Training on Prosody with Hadar

Sam. Hello. Hello. Hello, everyone. How are you doing? Hello. I'm gonna say hi with my face. Hold on. Hello, everyone. How are you? Welcome to our prosody training. Intonation, content, words, function words. Are you excited about today? Because I am super excited about today. We're going to talk a little bit about content words, a little bit about function words, we're going to talk about pitch, we're going to talk about all of those exciting things that end up creating the sound that we have and the voice that we have. It's called prosody. Prosody basically is everything that is not the pure sounds when it comes to speaking. So I gave you that example during the festival, if you think about it like music. So the sounds would be the notes, but the notes are not enough to create the actual piece of music. Right? Piece of work. You need the rhythm. You need to decide how it all goes together. You need the tempo, you need the. The volume. Right? All of that ends up contributing to what we, you know, love hearing or we don't love hearing. So that is what we're gonna do today. And I'm excited. Let me see. See? Yes, everyone's here. You can see me. You can hear me. Hello. Hello, Hello. Now, intonation is basically an element of prosody, which we'll focus on today because we only have one hour, and I want to talk about that element. And within that, I'm going to talk about content words and function words. And as you've seen at the beginning, we have the whiteboard today. All right? So just so you know, we might get to the whiteboard. And when I get to the whiteboard, you cannot stop me. So how are you feeling today? On a scale of 1 to 10? Let me know in the chat. On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable or confident do you feel with anything related to porosity, intonation, rhythm, and stress? On a scale of 1 to 10? So one would be. I have no idea what that is. I don't use it. I don't think about it. I don't listen to it. And 10 would be, I got it. I own it. I love it. I do it right. So, okay, I see some fives, sixes, fours. Okay, this is a good average. Very good. Confident. Give me a number eight. Jungle there makes me proud. Very proud. After new sound, what is it? A hundred thousand? Okay, good. Very nice. Okay, good. So first thing, I love that we're all on the same page here, that we all feel like we are, you know, we are. We have some kind of Understanding, but sometimes it's not enough. So let's go through the, the theory really quickly. This is something that I've taught about, I think six months ago, I'm going to teach it again. And then we're going to go to the whiteboard and answer some questions and deal with, with specific issues. So in this training you will learn what, what intonation is, what content words are, why we emphasize content words, and how we can know what word to emphasize, which usually that is the most, the biggest challenge for speakers in general, especially if the language is not your native language. Also, we're going to talk about function words. What are function words? Right? They complete content words ultimately and why we reduce function words, how that might sound like and what reduction is and when to stress a function word. Right? So we have content words that are usually stressed, function words that are usually reduced. But there could be different cases for each. So what is intonation now? Let me know in the chat. When you hear the word intonation. You have that in your first language. You have that in English. When you what comes to mind, let me know. So this is my definition. Intonation is the melody of the language, the rising and falling of pitch while speaking. Now, a lot of you have gone through my sneak peek lessons and that means that you know a little bit about pitch. Pitch is the tone of your voice. You have low pitch, which is usually lower, the lower note and you have higher pitch, which is usually the higher notes. And then you have medium pitch, which is usually where your voice is most comfortable at the optimum pitch level. The optimal place for your voice is your medium voice, right? Not high voice, not low voice, usually for a lot of speakers. And that is medium pitch. So that means that from that point you can easily go up and you can easily go down. And that's a comfortable place for us to be in because we want to be able to raise the pitch and lower the pitch without working too hard. Let's imagine I would be speaking only here. I wouldn't be, I wouldn't have a lot of versatility or a lot of different ways to stress words only by going up, right? But if I'm down here, if I'm, if I'm here. No, let me give you the counter example. Let's say I speak here and my voice is really high up and I'm only using this voice, it would be really hard for me to use even a higher pitch to stress words. So ideally we want to use our middle voice both because it's the best place for the voice to be in, but also because from here I can go up and I can go down, right? I can emphasize words. And emphasis happens when we change the pitch from like what, the average pitch that I'm using. So I have more flexibility when I'm in my medium pitch going back. So intonation distinguishes between types of sentences and indicates the speaker's mood and attitude. If you've been to the prosody practice group, you have probably practiced with Jelena, different types of sentences, like questions. What is the difference between a question where you want an answer that is just yes, no, and what is the difference? And that and a question where you are looking for a bit more information. So content words. And you can watch it, you can still watch it until the end of this week. Content words versus function Words play a key role when it comes to intonation because ultimately the words and the content determines