Exercise 1-52 Reducing Articles
When you used the rubber band with [Däg zeet bounz] and when you built your own sentence, you saw that intonation reduces the unstressed words. Intonation is the peak and reduced soundsare the valleys. In the beginning, you should make extra-high peaks and long, deep valleys. When you are not sure, reduce. In the following exercise, work with this idea. Small words suchas articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, relative pronouns, and auxiliary verbs arelightly skimmed over and almost not pronounced.You have seen how intonation changes the meaning in words and sentences. Inside a one-syllable word, it distinguishes between a final voiced or unvoiced consonant be-ed and bet. Inside a longer word, éunuch vs unίque, the pronunciation and meaning change in terms ofvocabulary. In a sentence (He seems nice; Heseems nice.), the meaning changes in terms ofintent.In a sentence, intonation can also make a clear vowel sound disappear. When a vowel is stressed, it has a certain sound; when it is not stressed, it usually sounds like uh, pronounced [ə]. Small words like to, at, or as are usually not stressed, so the vowel disappears.
