ConceptCONCEPTMind Your Future
Part Three · Natural speech · Level B2

Unit 27
Strong words and weak words

ˈ /ə/
Worksheet W27
From your coach. Content words get the stress and everything else steps back. If you stress all of it, you have stressed none of it.
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These are the symbols you will see in a dictionary. Click any one to hear it. You do not need to memorize them.

Why this mattersEnglish sorts every word into two piles

Content words carry the meaning: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs. These are said strong. Function words hold the grammar together: a, the, of, to, for, from, can, was, and. These are said weak, fast and small.

This is not optional and it is not informal. It is how English sentences are built, and it is how your listener finds the important words. If you give every word equal weight, your listener has to work out your meaning without any help from you.

English sorts every word into two piles, and your listener finds the meaning in the strong one.
Before you start Part Four, a warning. Everything here will feel wrong at first. You are going to be asked to swallow vowels, weaken words, run things together and drop sounds. In your language that would be careless speech. In English it is correct speech, and speaking too clearly makes you harder to follow, not easier. If you have worked hard for years and still feel something is missing, this is almost certainly where it has been hiding.

What your language doesWeakening is not disrespect

If your language gives every word roughly equal weight, which most syllable-timed languages do, you will do the same in English, and it will sound flat and effortful to an American ear.

You may also believe that weakening words is lazy or disrespectful. In your language it might be. In English it is simply the rule, and native speakers do it in the most formal contexts imaginable. A CEO addressing a board still says tuh for to.

The specific habit to break: reading every word as though it were alone. Your language may reward that. English does not.

Common trap

You may feel that weakening words is lazy or disrespectful. In your language it might be. In English it is simply the rule.

How to make itStepping stones across a river

Two steps, and the second is the hard one.

One: find the content words. Read a sentence and mark the nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Those are your strong beats.

Two: shrink everything else. Not slightly. Substantially. Function words should be quick, quiet and often reduced to the schwa from unit 17.

The picture: stepping stones across a river. The content words are the stones, and you land on them firmly. The function words are the water you move through in between.

The way in. Take I need to go to the store. Say it with every word equally strong. Then again with only need, go and store strong, and everything else almost disappearing. Seven words, three beats. Both are the same words. Only the second sounds like English.

Try this now

Stepping stones across a river: land firmly on the content words, glide over the rest. Say I need to go to the store with only need, go and store strong.

In a sentencePut it under pressure

NoticeHear how it lands

Play each line and notice where the stress falls and how the melody moves. Pick one to record and compare your own delivery.

Record and compareSee the shape of your voice

Pick anything above, then record yourself saying it. Your recording appears in red over the model in gray. You are comparing shapes, not chasing a score.

Choose a word or sentence above
ModelYou
Nothing selected

Check yourself

I need to go to the store has seven words. How many strong beats?

Three: need, go, store. The other four are grammar, and they should be small and fast.