the pitch and the melody. It's not the other way around. It's not that there is this melody to English and then we need to fit it in. Now, I'm not going to lie, and I'm not going to say that that's not the case for some speakers. Sometimes you will hear speakers that have the same repetitive melody no matter what they're saying. That is not necessarily good speech because that becomes monotone. Monotone is not just one note. It's repetitive melody that we hear over and over again. So, for example, if I were to speak like that, and no matter what I'm saying, that's how it's going to sound whether I'm ending a sentence or starting a sentence. It's called up speak, by the way. And at some point, if I keep talking like this, I'm going to lose you because you wouldn't know what I'm stressing, what I'm not stressing, and it's going to sound redundant and repetitive. And you'd feel like you have figured out how I speak. You get the point, right? So that is the idea of taking a certain melody pattern and inserting what you have to say. That's not what we want. So melody is not like we. We don't worship melody, right? We don't work around the melody. We think about the content, what we want to say, which makes it a little harder, but with a lot more impact because melody serves the content. Melody, your little helper, that helps you get your point across, okay? Melody, intonation, and stress, all of that is designed to help you get your point across. Because when you hit a word that is more important than the others. You use melody to emphasize it. You use pitch. You say it a little higher or a little lower, generally a little higher. And to that I'm going to add, you're going to say it a little longer. And ultimately that is going to be emphasized simply by people recognizing that it's longer and different in pitch. So when you have a lot of words that you want to stress, your melody is going to sound like this, because it feels like you're stressing a lot of things and you're going to feel that there are a lot of moments where I stress something. Now, I'm not saying it's not a possible way to speak, but it's just that if I were to only speak like that, that would be a little too much as well. And monotone. Again, it's going to be monotone. So we gotta find the balance between, you know, knowing what we want to stress, making sure that we're not stressing too much. Right. Imagine like, you're going for dinner and you're. You have this beautiful dinner, and people keep serving you. Here's a salad, and here's a soup, and here's another appetizer. And here's another appetizer, and here's this, and here'. You wouldn't know where to put your focus, right? What is this? What? What? I don't know. So the idea is that you don't want to stress every single word when you speak, and because it affects the melody and intonation that creates that resistance. But also, it's going to be hard to understand the message. So this is why, when we think about delivering a message, we're thinking about both how we use those elements, those musical elements like pitch and rhythm and stress, and also how do we choose just the right words so that it's not too much and it's not too little, and it gets our message across. These are the two big questions and big tasks that we have when we speak. So I hope that in this lesson, we're going to cover, or I'm going to help you understand how to address all of that. So to do that, we need to understand content words. What are content words? Content words are words that have meaning on their own. If we look at these pairs, green on pig is should run. When we look at each pair, it's pretty obvious, right? What has what holds meaning and what doesn't. Green on. So green. I can visualize it. I see what that is. I know what green is on. I know what on is. But on is just it it's not something that I like. I'm. Doesn't have a meaning on its own. Right? Something on something. But I need to visualize two things to be able to use on. So green is a content word. Pig versus is. Right? Pig. I can visualize it is. I can't. I use is to help people understand me. But if I just use is alone, you know, if I. If I'll come to you and say. If I come to you and say is be like, okay, hadar, what's up? And if I come to you and say pig, you'll visualize it, right? That. That is the meaning of content. Should versus run. Same thing. So content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Any questions up until here? Maria, I see that you have a question about new sound. I'm going to answer that. I'm going to mark it for myself and I'm going to answer it right after. Yes. What I'm teaching here is a very small part of the entire prosody sequence inside of new sound. So if this is interesting for you and you want to go deeper, then definitely new sound is going to address that. Other questions? Let's see. Okay, now, content words are usually stressed. Okay, this is great. He works at home. I'm waiting for you. Notice that in these phrases, the words that are in bold are stressed. They're content words. All the rest are function words. On the contrary, see how it sounds. If I were to stress all of them. This is great. He works at home. I am waiting for you. Sounds like a very, like a voice to text to speech system software from the 90s, right? So we don't speak like that. None of you do as well. Because you, you know, like, you don't have that in your first language as well. So the idea is that we want to create hierarchy when we speak. This is great. And the hierarchy is created by pitch and by rhythm. He works at home. Let's do it together. And you know, language is really rooted in music. So when you get lost, when you're not sure about something, when you feel like you can't hear it, then take out the words and just think of the melody. This is great. He works at home. I'm waiting