confusing because of the semantic ambiguity of "English teacher' and 'orange pip' without context, but yes the stress is still on the first element if you're distinguishing between an English and a Canadian teacher ('English' here is an adjective), or a teacher of English and a teacher of Science ('English' here being a noun of course). The second element is stressed only if distinguishing between, say, an English teacher and an English nurse ('English' as adjective)
Not only that, Francis, but you use ”accented” and ”deaccented” in your post, and an English person would place emphasis on the first (or second) syllable of ”accented”, but most definitely emphasise the first syllable of ”deaccented”. The prefix is new information and is thus focused on for contrasting effect. I have found that this is less common in the United States, and it grates every time I hear an unstressed contrast!
@@DrGeoffLindsey This phenomenon trips up some translation tools. Imagine an online shop selling ironing boards. I believe in standard English the first word is accented, indicating a compound: IRONING board. The correct German translation is also a compound: Bügelbrett. But if you're an automated tool, you might not know that, producing instead "bügelndes Brett", i.e. a board that irons for you, an ironing BOARD.
I spent my early childhood in Northern Ontario, a bilingual part of Canada where speaking both English and French in the same household is common. The stress patterns of Canadian French, especially the "Franco-Ontarian" variant, are very different from Canadian English, as well as being different from those of France. The English I learned in this rather remote and frosty part of Ontario is different in some ways from what is spoken in the populous southern part of the province. One difference in the North is that when two words are used to describe a single concept or a single substance, the stress is placed on the second word, in the case of two one-syllable words, or on the penultimate syllable of the second word in the case of two two-syllable words. Thus, I say "ice CREAM" rather than "ICE cream" and "peanut BUTter" rather than "PEAnut butter". This sounds rather goofy to my friends in Toronto. It's been many years that I've been surrounded by the stress pattern used by 99% of North Americans, but it is so ingrained that I cannot relinquish this last little bit of my childhood. My subconscious mind screams "don't you realize it's only one thing?!!" when I hear the dominant pronunciation. Is this stress pattern known in the U.K.? It's closer to the stress pattern of Canadian French, but it could also come from the First Nations languages (Cree and Ojibway) that are spoken there. The Cree word for Ice Cream, at least in the Moose Cree dialect of my region, is "kâ tahkâk", stressing the last syllable, just like "crème glacée".
These channel is a treasure
And that Totò scene at the end.. brilliant
I love your videos on stress, compounds, and deaccenting! I am obsessed with these topics but rarely find anyone who seems to pay as much attention to them as I do.
Thanks, Dawn. Speakers of almost all other languages tend to get these things wrong!
@@DrGeoffLindsey Yes! I have noticed haha
I love these unique patterns of spoken English, and I love bringing them to light in fun and creative ways...as I can see you do as well. Sometimes I feel that I am a voice crying in the wilderness because people don't seem to quite get it when I say these things are happening, and that they're important. English learners have a much easier time grasping the importance of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. But I keep talking about them anyway because they are meaningful as well as fascinating...and all happening at the subconscious level. Language is amazing.
You've found one, see above comment
@@irenejohnston6802 hmmm, I'm a little lost with all the comments. I wonder which comment you're referring to?
My husband is from the Northeastern U.S., and says "in-SHUR-ance". My Southern "IN-shur-ance" drives him nuts.😊
Another thing that I find really fascinating about this topic is that some words seem to have different pronunciations by different people or even by the same person with different meanings... for example the words finance, adult, and insurance are sometimes accented on the first syllable and sometimes on the second. At least in my idiolect the word finance means the global financial system if you are emphasizing the second syllable and the personal budgeting at a micro level if you stress the first.
Interest. I wonder where you come from. I have heard 'adult' stressed on either syallable but never heard or 'insurance' or 'finance' stressed on anything but the second and first syllable respectively. I'm from the UK.
@@barrysteven5964 I have heard "insurance" pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, specifically by family members from Georgia, Louisiana, and thereabouts. (I'm American BTW)
It's such subtle changes in intonation and cadence that tend to distinguish the accents of our southern states. Such as the word "envelope" spoken with the second syllable stressed, "en-VEL-ope"; or "internal" emphasizing the first, "IN-ter-nal".
