Introduction to American Intonation and Stress Patterns

Intonation refers to the rhythm and music of the language. It is far more important than being able to pronounce individual syllables and phonemes correctly. When I am traveling around the world and find myself in a crowded airport or restaurant, I can pick out the Americans in the room by their sound even though the US is very big and has regional dialects, in addition to variations in the pronunciation of vowels, consonants and phonemes. The reason is that their intonation patterns give them away. Intonation  involves:

• Stressing the correct syllables
• Reducing words
• Connecting words
• Pausing in the right places
• Adjusting pitch appropriately

To pronounce a word correctly we need to know which syllable or syllables are stressed so that we pay attention to giving the accented vowel its full sound — speaking it loudly and clearly, whereas we tend to shorten and almost swallow the vowel sounds in unaccented syllables. 

Unaccented syllables in English take the schwa sound which is written in the dictionary like an upside-down e, like this: ə. It sounds more or less like ‘’uh.’’ To learn more about the sound of the schwa, listen to my video called Stress Patterns American English Intonation. That video also covers rules for stress patterns such as:

Rules for stress patterns in American English:

1. The vowel in one-syllable content words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs) is stressed because the meaning is important to the context of the sentence.
   (Prepositions, articles and conjunctions such as at, by, the, a, and, but do not generally receive stress)
   Ex: work, play, go, back, big, time, Spring, Fall,

2. Most (but not all) 2 syllable nouns and adjectives stress the first syllable.
   Ex: Nation, boring, pretty, ugly

3. Most 2 syllable verbs stress the second syllable
   Ex: BeLEIVE, aGREE, sugGEST

Intonation can also be used to emphasize meaning or context as demonstrated in my video called Introduction to American Introduction which also covers the way we project our voices up and down to convey or change meaning.

It is also important to note that our intonation goes up for ‘Yes/No’ questions as we are asking for confirmation. Our pitch falls for open-ended questions, just like for declarative sentences. As covered in the video, we tend to accent content words such as nouns and verbs more than smaller words like conjunctions and prepositions as the content words tend to accentuate the meaning of a message. We may accent a particular adjective or adverb for emphasis. We may even raise our pitch to punctuate anger or strong emotions.

I recommend that my students listen to YouTube regularly to become familiar with American Intonation Patterns and the various ways we use it. There are many right ways and wrong ways, so it takes practice to understand it and develop your own style.

Please visit me at www.amysindicic.com for more information.

Amy Sindicic is a retired ESL professor who teaches Business and Medical English (see Business English 123 and Medical English 123) to learners from around the world. She is a polyglot and formerly translated for the French government and World Bank. She hosts a YouTube Channel called Amy Sindicic where she gives tips on American Accent and Intonation, as well as grammar and vocabulary. You can also find her on Italki under the name: Business/Medical Pro.