How to Pronounce: Word Stress

Hello! I’m John Russell.
In recent videos, we explored syllable stress. Let’s move up a level to explore stress in terms of words.
Think of word stress like music. Music has ups and downs, rhythm, changes in volume and speed. So, too, do words in English -- when they are properly stressed.
Word stress is important for showing meaning. We can take several sentences with the exact same grammar and change the meaning with word stress alone.
Consider this example:
Bob loves English grammar.
This is a basic statement about a person named Bob.
Let’s see how the meaning changes with word stress.
BOB loves English grammar.
This is a kind of correction. Perhaps the listener thought that another person named Joe or John loved grammar.
Let’s think about the sentence again:
Bob loves ENGLISH grammar.
This suggests a misunderstanding - the listener thought Bob loved French grammar, or Arabic grammar. But Bob loves English grammar.
Word Stress is not only about misunderstandings.
Consider this example:
Bob was nice.
This is a basic statement.
But if I said,
BOB was nice
I am suggesting that Bob was nice, but somebody else was mean or unpleasant. I’m talking about Bob, but really I’m criticizing someone else.
We’ll explore word stress in greater detail in future episodes.
That’s all for today! Keep up the good work!
Originally published at - learningenglis...