How come this is the first time I'm ever learning about all of this? A lot of the things on your channel are mind-blowing, even though they seem self-evident when you explain them.
I also think we accent AIRport or PRESS conference like we do because there are other types of ports, and there are other types of conferences. It’s the same with SLEDGEhammer or PALM tree.
Finnish actually works the same way with deaccenting, as English; therefore, it’s very much natural to me, as a Finn, to deaccent given information 🇫🇮.
*EDIT:* So much so, in fact, that the Italian and Spanish accenting of given information actually sounds *_UNnatural_* and wrong, to me. We would also have: _”Ollako, vai _*_ẸIKÖ_*_ olla?”_
(= ”To be or *_NỌT_* to be?”).
We mess with word order to do that job for us
@@crusaderACR Interesting. I wonder, how that, exactly, works. 🤔
@@PC_Simo
Sorry I realized I didn't specify what I meant with We. I mean Spanish speakers.
The English would say
"You say he's gone?"
While stressing the last part and kinda mumbling the first part. But we would say
"Gone, you say he is?"
"Se fue, dices??"
Maaaybe stressing the first part, but not necessary. Word order sends enough of a message. Too much stressing can actually make it sound unnatural or way too "hype" or that you're unsettled which isn't always what you want to communicate.
This is more common in SPOKEN Spanish btw. In writing we try to keep certain word orders more closely than in real life. But it still happens, so we can convey emphasis.
This works because Spanish has kept most declensions it inherited from Latin, so word order is mostly optional, with few exceptions. Latin got so many declensions that word order is completely 100% absolutely unimportant, and whatever there is, is a convention, not a rule. Spanish isn't that extreme, but we're still allowed to mess with word order a lot.
@@crusaderACR Yeah, I kind of figured from your username that you are probably a Spanish speaker. Thanks, anyway, for the clarification/confirmation 😅. So, you say the new/important information at the beginning? Finnish has a free word order, as well (being very inflected and agglutinative); and we call that phenomenon: _”Teema-reema -rakenne”_ (”Theme-”reme”(?) structure”), where the ”theme” refers to new/important information, and the ”reme”(?) refers to old/given information. 👍🏻
To me it makes sense that "James" is emphasized as new information. You don't care about Bond anymore, you underline what Bond, which is James. However I've never been good at hearing accent differences unless it's pitch difference.
The way my brain treats the football tie is "arsenal 1, and unexpectedly, liverpool also one" and that makes the connection to the tone and accent. At the same time I also found out that my brain treats accents as what's the critical part of information or what someone is trying to imply, that there could be extra words in the sentence explaining why the accent and tone.
These videos reveal very exciting things I've never paid attention to.
Well in Spanish R2D2 was always mistaken by ARTURITO, they sound almost identical plus it´s a real name...very funny
We all call him Arturito.
Yes, and the stress remains on the third syllable.
I love this channel so much :D I'm a totally non-educated language nerd, that has always noticed and observed most of the things you talk about in English, but never really had a good explanation for them. It's crazy how many things we just learn naturally that are never talked about, but we all just do. These complicated conditional rule-sets that we all follow but no one is aware of. The whole idea of given-information makes perfect sense to me, and is one of the things that I like about English, and the languages ability to convey context and subtext, but I never had the language to really clarify what was happening. The RD2D bit was really perfect, because it just seems like the totally normal and natural way to say it, and if you changed it to R2D3, I would indeed naturally accent the 3. Numbers (almost) always getting an accent seems to feel "correct" as quantities tend to be clarifying information, and thus the more important stressed part; with the rest being context for what you're quantifying. c-THREE-pee-oh. the "pee-oh" seems to be given information; some known context or classification that's obvious; what's important is to WHICH particular "C" class he belongs. WE assume that if there's a number, then that number is either an important quantity or a part of a series, and thus important information. If there's a c3po, we can assume there was probably a c2po and maybe even a c4po; to understand which one we're talking about, we stress that number.
I've been speaking English for decades now, still learning how it works.
Interesting, I've been learning English for so long that I subconsciously picked up on this, I had no idea it was an actual rule.
I just discovered this channel as a native (Midwest American) English speaker and not only is it helping my pronunciation in English, it's also helping me to better understand IPA and pronunciation for other languages too!
