 Hi, and welcome to Talk To Us. I'm Avi Ardidi from VOA Learning English in Washington. And welcome to our first Google Plus Hangout. We are going to be talking today for the next few minutes about the natural rhythm of English. Or as our guest puts it, don't stress about sentence stress. Now our guest joining us from Los Angeles by Skype. We hope to have a little problem with getting her into the hangout here. But joining us by Skype is the voice of Lita Baker. Good morning, Lita. Good morning. How are you? Thanks. And we have two participants with us today in our Google Plus Hangout. We have Alpha, who is from Guinea, Conakry. And he's joining us from Malaysia. Hi, how are you, Alpha? I'm good. How are you too? Fine, thanks. And also joining us is Carolina from Columbia. Good morning, Carolina. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? OK, well, so now just a little background about our guest. Lita Baker has taught English at the university level for more than 25 years. She's the author of numerous textbooks, Frequent Presenter and Trainer in the areas of listening, speaking, pronunciation, and materials development. Lita is also the president of BlackInk Unlimited, a company that specializes in writing and editing materials for English language learners all over the world. Lita, thank you for joining us today by Skype. So over to you for a little bit of an explanation about the rhythm of English. OK, a topic that would work in this framework, something related to pronunciation. The topic that came to my mind immediately was the topic of sentence address. Because can you hear me? Yes, Lita, we can hear you. Go ahead. Yes, so of the many characteristics that typify spoken English, sentence stress is probably the most important one. So if I were teaching a pronunciation course, this would be one of the very, very first things that I would present to my students. So two things that I wanted to talk about today. The first one is the question of what is sentence stress? And the second question is how sentence stress is related to meaning in English. And so we'll see if we have time for both of those questions. But I think for sure we'll be able to get through the first one. So to start with, the first question is what is stress? And I'll start by asking you to think about the word stress and what that word means to you normally. Kind of the common meaning of the word stress. So if you're feeling stressed, how do you feel? So how about Carolina, would you like to answer that question? How do you define stress when you hear that word? What do you think? What's the first thing you think of for the meaning of the word stress? Is there a force in the special principle by the word in the sentence? Is there a force in the sentence? I think, I guess. Is there a force in the sentence? Well, Lita, do you mean stress like the emotional stress we feel or physical stress? Well, that's what I was getting at. But if I understood Carolina correctly, then she's right. She said the principle word in a sentence. Very good. Is that what she said? But we're not talking about the kind of stress that you feel if you have to go to the dentist or if you're going to go have a big exam. We're not talking about that kind of stress where you're all worried and you feel uncomfortable. The stress we're talking about, in some textbooks call it accent. But accent is actually, that's not the word that we use in the United States. When we say stress, what we are talking about is words that have three characteristics in a sentence. Are you ready? Three things that are the characteristics of a stressed word. Number one, stress words are longer. Number two, stressed words are higher. And number three, stressed words are louder than the other words in the sentence. OK, so longer, higher, and louder. So if you hear a word like, I'm going to the market, the word market, can you hear how that word is higher and it's longer? And it's also a tiny bit louder than the other words in the sentence. Are you with me so far? Alpha, Carolina, are you following Lita in the? OK, so let me give another example. So if I say, alpha lives in Indonesia. Is that correct? No, Malaysia, excuse me. I'll say it again. Alpha lives in Malaysia. There are two words in that sentence that are louder, higher, and longer. Which words were they? Alpha lives in Malaysia. Alpha, did you hear Lita's example? Can you hear us? I think, alpha, can you hear us? I see alpha, too, and hold on one second. Let me, OK, alpha, say something. Can you hear us now? Yeah, I can hear you. Sorry, did you hear? I think the first one is alpha, and the second one is Malaysia, if I get it right. So you heard correctly. Even over this bad connection, I'm glad. Yeah, I can hear you, I can hear you. So keep going. OK, so alpha is from Malaysia. There are two words in that sentence that are stressed, and then there are two words that are not stressed. The second word, which is is, and the third word, which is from. So what happens is that the stressed words are generally pronounced longer, higher, louder, clearer, and the unstressed words are lower in volume. And a lot of times they get kind of pushed together, and they're said not very clearly. This relationship between stressed words and unstressed words explains the kind of musical quality that the English language has, and it also explains the special rhythm that English has compared to other languages. Now, we can think of stress and unstressed as a system, and most systems have rules. So here are the basic rules that govern the use of stress in an English sentence. The stressed words tend to be what we call content words. Content words are nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs, and also question words and negative words. OK, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, question words, negatives, oh, and also numbers. So these words are usually stressed in a sentence. On the other hand, unstressed words are usually what we call function words, and those are articles, pronouns, prepositions, injunctions, and also the verb. So those are generally unstressed in a sentence. Everyone following this line, are you following it? I've understood it. That's just the general explanation of stress. So now, let's try to do a little exercise together where I think it will be