Diphthongs, Stress,

Rhythm and Intonation

Ed Patrick Bulanadi
CJ Bunagan
Jerrold Cabuyao
Donne Joseph Calderon
Patrick Angelo Catanyag
Russell Maverick Remulla
 Diphthongs

A diphthong is a vowel sound in a word that slides

from one into another with the emphasis on the first
part of the sound. This "gliding" from one sound to the
next occurs within the same syllable. They are sounded
out like long vowel sounds, but unlike "pure" vowel
sounds, you hear two distinct sounds.
 Examples of Diphthongs

The Diphthong "oi"

When found in words such as "soil" and "foil"

you can hear the vowel change clearly. Say
the words slowly and notice how you hesitate
slightly on the beginning vowel sound "o,"
before sliding into a short pronunciation of
"i." You say it as one syllable, but the change
in vowel sound is unmistakable. That is the
diphthong.
The Diphthong "ou"

Some examples of this diphthong are

"mouse," "house," and "grouse." You should
easily be able to hear the movement between
vowels here. The same sound, "ou," and the
same diphthong, can be made by words such
as "stone," "so," "toe," and "ghost." These are
not as easy to hear, but they are there.
 Stress

Stress is the degree of emphasis given a sound

or syllable in speech.

One of the main functions of stress is to provide

a way of distinguishing degrees of emphasis or contrast
in sentences or lines of verse.
 Stress

One of the functions of phonetic stress is to make

words understandable. This kind of stress, known
as word-level stress, is actually part of a word's
pronunciation. It may also serve to differentiate words
that are similar. For example, We're going
to record a record, the two similar words are stressed
differently so that the first record is stressed on the
second, whereas the second record is stressed on the first
syllable.
 Rhythm

Rhythm is the musicality of English–

the ups and downs and the connected speech and the
linking of words, which together, change how we say
sentences. It is the sense of movement in speech, which
is marked by the stress, timing and quantity of
syllables.

•Remember, speaking with correct rhythm (musicality) is

essential to being understood when you speak!
 Rhythm

Content words are words that receives the most

stress. Content words are usually nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs and pronouns. These words are
important in expressing the main meaning of a
sentence.

Function words are expressed weaker and

shorter than content words. It is usually in the form of
auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, prepositions,
determiners, and possessive adjectives.
 Stress-timed Rhythm

Rhythm in which stressed syllables tend to

occur at regular intervals of time, regardless of the
number of intervening unstressed syllables.

•Example:

Saying the sentence “ Dogs chase cats” will take

almost the amount of time saying “The dogs
will be chasing the cats” because the two
sentences contains the same amount of stressed
words (content words) .
 Syllable-timed Rhythm

Rhythm in which syllables are approximately

equal in duration and thus tend to follow each other at
regular intervals of time.
 Intonation

Intonation is about how we say things, rather than

what we say. Without intonation, it's impossible to
understand the expressions and thoughts that go with
words.
Listen to somebody speaking without paying attention
to the words: the 'melody' you hear is the intonation.
 Intonation
It has the following features:

•It's divided into phrases, also known as 'tone-units'.

•The pitch moves up and down, within a 'pitch range'. Everybody has
their own pitch range. Languages, too, differ in pitch range. English
has particularly wide pitch range.

•In each tone unit, the pitch movement (a rise or fall in tone, or a
combination of the two) takes place on the most important syllable
known as the 'tonic-syllable'. The tonic-syllable is usually a high-
content word, near the end of the unit.

•These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning.

Changing the intonation can completely change the meaning.
 Intonation

Example:
• Say: 'It's raining'.
• You could say it to mean what a surprise it is, or how
annoying it is ,or how great it is. There are many
possibilities.