English Rhythm Video
Have you ever noticed that you need to replay certain English words multiple times just to catch all the syllables? How is it that native speakers hear them effortlessly, while we often miss them unless we listen again and again? The reason is that English is stress-timed.
Linguists typically categorize languages into two rhythm types: syllable-timed and stress-timed. Most languages around the world, such as Korean, Hindi, and Romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian, are syllable-timed. This means that each syllable is spoken at an even pace—like chopping onions on a cutting board.
English, however, is stress-timed. In stress-timed languages, stressed syllables occur at regular intervals, while unstressed syllables are shortened and compressed to fit within these beats. If you grew up speaking English natively, this rhythm comes naturally. But if you learned English later in life, you'll need to study its rhythm patterns to sound more natural.
Dr. Byrnes' English prosody course is a great resource for understanding the theory behind English rhythm and melody. It’s not just useful for TOEFL preparation but also for improving overall comprehension and speaking clarity in everyday conversations.
To speak with natural English rhythm, you need to know two things:
How to stress stressed syllables.
How to properly reduce unstressed syllables.
Stressed syllables should be louder, higher in pitch, and longer, while unstressed syllables should be quieter, lower in pitch, and shorter. In our previous video on pitch levels, we explained that English has four pitch levels—stressed syllables usually hit level 3, while unstressed ones stay at level 2.
For example, in words like about and below, the rhythm follows a da-DUM pattern:
a-BOUT
be-LOW
Since unstressed syllables are quieter and faster, non-native speakers often struggle to hear them in fast speech. This is one of the main reasons why listening comprehension is difficult for non-natives. If learners simply imitate only the syllables they hear clearly while ignoring the ones they miss—often the unstressed syllables—their speech will sound ungrammatical and out of sync.
The key to mastering English rhythm is learning to pronounce unstressed syllables quickly and at a low pitch. This is especially important when multiple unstressed syllables occur between two stressed ones. To achieve this, native speakers rely on two key techniques:
🔹 Vowel centralization – Reducing unstressed vowels to a schwa sound (ə).
🔹 Elision – Dropping certain sounds, sometimes entire syllables, for smoother speech.
Mastering these techniques will help you not only sound more natural but also improve your ability to understand native speech. Now, let's examine how they work with plenty of examples!
Vowel centralization
Vowel centralization means that unstressed vowels are pronounced in the center area of the vowel chart. Vowels pronounced in the center area are lax, reduced, weak and less noticeable. For this reason, they are called lax vowels.
Tense vowel to lax vowel
The lax vowels in English are /ɪ, ʊ/ and the schwa. For example, ‘been’ in dictionary pronunciation is [bin]: [i] is called tense vowel. But when used in speech, it sounds like [bɪn]. These words also have the tense vowel [i] as their dictionary pronunciation: be, he, me, she, and we. But when used in speech, their vowel may be the reduced form, [ɪ].
“she’s” [ʃɪz], not [ʃiz]
“he’ll” [hɪl], not [hil]
“we’re” [wɪr], not [wir]
Most commonly, unstressed vowels approach the mid-central vowel, called schwa [ə] which sounds like “uh”. Schwa occurs only in unstressed syllables. Schwa is characterized by such features as shortness, laxness and central position. Schwa is not an exact sound, but a lazy sound, used to facilitate fast speaking.
Schwa
Schwa happens in two cases: multi syllable words and function words. When a word has two or more syllables, the vowel of the stressed syllable is fully pronounced, but the vowel of the unstressed syllable is usually reduced to the schwa sound.
America ə ME rə kə
bacon BAK ən
ribbon RiB ən
animals AN ə məlz
potato pə TAY də
symbol
SYM bəl
officer OFF ə sər
president PRE zə dənt
Function words are grammar particle words like articles, auxiliary verbs, pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions. In a phrase or sentence, these function words are usually not stressed, so are greatly reduced. They are spoken quickly and unnoticeably. The degree of reduction depends on the rate of speech delivery. The faster the speech is, the greater the reduction is. These are some examples of function word reduction:
Of [əv, ə]
From [frəm], [frm]
To [tə]
That [thət]
Your [jɚ]
Elision
Elision means the dropping of sound. Elision is used to simplify the pronunciation, so that we can say words fast and easily. Stress is powerful. To emphasize stressed syllables in speech while maintaining the rhythm, some surrounding unstressed phonemes, even syllables, can be dropped. That is, unstressed syllables or phonemes often elide. We examine cases of elision due to stress.
Syllable elision
Syllable elision means the dropping of unstressed syllables. An unstressed syllable can be elided when it comes right after or right before a stressed syllable. Due to the syllable elision, common long words can lose a few unstressed syllables, and become shorter words in casual speech. Consider camera and family. In the dictionary, these words are noted as having three syllables: ca.me.ra and fa.mi.ly. But in everyday speech situations, these words are pronounced as two-syllable words: cam.ruh, fam.ly. In the dictionary, the word 'particularly,' has five syllables, /pɚ tɪk jə lɚ li/.
