The Importance of Emphasis
All words are spoken with an emphasis put in a particular place. The part of the word that is emphasised will often sound louder than the rest. The same word can therefore sound completely different if you put the stress in a different place.
Emphasis is an important feature of language, and one that most speakers are not aware of. But if you use a different emphasis from the one that speakers are expecting, sometimes they won’t understand what you are saying!
Instructions:
Compare the way in which the word ‘analgesic’ is pronounced in the following examples. The Australian English speaker puts the emphasis on the first syllable. The Malay English speaker has a emphasis on the last syllable. Notice that there are also differences in the way the vowels are sounded. The change in emphasis pattern and the different vowel sounds make the word unrecognisable to most Australian English speakers.
INSERT AUDIO
Australian English – Analgesic
Indian English – aNALgesic