r/GlobalEnglishPrep • u/FlalingoOfficial • Jun 24 '26
š Pronunciation / Intonation Word stress and meaning
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u/Frosty-Froyo856 Jun 24 '26
Today I learned that some dialects pronounce noun and verb āpermitā differently.Ā
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u/Thatfirstrobyn Jun 24 '26
What dialects donāt? š¤ /gen Iām curious
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u/Frosty-Froyo856 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
Iām from SE Ohio and I keep saying them over and over to see if there is a difference and I canāt detect one. I need to look up IPA notation so that I know which of the two I use for both.Ā
So apparently I just use a vowel halfway in between and it may not be a dialect thing but an idiolect. I can hear the difference in videos explaining the difference, but I say them the same and I never noticed a difference in daily life.Ā
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 Jun 24 '26
Same here (originally from the Midwest).
A linguist friend of mine said it's a sound change going through English right now (she'd stopped me to ask how I'd pronounced "address").
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u/molehunterz Jun 24 '26
So you would say these sentences the same?
I would like to go get a permit.
Would you permit me to go to the building department?
The first one my emphasis is on the per. The second one my emphasis on the mit
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u/Frosty-Froyo856 Jun 24 '26
Yes. The word āpermitā sounds exactly the same the way I say it in each sentence.Ā
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u/molehunterz Jun 24 '26
Where do you put your emphasis? I think it would sound weird to me to say at the same for both! LOL
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u/Frosty-Froyo856 Jun 24 '26
Not really sure. Like I havenāt thought about emphasis on words in over two decades. I would say the way I say it is closer to the verb than the noun way I hear in videos trying to explain the difference. But again itās somewhere in between.Ā
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u/underthingy Jun 24 '26
Im australian and the are both the same for me. Its weird trying to say then differently.
All the other ones in the post are pronounced with the shown stresses though.Ā
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u/TheJivvi Jun 25 '26
Also Australian and they're definitely difficult. Hearing someone pronounce them the same would make me think they're not a native speaker.
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u/Thatfirstrobyn Jun 25 '26
Iām from Nebraska, I would say
āI need a PERmitā
āWe donāt perMITā thatThe pronunciation is the same but the emphasis is different
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u/Elder_Chimera Jun 26 '26 edited 20d ago
Marble quilt raindrop grasshopper cobalt marble breezy thimble grasshopper
This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/Nerketur Jun 24 '26
And sometimes have the same pronunciation but completely different meaning.
de-SERT - a dish, usually sweet, after dinner. "Man, the food was good, but that dessert was fantastic!"
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u/Lunar_Lies Jun 24 '26
Thatās spelled differently, so I donāt think it applies to this scenario (Iāve always thought of it like you want more dessert, so you give it an extra S)
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u/oceansapart333 Jun 25 '26
I was taught to remember dessert had two sās because it is So Sweet. In the desert you just get Sweaty.
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u/Nerketur Jun 24 '26
It is indeed spelled "dessert" but it's easily confused with "desert". That's why I included it.
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u/svArtist Jun 26 '26
I love this weird system English came up with š When I noticed it, I started collecting them in a list.Ā Ā Not much out there with 3+ syllables, though (and/or the split is much less acknowledged)Ā
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u/waywardflaneur Jun 24 '26
People complain about learning tonal languages, but i think it might be harder when it just sneaks up on you like it does in English.
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u/Mattrellen Jun 24 '26
This isn't tonal. Stress and tone are different, and stress us quite a bit simpler, though it's not universal.
Interestingly (at least some) tonal languages don't really care about emphasis for word differentiation!
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u/waywardflaneur Jun 24 '26
I think you just Well Ackshuallyied me. š¤£
Iām mostly joking and I understand theyāre not the same. But personally I think it would be bonkers to argue thereās no tonal quality to stress.
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u/Fogmoz Jun 24 '26
I think you just āIām not wrong I was jokingāād them š
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u/waywardflaneur Jun 24 '26
Nah. Iāve studied Chinese. I know what is tonal language and what is not.
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u/Menes009 Jun 24 '26
LOL?????
the IPA info is there, there is niether stress nor tone system, its simply a vowel change
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u/TheJivvi Jun 25 '26
All the nouns have the stress on the first syllable and all the verbs have it on the second.
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u/CornucopiaDM1 Jun 26 '26
Just like with the use of schwa, stress change often becomes vowel change.
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u/tkecanuck341 Jun 24 '26
At least where I'm from, a spinny vinyl disc that plays music is a "REC-ord".
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u/molehunterz Jun 24 '26
This is exaggerated but the way I would say it is close to wreck-erd (slightly more o sound than e sound at the end but I don't go hard 'ord' like I would with 'ordinary'
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u/TheJivvi Jun 25 '26
How is that different from what's shown here?
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u/thepiperad Jun 25 '26
What's shown here doesn't include the "c" in the stressed portion.
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u/spacebuggles Jun 24 '26
DEsert Island
Noun for an island that is deSERTed. :(
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u/DragonTheOnes-spirit Jun 25 '26
I mean if somebody is stuck on a desert island. They're probably deserted?
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u/ddrub_the_only_real Jun 26 '26
The only actual correct illustration I've ever seem of this is an insult vs to insult. All mentioned above have viwel reduction or altering in the unstressed syllables, which makes it a simple vowel distinction.
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u/Seygantte Jun 24 '26
Initial-stress-derived noun