How to speak English correctly: stress, continuous reading, blasting, weakening, and pauses

This time we discuss pronunciation issues at the sentence level. The techniques involved here mainly include stress, continuous reading, blasting, weakening, group pauses, etc. Since it is purely technical, it is easier to master and is simpler than the previous level. Due to my personal pronunciation tendencies, I feel that the technical things I am talking about are more suitable for American English than British English. First, let’s talk about the problem of group pauses. We do not speak out word by word, but in groups of language units. "Pinched...hands!" Have you heard this joke? You see, "pinched hands" is a linguistic unit. To put it separately, it means gasping. If someone doesn't pinch your hand, whose hand should they pinch? Of course, English is no exception. It is best not to read the subject, object, definite, adverbial and other language units separately (including verb phrases, etc.), but there can be a pause between language units, such as: Most of us| like to eat potatoes |. But most people | do not know | what part of the potato | is best for food. You can practice more slowly at the beginning and pause where necessary. After you get used to it, you can lengthen the pause gap, such as Most of us like to eat potatoes|. But most people do not know | what part of the potato is best for food. Secondly, let's talk about the accent. As mentioned before, words have stress. A sentence composed of several words will of course also have sentence stress. What is stress? Stress is a sound that is obviously heavier than other syllables. So why is it heavier than other sounds? Because the person who said this sentence wanted to emphasize this sound, haha, this is the right way to think about it. Let's look at the sentence "This was a red car yesterday." Where is the stress in this sentence? THIS was a red car yesterday (Just this car, it was still red yesterday). This WAS a red car yesterday (This car was indeed red yesterday). This was a RED car yesterday (This car was red yesterday) Yeah). This was a red CAR yesterday (How about preparing the ground, the red guy was a car yesterday). This was a red car YESTERDAY (Just yesterday, the car was still red). Haha, it’s all possible! Linguistics books say that what a person says contains new information (what he wants to say but others don’t know yet) and old and new information (what he said but others already know). From this perspective, sentences The emphasis usually falls on new information. Well, I have basically explained the issue of stress clearly. Next, we will talk about continuous reading, blasting and weakening, combined. Now that we have found the stress of the sentence, can we think about it this way? Can a sentence be regarded as a big word? Okay, let’s take the above sentence as an example to understand it. This was a red CAR yesterday [δisw09z09red’ka:rjest09di]. Our conclusion is that when reading a sentence, treat it as a word. Stressed phonemes should be read clearly and slowly, while unstressed phonemes should be read vaguely and quickly. In other words, we divide a sentence into two parts, one is stressed and the other is unstressed. We need to quickly connect the unstressed parts together so that the stressed parts can be highlighted and the meaning can be conveyed clearly. In American English, this kind of understanding is called the chain phenomenon of language. It is like an iron chain. If you pick up a certain iron ring at random, the other iron rings will move closer in the same direction.

Stressed sounds are easy to pronounce (as long as you read them clearly and slowly), the question is how to achieve the chain of unstressed sounds? The methods are nothing more than three basic oral skills, namely continuous reading, blasting and weakening. English learners generally know these three (or the first two) basic skills relatively well. To put it simply, continuous reading means that the last sound of the first word is a consonant, and the first sound of the second word is a vowel. This conforms to the rule that vowels and consonants in phonetic symbols form syllables, so continuous reading is produced. Such as stand up. However, many English learners have not developed the habit of memorizing words according to their pronunciation. They are easily deceived by word forms and fail to notice some potential consecutive readings. One of them is a typical example. There is another typical potential consonant that is more likely to be ignored, which leads to difficulties in listening, such as tell him, tell her. Since [h] is a consonant that is pronounced very weakly, people often pronounce it with Just skip it, then the phenomenon of continuous readings like tellim and teller will naturally arise. Now that we have transitioned from the problem of continuous pronunciation to the problem of weakening of speech, we now start to examine the phenomenon of weakening. Speaking of weakening, I suddenly remembered something interesting that I might as well share. One teacher asked another teacher, "Why is us [09s] used like this here?" At this time, the teacher in the same teaching and research section laughed loudly and said, "This new teacher is really interesting. [Λs] actually reads As [09s]. "The teacher was very unconvinced. He looked up the dictionary secretly and became very angry when he found that both pronunciations were correct. What do you think about this issue? Let me tell you my opinion first. First of all, the new teacher is right. Because the word US is stressed only when it appears in the dictionary or when we only talk about the word US. In other cases, it is weakened and becomes [09s], because it does not need to be emphasized; secondly, Those teachers who laughed were right. Because when you talk about the word US now, you should re-read it. Why weaken it? Haha, that's my opinion. What we are actually talking about now is the essence of the weakening phenomenon, which is to speed up your speech and form a chain to highlight the focus of your words and let others know what your intentions are. I hope you will still remember the [09] weakening rule I mentioned when talking about the syllables of words above. This rule is also suitable for weakening in sentences. I tell my students that when you see AND, you just read N [Λnd-09nd-09n-n]. The same goes for BUT, because there is no time for people to emphasize the conjunction AND except at the beginning of a sentence. So why do some single vowel sounds usually weaken into the [09] sound? I think it may be because the [09] sound has a small mouth shape, and you don’t need to open your mouth as wide as [Λ] to pronounce it, and it is easy to transition to other sounds. The speed is naturally fast. Have you basically explained everything clearly? Oh, and there is also the issue of explosion. I guess everyone has practiced it attentively, so I won’t go into more details. I will only mention the reasons why explosion occurs. Why blast? It's because the two related consonant phonemes are too close, such as Sit down. Two sounds that are too close are like having to pronounce the same sound twice in a row. How awkward. Listen, si T D own.! I think this is a purely low-level error, and its root cause is a lack of understanding of the language chain phenomenon. In the final analysis, there must be a key point in speaking. To highlight this key point, you must use connection methods such as pauses, continuous readings, blasting and weakening to connect the unstressed parts into one, so as to be different from your key point. This understanding is in line with people's normal speaking rules, and will help you develop a sense of language, increase your speaking speed, and solve your hearing problems with a little effort.