for you. I'm waiting for you. Sounds robotic, right? I mean, not this. I'm reading comments. Sounds robotic. Like the previous example, where everything is stressed the same. Why robotic? Because it's not a human speech. A human speech intuitively stresses words. Now the thing is, it's easy when it's your first language, it's not so easy when you're trying to figure out the words and when it's not your first language so you don't know the rules and you really try to just get your point across. Okay, now, why do we emphasize words? Pretty straightforward. But I'm going to go through this really quickly to signal new or important information to the listener, to make our speech more varied. Because when it's varied, people pay attention. If it's the same again and again and again, it's going to be hard for people to pay attention because our brain shuts down or zones out when we hear the same pattern again and again and again. So back to how we stress words. How do we stress words? We change the pitch. Da da, da. We change the length. Da da, da da. Right. I'm stretching it and I'm also saying it a little louder. So pitch, length, volume. These are the three ways in which we stress words in English. And like we said, generally we stress content words. Don't get me started. Let's try it together. Don't get me started. By the way, if a sentence starts with don't, the don't is stressed. Don't get me started. You're a true friend. Two stress words, two content words. But notice that here as well, not both of them are stressed the same. Which word, in your opinion, is more stressed in this? In the second sentence, you're a true friend. Is it the word true or friend? You're a true friend. I'm going to move on to the next one, then come back to your answers. You should know better. You should know better. So here only no is stressed. You can also see it in bold. So a lot of you said true, and yes, true was stressed a bit more. No, I'm going to rephrase it. True was stressed more than you're a. But think about it. When I say it. Listen, I'm going to say it now in slow motion. You're a true friend. True friend. Friend goes a little higher in pitch than true, which ultimately kind of means that friend is more stressed. Now, there's another rule there. But again, listen, you're a true friend. How would it sound like if I were to just stress the word true? You're a true friend. There would be a bigger gap between the two. You're a true friend, not a false friend. You're a true friend. Usually. And that's the rule. You can even write it down. When there is an adjective in a noun like true friend, the noun is a bit more Stressed than the adjective. They're both stressed. So you got that right. But it just shows that maybe you need to listen to it even more closely to see that if something is a bit longer and higher in pitch, then probably it is more stressed. You're a true friend. Friend is higher in pitch and a little longer. All right. Okay. So friend was a bit more stressed. It's a great job. It's a great job. Job is more stressed. He's a tall person. He's a tall person. It's a great restaurant. It's a great restaurant. It's a great restaurant. The latter was just great. I stress the word great. It's a great restaurant. Not a bad one. Okay, can you hear this? Good? All right. Now, there is this thing called focal intonation. Focal intonation is when there is the obvious stress. I want to go and not stay, right? I want to go. Friends, I want to go. Go is stressed. But then if I choose to stress something else, right, that's called focal intonation, where I put the focus on the not obvious word. I want to go. Why are you saying that I don't want to go, I want to go? And that creates a more specific situation. So the words that we choose not only convey a message, but also specify the situation. I want to go. If you were to hear that, if someone were to say that to me, I might say something like, fine, I didn't say that you don't want to go. Right? That would be the response. If someone were to say to me, I want to go, like, okay, let's go See how my response has changed based on where we put the stress, where the intonation is. So the question is, how do you know what word to emphasize? Want or go? Now, this is. This could be intuitive. That's a very, you know, common sentence. But how do you. How do you generally know? How do you start practicing it? So does this rule nouns stress more than adjectives? This is a good question. So that would be the default neutral pronunciation. So, for example, Dan bought a new car. So we have new car. And inside new car, we have a noun and an adjective. And yes, noun is. The noun is going to be more stressed. However, there is this situation where if I want to say, Dan bought a new car, right? And I want to stress the word new, totally possible. But if I choose to do that and pay attention to what I'm saying here, if I choose to do something that is out of the ordinary, even though it's not really out of the ordinary, but let's Say the new car is the neutral pronunciation. When I change that, which could be very common, it means that I want you to pay attention more to what I've changed, because there is a reason why I changed it. Dan bought a new car again, even though he bought a new car five weeks ago. Right? So. Or Dan bought a new car, not an old car. Why do you think he bought an old car? So if it's not the noun, then we need to pay close attention to the circumstances or the situation, because maybe there is a meaning why the adjective is stressed. I want the blue jacket, not the white. I want a blue jacket. Great. Let's go and buy one for you. Or I have one at home. I can give it to you. So let's continue with the sentence, Dan bought a new car. When I saw it, I decided to buy the same car. So usually the last content word in a unit is stressed. So