Sunday 11 February 2018

Completely Speechless

ˈwen aɪ wəz ˈbɔːn | aɪ wəz ˈsəʊ səˈpraɪzd | ðət aɪ ˈdɪdn̩ ˈtɔːk fər ə ˈjɪər ən ə ˈhɑːf


Key at bottom of page.

Commentary
[Don't worry if you find this difficult. Don't let yourself be put off. The same phenomena will come up again and again in these transcriptions. There'll be plenty of opportunities for them to sink in over time. Slow and steady, a little each day, is the key to success.]

when: Although the interrogative pronoun when is a monosyllabic function/grammatical word, it is usually stressed and has no weak form. This is true of the other interrogative pronouns: which, who, where, etc.

I: Although I is a monosyllabic function/grammatical word and is usually unstressed, it doesn’t usually have a weak form.

was: When unstressed, as it usually is, was has the weak form /wəz/.

so: The word so is sometimes stressed and sometimes unstressed. When unstressed, it occasionally has the weak form /sə/ before consonants, but /səʊ/ is always acceptable and learners can safely use it in all unstressed contexts.

surprised: When a verb ends in a voiced sound (i.e. a vowel or a voiced consonant (except /d/)), the regular <-ed> ending has the form /d/.

that: When unstressed, as it usually is, the relative pronoun that has the weak form /ðət/. Note that the other uses of that do not have weak forms and are always pronounced /ðæt/: pronoun, I know that. /aɪ ˈnəʊ ˈðæt/; determiner, I know that man. /aɪ ˈnəʊ ˈðæt ˈmæn/; adverb, It wasn’t that good. /ɪt ˈwɒzn̩t ˈðæt ˈɡʊd/.

didn’t: Although function/grammatical words are generally unstressed in English, negative contractions such as didn’t (and don’t, won’t, can’t shouldn’t, etc.) are usually stressed.

Although /t/ isn’t usually elided when it is preceded by /n/ (e.g. in bent nail /ˈbent ˈneɪl/, front door /ˈfrʌnt ˈdɔː/), the negative contractions, because of their high frequency, are an exception and their final /t/ can be elided before both consonants and vowels (e.g. I couldn’t say /aɪ ˈkʊdn̩ ˈseɪ/. He didn’t ask /hi ˈdɪdn̩ ˈɑːsk/.), but not before a pause. This is much more common in the case of disyllabic negative contractions (e.g. didn’t, doesn’t, haven’t, hasn’t, hadn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, etc.). In the case of monosyllabic negative contractions (won’t, can’t), elision of /t/ is only usual in rather casual speech.

for: When unstressed, as it usually is, for has the weak form /fə/.

When a word ends in schwa /ə/ and is immediately followed (without a pause) by a word beginning with a vowel, the consonant /r/ is inserted between the vowels. This process is known as /r/-liaison and also occurs after /ɑː ɔː ɜː eə ɪə ʊə/.

a: When unstressed, as it usually is, the indefinite article a has the weak form /ə/.

and: When unstressed, as it usually is, and has the weak form /ən/ or /ənd/. Some books say that /ən/ is used before consonants and /ənd/ before vowels, but this is not true. While both forms can be heard before consonants and vowels, /ən/ is much more common than /ənd/. Learners can safely use only /ən/ for the weak form of and because it will never be wrong to do so.

When I was born, I was so surprised that I didn’t talk for a year and a half.

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