What a fabulous video. Even as a speaker of English of 30+ years, in your videos I always find tremendously helpful tips and stimulating angles of the language that I hadn't thought about. Your content simply goes beyond what is available on youtube. Congratulations on your Italian - your pronunciation of essere o non essere" is perfect (being Italian I feel qualified to say this!). And so glad you like Totò!
Brilliant! This is such a crucial part of effective and natural English speech but it is often so difficult to explain. The "semantic force" of inflection is such a magnificent part of clear and expressive English. Yet, language courses and study almost always neglects it, thus robbing the vitality and character of the language.
Brilliant! I’m a native English speaker and have taken it for granted that we do this. It’s so cool to understand why!
Thank you kind Sir, this is really top notch information that I’ve never learnt or even realised in schools. Simple yet effective.
I still can't get used to how many youtubers accentuate contrasting numbers, e/g "I made five hundred, but he made six HUNDRED", instead of "I made five hundred, but he made SIX hundred"
Great brief but still quite complete lesson. Loved the every day life examples. I'm glad I've found this channel through a phonetics professor recommendation. Gonna dive into the rest of your videos. Cheers!
Nice of your professor to make the recommendation. Thank you!
You have finally ended a years long debate about how to properly emphasize “green bean.” Thank you!
I'm a lexophile and poet. Your channel brings me such joy. I am pleased to have finally found it.
I may be wrong, but that seems to be the case with the band AC/DC, which is pronounced with a weak, unstressed C because it repeats. In my country, everybody says aCdC, with the accent on the C.
After watching this video, I searched for some recordings of Hamlet's tirade in French.
The trend for accentuation seems to be: "ÊTRE ou ne PAS être".
Thanks Geoff for the great explanation and examples! I wish I was able to put it into practice when I speak English - but I'll keep trying!
Thank you! I ask those I teach to go through news articles, looking for words or ideas that have already been mentioned, and which might therefore be deaccented. Then I suggest that, during spontaneous English use, they occasionally see if they can spot the same kind deaccenting opportunity - without at first worrying about actually executing the accent patterns.
I make this mistake too. Now I will start to notice it everywhere. Thanks for the great video.
You're welcome!
3:47 Oh wow the Shakespeare example was golden. I was thinking that I deaccent just the same in my native language, thinking of how I may immitate Bond, *James* Bond, but my rendition of translated Shakespeare did very much keep the verb accented.
Wonderful video!
Interesting, being a native speaker of Croatian, it is rather common sense to stress the words you're giving some new information about. I don't know for sure, but I suppose it's the same with other Slavic languages. I had no idea it wasn't the case with Italian or Spanish.
I'm always amazed, watching your videos, about the things you explain that I'd never even noticed before, as a native English speaker. And sure enough, you're right!
That's quite cool, thanks for the video. One thing that would have been helpful would be to hear you say things like "R2-D3" or "R3-D2", but I can well imagine it now.
In football scores, it is hardly 'given information'. It is different information- the score of a different team.
What is amazing, given the change of meaning that stress on words gives, is that we manage written English with almost no way to do that.
You are a genius man. My first language is Arabic. I have been baffled by the way native English speakers speak. But I didn't have the vocabulary to describe the things that I find different or difficult imitate.
Now I understand why certain French words are generally mispronounced in English, ie stress on the incorrect part of the word. Example: croissant.
i'm not sure about R2-D2 - the R and D part refers to different designations of what they are, not really already given information.
yes, "repeat" would be more accurate. Same with football scores. If you don't know that it was a draw before hearing the exact result in "Arsenal 1 Liverpool 1" the first 1 doesn't imply the second 1.
Wow！This might be the single best video on english pronunciation that Ive seen on youtube so far ！The empathy you have with non-native speakers when creating examples that easily demonstrate and make your points clear is unbelievable ！ I cant believe Im getting this amazing information free and on youtube, Im amazed
Brilliant! Thank you :) I'm an English teacher in Rome, I have recently found you and have begun sharing your videos with my students in the newsletter xo
This immediately made me consider when C-3P0 is talking about R2-D2 in an alien language, like when telling stories to the Ewoks, he shifts to adding emphasis to the second 2.
I've just started to learn weak forms. My teacher send me this video and said this is the gospel of weak forms :)
One of the best videos I've seen. thank you.
