How to Pronounce: Word Stress and Adjectives

Word Stress and Adjectives
Hello! I’m John Russell.
In previous videos, we explored word stress – saying a word louder or in a higher pitch. Word stress is part of what makes an American sound like an American.
For today’s lesson, imagine you want to describe something – a day, a person, a place.
Nouns and adjectives play a very important role in such descriptions.
And there are certain ways that Americans stress nouns and adjectives.
In general, when an adjective is followed by a noun, Americans stress the noun.
Here’s an example:
It’s a nice day.
The sentence has an adjective, nice, and a noun day. Notice that I put more stress on the noun, day.
It’s a nice day.
...nice day.
Or consider this description:
He has green eyes.
Once again, the stress is on the noun – eyes. There is less stress on green.
You might be asking yourself about situations in which two adjectives go before a noun. For exapmle,
She has short black hair.
In this case, there is stress on the first adjective and the noun. The noun still gets the most stress.
You can take these basic ideas to make your own descriptions. Just be sure to try to stress the noun more than the adjective.
That’s all for today, keep up the good work!


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