Do you sometimes have the feeling that native English speakers think you are being impolite – and you don’t know why?
Perhaps you are trying your best to use formal language. You remember to say things like “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me”. You don’t believe that you are breaking any cultural rules or using any inappropriate language or slang. But for some reason, the people you speak to think that you are being rude to them.
The problem is probably not what you are saying, but how you are saying it.
In English, intonation is very important.
Firstly, it’s important to understand the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables. English-speaking people usually:
- Emphasise the most important words in the sentence. Verbs, nouns and names are all likely to be stressed, while prepositions and connecting words like “the”, “and” or “with” are unlikely to be stressed. The word that is most strongly stressed is usually the word that the speaker wants you to focus on the most, or is the main point of the sentence.
- Stress the second-to-last syllable in the word. For example: intoNAtion, comPUter, SANDwich, TA This certainly is not always the case and there are lots of exceptions, but the majority of words are like this.
- Stress every other syllable as they speak. They don’t do it on purpose – it just sounds more natural to them! Listen carefully to native English speakers and you will start to hear this. Unless they change the order to deliberately stress a word for emphasis, most of the time they follow a pattern that goes unstressed-stressed-unstressed-stressed.
- Make their voice go higher at the end of a sentence if they are asking a question or making a request.
It’s tricky to get this perfect, especially for beginners. However, if you speak in a “flat” tone, where all the syllables are unstressed and at the same pitch, you will sound very strange to a native English speaker. They might struggle to understand what you are saying, or what you really want from them. They might also think you sound bored, as if you don’t really want to talk to them.
Or they might think you are telling them to do something or demanding something, when you meant to ask them politely, because you didn’t change the pitch of your voice at the end of the sentence.
In these situations, you could sound rude, even though you don’t mean to.
In fact, in English, intonation makes a big difference to the meaning of what you say.
The words you stress and the pitch of your voice changes the meaning for the person you are having a conversation with. It doesn’t change the literal meaning of the words, as it does in some other languages. By this we mean that the dictionary definition of the word is the same. Instead, intonation changes something called “subtext”. That’s what you really mean when you say something.
You can use exactly the same words, but depending on the intonation, an English speaker might think that you don’t really believe what you are saying, that you are joking, that you are actually angry, or even that you are being sarcastic. “Sarcasm” is when you say something that is the opposite of what you think while making it clear what you are doing. For example, you might say “Yeah, this food looks delicious”, while making a disgusted face.
For example, take the sentence, “She said she was sorry”. Depending on the intonation, the meaning can be very different.
If I say, “SHE said she was sorry,” or “She said SHE was sorry” or “SHE said SHE was sorry” I want to bring attention to the person. Perhaps I am surprised that this particular person said sorry, when I thought that I would be expected to apologise, or that someone else was actually in the wrong.
If I say, “She SAID she was sorry,” this means something very different. I’m focussing completely on the fact that this person said something, not whether they were actually sorry. Really, I’m suggesting that this person wasn’t really sorry. They said that they were, but they didn’t mean it.
If I say “She said she was SORRY,” I am also trying to make a point about the word that was said. Again, by only emphasising this one word in the sentence, I am trying to show that there is something strange or out-of-place about this word. The suggestion is that I don’t think that ‘sorry’ was good enough. Perhaps I think the person should have said something else, or something more.
Finally, if I say, “She SAID she was SORRY” this sounds quite natural to an English speaker, because the most important words – the action and the word that was spoken – are both emphasised, while everything else is unstressed. This intonation suggests that I accept the apology and am not angry. I am not trying to say that there was anything strange about this conversation. I am just explaining what happened.
Learning to appreciate intonation is one of the hardest things about learning English. Remember that people won’t expect you to get it perfect all the time, but do try as hard as you can to use stress and pitch in the correct way, so that people understand what you really mean. The best way to improve is to listen really closely to how native English people speak and copy the patterns in their voices until you get it right.
Do you have a question about intonation? Let us know in the comments section below!
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