Very kind - thank you 🙏🏻
This is amazing! Thank you so much! Sending love from Uruguay!
Very kind, thank you! And love back to Uruguay :)
👍🏻 Fascinating, thanks! I've only vaguely been conscious of this device; although, speaking English all my life, I've used it constantly. I wonder what speakers of other languages think when we unconsciously apply the same rules while trying to speak their language? Or what fun can be had by deliberately transgressing these "unspoken rules" in English .. would it cause confusion? Can't wait to see!
"I hope you enjoyed this video" I Always enjoy your videos. Thank you.
I suppose in chemistry simple chemical compounds like H2O2 and C2H2 can follow the rule here but in organic chemistry and biochemistry molecules can get very long and complex with groups, side-chains and numbers.
As an Italian native speaker, I can confirm the whole deaccenting situation is kinda hard to understand. Before seeing this video I didn't even notice it, I thought the given information went just unstressed . Thank you
It seems to me you're a kind person. It's а pleasure to listen to you.
This is what I sometimes call "C3" level English, as even some of my most capable students really struggle to hear or replicate the lack of accenting at the end of phrases and compounds like this, perhaps I should call it "R2D2" English though!
I find it funny how we stress the start of most compounds but then the end of almost all abbreviations, mG, bmW, iD, bbC, tV, f1, etc
I will forever more hear R2-D2 as a score draw.
It's insane how native speakers are all subconsciously aware of and replicate these patterns, but I've never once consciously realized I've done it.
Your videos are always Master classes
Yes, I remember noticing how they read the scores when I was a kid.
I think there's an exception to this rule (it is English after all!). When the repetition is for emphasis, the 2nd instance tends to be accented. An example of this might be a teenage girl saying, "Do you like him or do you LIKE him?" (sometimes the 2nd like is repeated with the deaccented version though: "LIKE like him").
I don't think that's actually an exception. It's emphasising that the meaning of the word 'like' is different in the two cases, and the second case should be read as if it was 'new' information.
German is the same as English in that regard, so as a native speaker I never realized that this is not something all languages do.
It's "SEIN oder NICHT sein" (to BE or NOT to be) for us too.
Interesting that when Luke Skywalker originally shortened “R2-D2” to “R2”, the digit syllable was accented (ArTOO), which is the normal way for that to be pronounced as a standalone phrase. But in later Star Wars, R2's name is almost always pronounced like “ARtoo” with the accent shifted, to reflect the semi-stress on that syllable of the full name (/ˌaɹtuwˈdijtuw/ → /ˈaɹtuw/)
Whoa. I only speak German and English; it never occurred to me that many (let alone most) languages do not leverage emphasis (accenting) as a means of hinting at the new/important bit of information. Except for tonal languages, of course.
I don't remember the terminology, but is there a connection between this import/novelty-focused (de)accenting and aspects of rhythm (like stress-timed/syllable-timed)?
Fascinating stuff. Accent on the stuff!
Absolutely brilliant!
this is an amazing little bit of English that I've never noticed before, thanks so much for making a video about it ^v^ ^v^
The R2-D2 example is very good, cause now I'm imagining pronouncing R2-D3 with the same stresses.
I remember noticing the different pronunciation of R2-D2 vs R5-D4 (the red one in the original film - we all had the toy so we knew its name). First time I've ever heard someone bother to come up with an explanation.
4:22 Although, interestingly, when characters in Star Wars films refer to R2-D2 by its abbreviated moniker, the emphasis is on the second syllable: "Artoo". Ar-TOO.
I never realized this before even though it’s so common.
Love Geoff Lindsey! Great content
also interesting how much staying power these particular stress rules have across dialects. The examples mentioned here are consistent across British (RP) and standard American, as well as the vast majority of other English dialects. The differences in stress instead tend to come from foreign loan words; e.g. alum*I*nium vs al*U*minum, oreg*A*no vs or*E*geno, etc. probably not coincidental that the actual phonemes used on foreign words also differs between these two predominant dialects, as you addressed in another video, with the American accent tending (but not always) to be a bit closer in pronunciation *and* stress to the original borrowed word, especially if borrowowing came from a Romance language.
