Forum: Writers


Subject: Chime time

tjames opened this issue on Dec 05, 2002 ยท 8 posts


Crescent posted Sun, 08 December 2002 at 11:58 AM

I pronounced "Bay Bi Bi Boh Bi Beh" with "Bay" and "Beh" getting the most stress, not "Bay" and "Boh." The reason is, I took that phrase and unconsciously treated it as a sentence. I had to repeat it a few times to see "where I went wrong." In English, we can tell if the speaker is stating something or asking a question not just by word order, but by how they stress the last word of a sentence. Say these two sentences out loud: You went for a walk today. You went for a walk today? In the second example, you probably put some emphasis on the word "today" and your voice rose on the last syllable to indicate this was a question. You can sometimes pick out someone who reads and writes English well but isn't as practiced at speaking it because all the words are pronounced properly but the rhythm is off. The harder vowels and consonents do chime out more, but just keep in mind that sentence construction will also affect how the words sound out. Not trying to be a wet blanket .... ;-)