Tom can play basketball, but not tennis. - Yes, he can! I saw him play tennis last week. This short conversation contains two examples of 'can'. In the first sentence, 'can' is not accented and takes the weak form. It is said quickly, with almost no vowel. In the second sentence 'can' is pronounced using the strong form with a full vowel. This guide to weak and strong forms will help you improve pronunciation by recognizing which words have these forms and when the weak or the strong form is used.
These two articles go further into how weak and strong forms are pronounced because of emphases and the intonation of English.
Intonation and Stress in English
Sound Scripting - Emphasizing words to change meaning
Comments
Ken – that’s interesting about the word ’schwa.’ In Hebrew the ’shva’ is two dots under a letter to show that the letter doesn’t have a full vowel sound. There might be a connection between ’schwa’ and ’shva.’
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keneth thanks for your guide line. i wannt some vocabulary words
Ken, what a wealth of info! You are seriously awesome. Thank so much for your column.
Well, You’re Really smart about those ideas kenneth. But if You know I Can guess one thing that everybody knows, English is sometimes difficult but if you have the right brain you could success anytime you wants. I know some other difficult languages as spanish, especially Spanish, Spanish is beautiful but there’re some bad conculusions and they’re goes fast. ken, I will officiate the Idea of Learning English and you know why exactly I learn English? All of Because I want to go to the USA and To be BodyBuilder there, so I must to go ahead and learning that language because of the current situation that happens on many people’s mind. People in the USA speak only english and I had to interract with them as they speaks themselves. so good luke for all the learners. Actually I love English and Spanish both because they Are So Beautiful and nicely languages.