1. Theme: Calc/u/late and calcu/late.
Occurrence of vowel sounds in
unstressed syllables.
Teacher: Umarova Z.N
2. WHAT ARE THE VOWELS IN UNSTRESSED
SYLLABLES?
These sounds are often pronounced
as 'uh'. The unstressed vowel is also
known as the schwa by linguists and
there is even a symbol for it too. It
looks like this ǝ- a little upside down e.
Any written vowel can be spoken as
an 'ah' sound.
3. WHAT ARE EXAMPLES OF UNSTRESSED
SYLLABLES?
The unstressed syllables are also
shorter, pronounced with lower
volume, and at a lower pitch - listen
one more time: ba-NA-na, ba-NA-na,
banana. More examples of the schwa
vowel in unstressed syllables: away,
commercial, and occasion.
4. HOW DO YOU TELL IF A VOWEL IS STRESSED OR
UNSTRESSED?
Stressed vowel sounds are longer,
louder, and/or higher in pitch than
vowel sounds without stress. You
can use just one of these features,
or any combination of these
features at the same time. Overall,
stressed sounds are “stronger”
than unstressed sounds.
5. WHAT ARE UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES IN
PHONETICS?
unstressed syllables: syllables that have no
stress at all. In English, almost all of these
have schwa [ə] for their vowel, though [i] will
also often be unstressed, like the [i] in
happy [ˈhæpi]. (Very rarely, another non-
schwa vowel might be unstressed, like the
[o] of potato [pəˈteto] for most speakers.)
6. WHAT ARE THE UNSTRESSED VOWEL
SOUNDS?
Unstressed vowels are vowel sounds that
are hard to hear when we say a word out
loud. Because we don't stress these vowels,
it can be easy to miss them out when we're
spelling! For example: when we say the
word library we often pronounce it more like
'lie-bree'. The 'a' is an unstressed vowel.
7. WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF UNSTRESSED
VOWELS?
Unstressed vowels are vowel sounds (a, e, i, o or u)
that are difficult to hear when a person is saying a
word out loud. An example of a word with
unstressed vowel sounds is 'desperate'. When we
say desperate, it sounds more like 'despret' - the 'e'
after the 'p' is an unstressed vowel.
8. WHAT TYPES OF WORDS ARE UNSTRESSED?
Function words (determiners, prepositions, and
conjunctions) are usually unstressed unless you
want to emphasize their role(s) in a sentence.
Question words (who, what, when, where, why, and
how) are usually unstressed unless you want to
emphasize their role(s) in a sentence.
9. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
STRESSED AND UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES?
In general, English words have one
stressed syllable, and the other syllables
are unstressed. That means that one
syllable is said LOUDER or with extra
emphasis than the other syllables in the
word (assuming of course that the word has
more than one syllable). So, think about the
word “apple.”
