Word Stress and Strong and Weak Forms

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When listening to English, in addition to different styles of speaking and regional dialects, you will find that some words are pronounced differently by the same people. This is because some words are particularly stressed in the sentence. A lot of words have 'strong' and 'weak' forms depending on of they are stressed or not. While it is not necessary to be able to pronounce the weak forms to be understood, it is helpful to learn them for the more common words, because you will be able to understand spoken English much better. The strong form is most likely to be the one in which it is pronounced like you expect it to be. In the weak form, the basic difference is that vowel sounds will be much shorter and less distinct.

The schwa is the name given to the most common sound in an unstressed syllable. In the phonetic alphabet, it is represented by an upside down letter ‘e’. It is similar to the vowel sound in words such as ‘fir’ and ‘purr’ , only it is shorter and there is no ‘r’ sound. It's the only vowel sound in the weak versions of the words , ‘can‘, ‘are’ ‘of’ and ‘was’.

There is only really one other sound that sometimes occurs in unstressed syllables. It is a cross between the vowel sounds in 'pit' and 'pat', and is also very short in duration.