(Eng. 3) Explanation of Basic Terms of the Pronunciation areas

Vowels and consonants
The terms are used both for writing and speech. You will usually find a term such as vowel sound or written vowel when you need to know the difference.


Phonemes and phonemic script
Individual vowel or consonant sounds are called phonemes. In phonemic script (often called phonemic symbols or notation), each symbol stands for a single phoneme.

Word stress
Spoken words consist of one or more syllables. In two-syllable words one syllable is stressed, the other weak. Longer words such as 'economic' may have three degrees of stress: in this case, primary stress on the third syllable; secondary stress on the first; and weak stress on the others.

Schwa /ə/
Most very weak syllables contain schwa, which is the name of the shortest (and most common) spoken vowel found in English. The word 'economic' contains two written vowels; but when written in phonemic script, /,ekə'nomik/, we see that the first very weak is schwa, but in the stressed syllable contains the longer sound found in 'top' and 'dog'. Schwa is also found in weak forms of most grammatical words such as 'to' and 'her'.

Pitch, tone groups and tonic syllables
Stressed syllables may change pitch. This means that the voice may move up or down. This change of pitch takes place on the most important syllable in a tone group, the tonic syllable. A sentence in terms of grammar/writing may consist of one or more tone groups.

Intonation
Changes of pitch are what make up the intonation of a language. We concentrate on the two most important possible directions for the change of pitch: a fall or a fall-rise.