Practice English Speaking&Listening with: English Rhythm

Hello and welcome to my channel Speak English with Joe. Today we are going to talk about

the basic rhythm of English. And we are going to use a banana to help demonstrate this.

Languages have rhythm. Some languages like Spanish are syllable based. This means this

will be pronounced banana. Banana. So that's three syllables, all three clearly pronounced.

Ba-na-na. Banana. English has a different rhythm, based on stress.

This means that some syllables are stressed and some are weak. So in English this is ba-NA-na.

Ba-NA-na. Ba-NA-na. So which syllable was stressed? Yes, that's right the second syllable.

Ba-NA-na. Ba-NA-na. So let's compare. Spanish: banana, banana. English: Ba-NA-na, ba-NA-na,

ba-NA-na. English words have stressed syllables and

weak syllables. So in the word banana, which are the weak syllables?

Yeah, that's right. The first and the last syllables are weak syllables.

OK, so far quite straight forward. Now it gets a little bit strange. The most common

sound in English is a vowel sound and it's called the schwa. The schwa is used to replace

the vowel in any weak syllable. It's a very easy sound to make, and it sounds like this:

uh, uh. So, back to the banana. The first syllable

is a weak syllable so it is pronounced b and schwa, ba. The second syllable is the stressed

syllable so we pronounce it n and a, na. And the last syllable is a weak syllable so it's

pronounced n and schwa, na. Making ba-NA-na. Banana. Banana.

I hope that makes sense but this is just an introduction. Please like, subscribe, and

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