much clearer if we actually look at some sentences. So what I thought that we would try is that I will say some sentences, repeat the sentences, and clap, clap on the stressed words. Let's see if that will work across the world, OK? Thank you. Here's my first sentence. My daughter is 21 years old. Daughter is 21 years old. Can you repeat that? Yeah. Do you want me to repeat it? Yeah, go ahead. Sure. Repeat it, then clap on the stressed words. I'll clap on the stressed words, OK? My daughter is 21 years old. Did I get it? Karolina, can you do this? You want me to repeat it? Well, let's listen to Karolina. Karolina, you're doing it perfectly. And then clap on the stressed words. But I'll record you repeat the sentence. There is quite a bit. I can't understand that. She's saying my daughter is 21 years old. Yeah, but you can't slow it down. Oh, OK, right, sorry. That's how we lose the stress. Oh, you're right. I'll just keep going. So those are the stressed words in the sentence. Let's try another one. Oh, incidentally, let's go back for a second and look at which words were stressed. But the first word, my, is a pronoun. And it was not stressed. The first stress was in that sentence. The pronoun was not stressed. The noun is stressed. The verb is was not stressed. The number 21 was stressed. And the last word, old, was also stressed. That's an adjective. So my daughter is 21 years old. OK? I was telling you I was. I know you said something, Karolina, but I could not hear it clearly. I'm so sorry. Let's try another sentence. Lita, can I break in for just a second? We've just had falade. Hello, falade, can you hear us? Can you hear me? We have another participant who's joined us. Falade in Nigeria. Are you there? Can you hear me? Say something, falade. Hello? I see him, but I cannot hear anything. Wait, wait, let me try. He's sending a chat to him. And let me see if I can, whoops, he's moving around. This is the fun of live broadcast on YouTube. I'm muted. Why am I muted? OK. Hey, falade, can you hear us? Your mic on. OK. All right, Lita, let's just keep going. And we'll see, hopefully, that falade can hear us. Oh, wait, here he is. No, that's me, my note to him. Oh, well. OK, Lita, keep going. Thank you. OK, well, let's try another example, another sentence. And again, you try to repeat it and clap on the stressed words, OK? Lita lives in Los Angeles. Lita lives in Los Angeles. Try again. Lita lives in Los Angeles. Lita lives in Los Angeles, right? Avi, you want to try? Lita lives in Los Angeles. But you can't speak. OK. Do not slow down. Lita lives in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles. In Los Angeles. That was correct stress, Carolina. That was right. Lita lives in Los Angeles. Lita lives in Los Angeles. Notice that the word it, lost, we don't pronounce it clearly at all. Here's another sentence. It never rains in Los Angeles in July. It never rains in Los Angeles in July. Never, right. Rain. You want me to do it? Yeah, actually, go ahead and let me, whoops, let me fill. OK, whoops, there you go, you're on. OK, it never rains in Los Angeles in July. That was exactly right. That was exactly right. So which words did we stress? The word never, which is a negative. Yeah, we stress also rains. Correct. We stress Los Angeles. Yes. And we also stress July. Exactly right. So the words I did not stress were the pronoun at the beginning, word it, and the preposition in. OK, those words were said lower and not so clearly. We sort of, we say that those words are not stressed. They're unstressed. So here's that sentence one more time. Never rains in Los Angeles in July. Ba-bop. OK, everybody's smiling. Smile. Well, I'm going to ask one more. Filade can hear us. I've been on chat here with Filade in Nigeria. Filade, can you hear, so you can hear us. Can you say something? Introduce yourself. Filade, say something. Introduce yourself. Well, I know. Is Filade, is your mic muted? Can you unmute your mic if it's muted on your computer? Because we can't hear you. So let's see if we can get Filade. I mean, the good news is he can hear us. But the bad news is we can't hear Filade. But Filade, one more time. Can you say something? If not, let me see here. No, we still can't. He just asked, how about now? No, we still can't hear you. OK, well, Lita, you know what? We actually are running out of time. We're going to have to give up our studio for the next show. So is this a good time? Can we wrap up, maybe, or say we're going to have you back for a fuller explanation of? I'd be happy to come back. And I guess where we could wrap it up right now is the answer to the first question. The first question was, what is sentence stress? And the answer, which I think our listeners understood very well, is that normally, the words that are stressed in a sentence, which is to say that they're louder and clearer and higher in volume, are the content words. The nouns, the verbs, the adjectives, the adverbs, negative words, and numbers. And the thing that I forgot to say before is that these are called content words because they're the words that carry the information in a sentence, right? Nouns are things, verbs are actions. So these are the most important words in a sentence. They carry the meaning. And so that's why we stress that a little bit. We can stop there. You know what? Perfect timing, because they just started the music in the studio to do the air check for the next. So we've got music here in the background. OK, so we're wrapping up here, but I want to invite all of you to keep learning. Head over to our website, learningenglish.voanew.com. Hope you'll subscribe to our YouTube channel, VOA Learning English Channel on YouTube. Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, connect with us on LinkedIn. I'm Avi Arditi from VOA Learning English. I want to thank Alpha from Guinea-Connac, Malaysia. Thank you, Alpha. I want to thank Carolina from Columbia for joining us. I want to thank Filade from Nigeria, who unfortunately, we couldn't hear, but we just got a nice wave, and we waved back. And I want to thank Lita for joining us by Skype and thank her for agreeing to come back for more of an explanation of this very important topic. I'm Avi Arditi, VOA Learning English in Washington. We'll see you next time. Take care. But when we're next time, and these things.