Your videos ARE amazing
Top explaining, doc.
Thanks, Geoff - fascinating as always!
Two questions/remarks:
1. I don't think it was said explicitly in the video, but it is my impression that deaccentuation of given information is especially strong at the end of phrases, and less so in the beginning. For example, if Bond were to introduce himself as "James, James Bond" (which I think he actually does on one occasion in film? I'm not sure), we wouldn't witness the same deaccentuation in the second James as we do in the second Bond of "Bond, James Bond", right?
2. The explanation of the pronunciation of R2D2's name sounded quite compelling, but then I thought that that does not account for the stress pattern in the name of his friend C3PO - but I guess I was wrong to assume the O at the end was the number zero (I thought C3-P0 somehow paralleled R2-D2) , and that it is in fact the letter O (and hyphenated C-3PO), so it's just the number that gets the stress (not in the end).
I would deaccent the second James. And it's another English habit to say "Oh" instead of "zero" or "nought". So I'd still say C-3P0 the same way.
@@thebigmacd Would you really deaccent the second James? And to the same extent as you would the second Bond in 'Bond, James Bond'?
To me that sounds rather strange. As for C-3PO, if it was C3-P0 (divided this way, and with a zero - possibly pronounced 'oh'), then I'd definitely not deaccent the 3 and the 0 (ending up accenting all four parts, much like in 'Liverpool 1 - Arsenal 2').
@@ytbqiqayon yes you would deaccent the second James if we’re following our normal speaking rules. I think for this example specifically we’re so used to hearing it one way that deaccenting the second James sounds odd to the ear. If there were any other noun pairs like this we would follow the ‘rule’ naturally. It doesn’t work for adjective+noun though, for example, as repeated adjectives are usually there for emphasis and therefore every word is emphasised.
Love the video! I'm wondering if you are making specific distinctions between terms like "stress", "accent", and "intonation". They all seem related to me, but I'm not sure which words mean what to a linguist.
What an awesome content! Just found your channel and I'm amazed. I have hope now. Maybe one day I can learn and speak correctly, things that until now were a mystery to me. Thank you.
R2D2 is more "That's how it the movie pronounces it." In the book (at least in the paperback in the 90s), R2D2 and C3P0 were spelled "Artoo Deetoo" and "See Threepeeo" as if the civilization didn't realize they were acronyms. And the Russian paperback turned them into Эрдва Дедва ("Erdva Dedva", Р2Д2) and Эс Трипео ("Es Tripeo", С3ПО).
I live in Melbourne, Australia. We have a BOURKE Street but a Burke ROAD. Why the shift in accentuation? Could it be because all streets are assumed to be 'streets' unless otherwise specified? If so, why, since there are surely more roads in Anglophonia then streets? Ideas anyone?
Hi. Yes, 'street' is default for addresses. Roads traditionally connect places, including towns (Roman roads, road movie, road trip). A 'London Road' may well head towards London (at least historically).
But streets have buildings and therefore addresses. There are lots of ancient streets (like Fleet Street in London), whereas using 'road' in addresses came later. The classic US address has street, city, state, zip.
So streets get basic compound stress, FLEET Street. Everything else follows the name + NOUN pattern: Burke ROAD, Sunset BOULEVARD, Melbourne ZOO, Mickey MOUSE, Hubble TELESCOPE.
There are some other defaults of the 'street' type. Most 'constituent' compounds are late/double stressed, brick WALL, leather BELT, tomato SOUP, but 'juice' and 'cake' get early/single stress, like 'street': ORANGE juice, CARROT cake. Compounds are fascinating and I could go on all day.
And compare "a white house" vs "The White House".
Dear Geoff,
Just the other day, I came across you channel, and I am very happy to have found it, since it provides me with a lot of additional insight, sometimes confirming my own little pet theories, sometimes countering them, sometimes just surprising me.
