Hi. What's up? How are you?
Hey guys, it's Hadar and this is The Accent's Way. Today we are going to talk about American intonation.
Now I know that usually in this channel I talk about pronunciation, but don't get me wrong. American intonation is not less important, and sometimes more important than pronunciation, and this is why I figured it is time to talk about American intonation.
So today I'm going to open the wonders of American intonation so you can start listening to English rather differently. When we talk about intonation, we are talking about three things.
One is the melody - the music of the language. When I go up in pitch. When I go down - "Ha-dar".
If I take away the words and I just play it, it's just like a song or a tune that I'm playing. So when you're listening to English or when you're speaking English, you also want to consider the melody, the notes that you're using.
We're also going to talk about stress. Stress is what words you choose to stress in a given sentence.
"WHAT are you doing?" Or, "What are you DOING?"
'What' verses 'doing'. While there are some patterns and a neutral way of saying things, there's also a lot of freedom.
Of course, it depends on the context, the attitude, and many other things, but you first need to know the building blocks and the basis of what words are usually stressed and what words are not stressed for the most part. Now, lastly, we have rhythm.