But in everyday speech, it is spoken as a four-syllable word, [pɚ tɪk jɚ li], a three syllable word, [pɚ tɪk li] or even two syllable word [ptɪk.li]. These are words where syllable elision frequently happens:
 |
| syllable elision |
AC.tu.al.ly → AC.TUAL.ly ("ACK-choo-lee.")
A.ve.rage → AV.rage
CA.me.ra → CAM.ra
CHO.co.late → CHOC.late
COM.for.ta.ble → COMF.ta.ble
cor.RECT → crRECT
DES.pe.rate → DESP.rit
DIF.fe.rent → DIF.rent
FA.mi.ly → FAM.ly
FI.nal.ly → FIN.ly
GRO.ce.ries → GROC.ries
HIS.to.ry → HIST.ry
IN.te.rest → INT.rest
JEW.el.ry → JEWL.ry
LI.bra.ry → LI.bry
ma.the.MA.tics → math.MA.tics
ME.mo.ry → MEM.ry
NA.tu.ral → NA.tral
O.range → ORNGE
po.LICE → PLIS
per.HAPS → PRAPS
PRE.fe.ra.ble → PRE.fra.ble
PRO.ba.bly → PRO.bly
SE.pa.rate → SEP.rate
sup.POSE → SPOSE
TEM.pe.ra.ture → TEM.per.ture
VE.ge.ta.ble → VE.gta.ble
Phoneme dropping in function words
Phoneme dropping means some vowels or consonants of words are elided. Phoneme dropping happens frequently in function words, since function words are normally unstressed. These are examples of function words with some phonemes dropped:
The words, of, to, and have all tend to elide to nothing more than a schwa [ə] in fast conversational speech.
of, to, have → [ə]
I got to [ə] do this.
I might have [ə] done it.
It has a lot of [ə] flowers.
Is and has are reduced to [s] or [z].
Is, has → [s] or [z]
She is [z] nice.
It is [s] nice.
She has [z] a car.
It has [s] hair
Auxiliary verbs are normally reduced: e.g., would [wəd, d], should [ʃəd, d], could [kəd].
would [wəd, d], should [ʃəd, d], could [kəd]
I would do it.
I could do it.
Because is reduced and pronounced as
because → [kəz].
I did it because [kəz] you asked me to do it.
The pronoun them tends to elide to [əm] after consonants. For example,
them → [əm]
ask them [ˈæskəm].
The following phoneme ellisons have names of their own.
Syllabic consonants
If the final consonant of a function word ends with nasals or liquids, i.e., /m, n, ŋ, l, r/, they can become syllabic consonants. That is, the schwa before these consonants is dropped. We use the superscript schwa to indicate its subsequent consonant is the syllabic consonant. For example,
/m, n, ŋ, l, r/ → syllabic consonants (syllable without vowel)
Shall [ʃəl]
From [frəm]
Am [əm]
Can [kən]
Than [thən]
Will [əl]
For [fər]
And [ən], [əŋ]
These are sentences with the syllabic-consonant function words:
I shall do that.
I am from Korea.
I am fine.
I’ll have fish and[ən] chips
I need a rock and [əŋ] key
H-dropping
 |
| H dropping and liaison |
Function words that begin with H (i.e., he, his, him, her, has, had and have) often have the /h/ sound dropped. For example,
Is he [ɪzi] happy?
tell him [telɪm] now.
tell her [telər] about it.
it has been fine
It might have been me (the ‘v’ in ‘have’ also elides )
It had left.
Contractions
Contractions reduce the number of syllables by way of eliminating internal letters and sounds. Contractions often happen with the pronoun subject and an auxiliary verb pair or an auxiliary verb and the word not. A contraction is indicated by an apostrophe.
“'s” is used as a contracted form of ‘is’ and ‘has’:
It's nice here. (is)
It's been nice here. (has)
“'d” is used as a contracted form of ‘would’ or ‘had’ → ‘d’
I'd eaten. (had)
I'd eat. (would)
When “have” is contracted, it sounds like “of”: have → [əv]
could've [kʊdəv], [kʊɾəv], [kʊdə], [kʊɾə]
should've [ʃʊdəv], [ʃʊɾə]
would've [wʊdəv], [wʊɾə]
must've [mʌstəv], [mʌstə]
It could have been me.
We should have been at home by now.
It would have been such a good film.
He must have eaten fish and chips.
Negative contractions
aren’t /ɑrnt/
don’t /doʊnt/
won’t /woʊnt/
doesn't /dʌzənt/
haven't /hævənt/
isn't /ɪzənt/
mustn't /mʌsənt/
can’t /kænt/
We can meet here.
We can’t meet here.
I can do it.
I can't do it.