When I read the title of this video, however, I expected quite the opposite of what it actually contained. Being German, I have no trouble with the concept of "given information" and adjusting the accent of the following phrase accordingly. To me, this seems rather natural (other languages seem to work differently, though, as I learned from your video). Anyway, What I had hoped for was instead an explanation for all the cases which display the exact opposite of deaccenting in the way you described it and which puzzle me to this day. It's laying the emphasis on the given information, not on the new one. For example, the phrase "inside or outside". Every non-native speaker will be compelled to emphasize "out" in outside in opposite to "in"side, because this bit is the new information. In contrast, any native speaker I have ever heard utter this phrase emphasized the already given information "side". Same with "upstairs and downstairs" and similar phrases. I wonder if this is to do with regionality (although I am pretty sure that I hear this from English speakers as well as American speakers), or the fact that it puts opposites right next to each other? To me it sounds particularly "native" to emphasize phrases like this. So is it typical? A linguistic fashion? Or an aberration?
I would very much appreciate if you could let me (us) know your thoughts on this (maybe one of your videos?), since I feel that little things like this present big obstacles in my personal "deaccenting efforts", that is to say, my efforts to get rid of (most of) my foreign accent.
Kind regards,
Martin
I recommend the video on weak forms he's just released a few hours ago. Both of the examples you gave contain words that start with prepositions, so I suspect that the weakening of the prepositions is countering the devoicing. That said, it feels more natural to me not to emphasise "side", as my natural choice is to emphasise the syllable that differentiates the words.
I would certainly emphasise the contrasting prefixes in those cases, and I'm fairly sure most people I know would too. (Native NZ English speaker.)
Totò. Unmatched. Thanks for the quotation.
You could have added foreign speakers' habit of the opposite: deaccenting non-given information at the end of a phrase, where a native speaker will give clarity and usually emphasis to the new information.
Hey I think this works in Dutch too! :D. The mind is wierd, never realised we did this :)
with R2-D2 I think it's just because it's following the usual English stress pattern of putting the stress on the penultimate syllable. (Very few words in English stress the final syllable; verbs such as "record" or "enjoy" are the main exceptions.) Of course for some words we put the stress on the anti-penultimate syllable, e.g. in the name "C-3PO" where it's on the 3.
Try saying R2-D2 in the usual way and then again replacing the final number with a different one. To my ear at least it sounds wrong to say for example R2-D4 without an accent on the 4. Also, you may have meant this, but it's worth pointing out for others that in fact a lot of two syllable verbs stress the final syllable 'arrive, berate, collude, debate, begin, decide, compute, insert' etc.
My wife, who is not a native speaker, has nearly flawless English but is still occasionally tripped up by this. She says Joshua TREE national park, for example, which makes me laugh because it makes it sound like a person’s name.
This is amazing! I would love it if you would do another one on how we use intonation to break this convention. That is, this is the rule, but I notice that when I want to emphasize a particular concept in a sentence, I will emphasize it specifically, and of course, it can totally change the meaning. I could just never explain this to non-native speakers, but of course, I did not have this foundation to start with. But the ability to specifically choose the accented syllable allows you an incredible amount of power to make distinctions.
Something that blew my mind was when a teacher demonstrated that the (example) sentence "I didn't say you stole that money" can mean seven different things depending on which of the seven words you stress.
I’m not a linguistics student, but I’ve learned a couple of languages to B.A level; it seems to me that the given information is deaccented when the previous word is a qualifier, functioning as an adjective. So “Bond, James Bond,” because he wants you to acknowledge that it is he, *James* Bond, standing before you, not unimportant Harry Bond, your old English prof. all togged up. The same for Facebook; it’s the qualifier that’s accented, because the qualifier is important. It’s “Face book,” not “paper book” or “big book.” I think it’s trickier with R2-D2. There’s a make-and-model thing happening there. So the full name is R2-D2, accenting the D because the drone is distinct from the earlier R2-A2, R2-B2, & R2-C2 models and the later R2-E2 model. (I work for an office electronics distributor; I deal with model numbers and SKUs all day long 😂). Anyway, it gets tricky because when Luke is talking to it, he shortens the name to R2, accenting the 2. So presumably there was an R1 model in the series at some point? (disclaimer: I only watched the first three episodes and that was when they were first released) Or it’s just Luke’s way of making a pet name for the thing because it’s so cute 🥰.
Anyway, that’s enough amateur pedantry from me for one day. 😅. It’s probably coffee time. I love this channel 👍
There's a strange version of this in Glaswegian where place names get de-accented "CORNwall" but if it's a street name it gets emphasis at the end, "cornwALL street" no idea why though