How Fundamental is Tone in Relation to Accent

Neutralization?

The answer to this inquiry is plain and basic: very, if not the most
significant element. You see; English is a stressed language, not like
others that are considered syllabic languages. This means that stress
is what contains most of the sense in spoken language, instead of
syllables. There is an extremely useful manner of understanding this.
Get hold of a phonetic transcript, this is, check a phonetic book,
where you may discover lots of data written out into the International
Phonetic Alphabet. If you could find a tape with the audio adaptation
of the text in question, so much the better.

Even if you may get puzzled at first, go sentence by sentence and try
to analyze it. You will note that just a few syllables possess real vowel
sound, the remainder carry that indeterminated sound named
“Schwa”. This is how it is most often characterized: /?/

Now, take another glimpse: it is very simple. Only the stressed

syllables carry a diverse, individual sound; the others are schwa. At
present, it is valuable to make a division amid content words
-stressed words that possess the real sense of a sentence, typically
nouns, adjectives, and verbs-, and function words. Function words
are linkers, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns,
habitually one-syllabic words. These words, function words, by no
means, and this is crucial, by no means possess a different vowel
sound other than our friend, the schwa sound.

Kind of extreme? Not at all, simply try it. Now focus your attention on
the consonants, and take a closer look. Try to tell apart the different
consonant sounds and variants. Is it the equivalent /b/ when it is at
the beginning of a sentence or stressed word, between voiced
sounds, for example: between vowels, or at the end of sentence or
stressed word?
Now, a small diversion. Take a phrase of the content. Now read it out
loud, yet, as an alternative to employing conventional vowels, utilize
the schwa sound each time. If you can offer the accurate model of
modulation and emphasis, I assure you, it will sound very much like
native American English.

We have to deduce that excessive vowel separation is one of the most

obvious foreign signs you will find in spoken English.

To try an additional mini-game, experiment with these two phrases:

a- I can do it.
b- I can't do it.
Pretty much the same, aren’t they? Only a letter and apostrophe of
variation. Nevertheless, their modulation is completely different. “I
can do it” holds the main stress on “do”, where “I can't do it” holds
the main stress weight on “can't”. Really instructive, right?

Examples similar to this pop up again and again in every day chat.
Meaning is primarily carried by modulation and not vowel
differentiation. Try it. Even if in the beginning it may sound to you as
a bit awkward, as soon as you pay strong consideration to colloquial
English -not oratorical English or poetry, for example, only individuals
chatting, you will see most sounds are really the schwa sound.
Dominate this, and the access will be unlocked to welcome you into a
more advanced phase in your mastery of the English language.

If you’re taking ESL classes, you should check out more great articles
in our blog.

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