He rhythm of speech

Throughout this series of articles I have often talked about where the ' beat' goes on a word, and how important that is to allow us to understanding what is said. It is surprising how little attention is often given to this subject, considering how fundamental it is. You have almost certainly been a victim of this problem in your daily life, without even realizing it.

An early experience of mine was when I asked a chemist for ' paracetemo'”, which I pronounced with an English rhythm, like this ' paraCETamol'. I had remembered to make my ' c' into a ' th' and all my vowel sounds were correct, but there was still something the chemist couldn’t understand. He stared at me blankly while I repeated the word several times and then said “Ah sí, paracetaMOL”. Well, that’s what I said, wasn’t it? How difficult is it for a chemist to understand such a basic word?

I’ll bet you’ve been in very similar situations. Often the correct version which the barman or chemist repeats back to you sounds exactly the same to you, and to be honest, when we’re talking about beer in a pub, or pain killers in a chemist, what exactly is their problem?

The problem, ladies and gentlemen is ' beat', ' stress', ' emphasis', ' rhythm' – whatever you want to call it. Getting it in the right place is fundamental to understanding, even when the situation almost speaks for itself. What follows might seem like a digression from learning Spanish, but believe me, if you stick with it, and take it on board, it could transform your ability to communicate, and ultimately to your understanding of the spoken word as well.

A very important thing to realize is that every word has its own rhythm, and it is this rhythm that makes the word recognizable even when we can’t hear every sound clearly. Let’s look at a few examples in English to make the point: ' reject',' record', ' present', ' refuse'. As they are written here, you as English speakers have no way of knowing how they should be pronounced. For example ' I reject your offer', ' that product is a reject'. Now say ' reject' in both ways and notice what the difference is between them. You will find that it is essentially the ' beat' on the word. “I reJECT your offer”; “This product is a REject”. In English we have the additional complication that the beat alters the vowel sounds, something that does not occur in Spanish.

Now do the same sort of exercise with the remaining three words, and then with the dozens of others in English which do exactly the same thing. Sorry to be laborious about this, but your next step in the experiment is to imagine hearing one of these words mispronounced by a foreigner in an obvious situation.

Let’s say we are watching some sporting achievement and someone tells us it is ' a reCORD', or there is some rubbish on the ground and we hear “look at all this awful “reFUSE”, or even better “My father is a reFUSE collector”.

Now let’s return to Spain and Spanish. Every Spanish word has a rhythm, and unlike English, there are very precise rules as to how this rhythm works.

As foreigners we all have a nonSpanish accent to a greater or lesser extent, and we all have ways of saying things that aren’t exactly the same as native speakers. In addition to this we pronounce the most important word in the sentence with the wrong emphasis, and hey presto, the barman doesn’t know we want a beer, and the chemist can’t recognize a basic word for painkiller.

Now all we need to learn are rules for correct word emphasis.