if we look at this sentence and we think of each unit, like of it as comprised of units, and units is either a full sentence or a sentence up until the comma or a part of the sentence. It's called a thought group or intonational unit or breath group within that group. The neutral intonation is when the last content word is stressed. Listen, Dan bought a new car when I saw it. Saw is the last content word. I decided to buy the same car. Dan bought a new car. When I saw it, I decided to buy the same car. Okay? Can you hear it? But like we said, sometimes we will stress a different word that serves the meaning better. Dan bought a new car. And when I saw it, I decided to buy a different car. Because I chose the word different. I wanted to emphasize different. And then it's not the last content word. So what I'm trying to teach you here, my friends, is. And I'm going to go to the board here. Look at the. Look at the. No, actually, I'm going to stay here for a sec. Good. Pauline, you can hear the lows and the. And the highs. Good. What I'm trying to say is that there is a rule, an unspoken rule that I'm telling you that that's how 80% of the people speak and what they do with their speech when they're speaking. Usually they emphasize the last content word of the phrase. Now, sometimes they can have more content words that are stressed if they think of, like, breaking it down into small units and sometimes a little longer. But if it's not the last content word, then pay attention. And when you are speaking, you know, and you don't know what to stress and how to stress. If you optimize, if you kind of, like, focus on stressing the last content word, you're going to do just fine. Like, this is a good rule of thumb for you to follow if you want to understand what to stress and how to stress and how to practice it. Okay. Could come back to some questions in a second. And let's go to Gina. We told Gina that we would meet her at the party. So how would you break it down into smaller units? What would be the units? Just write it down in the chat. Put slashes between or forward slash between units. I'm going to give you a sec. We told Gina we would meet her at the party. If you had to take small breaks in between, where would it be? Very good, maria. Very good. Junko. Now, this is an example of where we stress things that are going to be a little different. So if I think of, like, how to say it in a neutral way, I would say we told Gina we would meet her at the party. So if we look at how you guys divided it into three units. Yes, absolutely. We told Gina Gina is the last conduit word. We would meet her. Meet is the last content word at the party. Gina, meet, party. Gina, meet, party. We told Gina we would meet her at the party. And the reason why I would divide it into two, the. The second one and not like to three and not to two, is because when you are analyzing, especially when you're just starting out, it's better to divide it into smaller units, and then you can divide it into bigger units. So a unit is an idea. Usually a unit has one or two content words. We told Gina we would meet her at the party. That would be like, the most neutral way for me to say it. But if I choose to stress a different word, then the meaning changes a bit. We told Gina we would meet her at the party. Right. We told Gina we would meet her at the party. I don't know why she's not here. It. It suggests that the circumstances are a little different than when we say it in a neutral way. Okay. Is that clear? Good. Okay, so we have a question. So basically, the stress words will depend on the message we want to deliver. Bingo. That's exactly it. And I'm going to go one step further and say, and as a result, the intonation is going. And the intonation is going to be according to that. So first come, that comes the message that we want to say. Then what we do with our mouth to. To reflect that, to Signal that. And as a result, we have the melody and the rhythm. So if externally we're not comfortable with raising the pitch. And this is what I talk about when I talk about the voice and how important it is to. To know how to use your voice and your intonation so you're not flat, so you're expressive, because then you're able to deliver your message. But if your voice is locking you, it doesn't matter what the message is. It's going to. It's going to get stuck, right? It's not going to be fully expressed. So there is the thought and what we want to say, and then the choice of the right words to stress and then what we do inside our mouth to stress those words, right? And that the outcome is the melody that we hear. Now we're going to move on to function words and then we're going to analyze some sentences. Function words are words that have little meaning, unlike content words, and are the glue that holds content words together. So unfortunately, we can't just use content words, even though it would make all of our lives a lot easier. It would be very hard to go into the nuances of the language tenses, relationships between words, so on and so forth. So if we're looking at the sentence, Ann is reading a book on the sofa, the content words would be Ann reading book sofa. And if I had to divide it into word, into units, I would say an one unit only content words stressed is reading a book. We have two content words. And here I'll choose the second content word on the sofa. So, and book sofa would be the stressed words. And then everything around it, all those little function words that you see are reduced. So function words. And I'm going to come back, like, just explain it a bit more. What do I mean by reduced? Are reduced to a schwa. An is reading a book on the. On the. On the sofa. So the thing about function words that I want you to remember is more than it's. I need you to be. I want you to be accurate with the pronunciation