2018-10-23 Pronunciation: reduced vowels

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
---
p. 51 exercise 1A - With your partner, identify which syllable has the primary stress in each word.
What rules can you infer about these suffixes and stress?
- The stress comes before the suffixes -ion, -ity, and -ic
- The stress comes on the suffix -eer.
(The more common suffix -er/-or usually doesn’t change the stress of the original verb.)
---
There are three main things we do when we stress syllables or words:
1 the stressed syllable is higher
2 the stressed syllable is longer (and the vowel gets its full unreduced pronunciation)
3 the stressed syllable is louder
- If you only focus on one of these, it should be (1).
---
Vowels in unstressed syllables and words are usually reduced, which means they don’t get the full sound they normally would.
photo - both ‘o’s sound like /o/
photograph - the second ‘o’ gets a schwa sound
---
schwa = /ə/
The most common reduced vowel sound in English is the schwa.
Relax your mouth as much as possible. (This is also the hesitation sound we sometimes write as “uh” in the US or “er” in the UK.)
In American English, if there is an ‘r’ in the word, the typical unstressed sound is /ɚ/.
---
photəgraph -> phətogrəphy -> photəgraphic
record - record
produce - prəduce (Even unstressed, “duce” has a /u/ sound, not a /ə/ sound.)
desərt - dəssert

(In general, the “long” vowel sounds don’t get reduced, especially at the end of the word.)
---
p. 53 exercise 3A - repeat the words and identify the other schwa sounds.
exercise 4 - draw a line through all the vowels that are pronounced with schwa