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[Abdessalami On-Line]

Pronunciation

          It is often strange that the language is looked upon as most expressive when it is to be written: You have enough time to omit, to change a word or expression .. in brief to recapitulate. While in speaking you have to be at the same time fluent and accurate so as your interlocutor can decode your message easily and exactly.

          In speaking you have to mind your pronunciation otherwise some questions may look like simple affirmative declarative statements and vise versa. Therefore speakers have to be careful on this special point. It is important that the speaker knows where to place the tonic syllable, for instance, to convey the right meaning of what he is saying because words alone or even sentences or utterances cannot make a meaning if they are articulated in an outlandish "accent". This surely leads to misunderstanding or worse. I mean that any stressed syllable in any English sentence can be treated as the tonic, and the meaning of the sentence depends essentially on where the tonic is placed. The same sentence can convey different meanings according to the way it is pronounced.

Consider the following:

| That's your | ' book
=> not your exercise book or your pencil...
| That's | ' your | book
=> not mine
| That | ' is your | book
=> you can't deny it.
| ' That's your | book.
=> not this one.

          The speaker also has to use the right tune. The meaning of a sentence is equally dependent on the tune which it carries, a change from the falling to the rising tune would turn a statement into a question:

That's your ' book ?

          Generally speaking, the sentence can't convey the correct meaning unless it is pronounced. It is somehow the same sentence but the way we pronounce it decides its final meaning. The speaker, thus, should be careful while speaking; perhaps the sentence pronounced in a certain tune may not convey the meaning that he intends to transmit to his audience.


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