of the schwa, with the reduction. It's okay if you say an or the, instead of the, even though it's just going to make it harder for you. It's about the rhythm. So even if you pronounce a full vowel in a reduced word, it is totally fine as long as you understand that it needs to go quickly before you get to the next word that is stressed. So hold that thought. I'm going to come back to it. Function words are articles, prepositions, Modals, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, and all of those small words that connect content words. Now, why do we reduce them? For the same reason that we don't want to stress every single word. Function words are there to serve our content words, and we reduce them to allow content words to stick out. Okay? So let's practice that sentence together. Ann's reading a book on the sofa. Ann's reading a book on the sofa. Ann reading book, sofa. Ann's reading a book on the sofa. See how I squeezed them in? I don't give the same importance to those function words as I do to the content words. Now, for those of you who are new to reductions and to schwa, reduction is when we change the vowel sound A, e, a, o, a in a function word to a schwa sound. A schwa sound is a very neutral and relaxed sound. Right? That's a. That's a schwa. So instead of in, you'll hear. Instead of what? You'll hear what? Instead of you, you'll hear y do duh of V. Okay? And this is why it's so hard to understand native speakers sometimes who use reductions and non native speakers who use reductions, because we are expecting to hear a certain sound, and when we don't, our brain is searching for a different word. The schwa, just so you know, is the most common vowel sound in English and appears in many unstressed syllables. So here are a few more examples of function words that are reduced can and from fr. M. Now, let's practice it in phrases. You can go. You can. I'm not saying you can go, you can go. So because I squeeze it, the vowel changes, which might sound confusing to some people who are not used to this reduction, but also it changes the rhythm. From you can go 1, 2, 3, we get 1, 2, 3, you can go. Or actually, more like 1, 2, 3, you CAN go. Call mom and dad. See how we reduced it? Mom and dad. Almost as if we try to kind of like just connect it to one of the words. Not even notice that. To not even notice that it's not. Call mom and dad. Call mom and dad. Fish and chips, rock and roll, bread and butter. He's from Japan. Okay, good. Now, actually, I'm going to hold on with that for a little bit. And I'm going to go to the. I'm going to go to the board right now. But before that, let me answer some questions here. If you have any questions until this moment before we go to look at a few examples, and I want you to write some examples for me to analyze for you. So feel free to write that. In the chat, Maria says Shakespeare is good for this. This is so true because Shakespeare and authors of his era used to write in iambic penthameter. Iambic pentameter is a certain rhythm where every line used to be composed of 10 syllables and every other syllable was stressed. That's the iambic pentameter. Now, every now and then, every now and then, he would change the rhythm, right? And then it's called a trochaic rhythm, where all of a sudden, instead of, you would hear. And that change of rhythm allows you to be like, oh, something's important here. So again, like, even in writing, it was used to deliver a message. Back in his time, there was no such thing as stage directions, Right? Now, when you write a screenplay, you write and you use stage directions and you write angry, sad, you know, like questioning, right? You write the feeling, the emotion that you want the actor to have. Back then, it was all by heart. They would learn the lines and that's it. It wasn't a written book that they would get. So the only way to give. To give these staging directions, the instructions for the actors was through the melody, right? Through the. The how he. He wrote it. If there is a rhythm, that means that maybe there is a break here, or maybe you need to go a little faster here. If there are more syllables in the. In the sentence, and maybe if there are a lot of consonants, the character is angry. Or maybe if there are a lot of vowels, that's the place for emotion. That means that the character is in pain. You can really hear and see those things. So this is why, Maria, you're very right. Like, we learn a lot about intonation and rhythm if we, you know, when we analyze such speeches. Okay, what else? Let's see. Naomi was asking about after hours. So, Naomi, I know that you joined New Sound in the first. First month of New Sound. I will be teaching past 5pm but generally, since I live. Since your evening is my middle of the night, then usually no. But inside of New Sound, it's going to be possible in the first week. First month. Okay, what else? They use the red materials as blood. As blood back then. True. Maria's. Maria's an actress. That's who I know for sure. Did you ask me a question earlier on? Anyway, someone asked me. Okay. I marked it and now I can't find it. Okay, Maria, please let me know if the 14 weeks course means that we will see here from you seven days a week. If this is only. Okay, so that's a good question. During New Sound, for those of you who are interested, all the lessons are recorded, but we have several live events every week. I coach you at least once a week. I do. I go live Q and like I do live Q and A's every two weeks or so. Two, three weeks. Every week you join me on a zoom call. I do sometimes live trainings like I'm doing now inside of New Sound. And in addition to that, you have a weekly practice group with. With the coaches and another coaching session with the coaches. So it's both. The core content is recorded so you can go through it at your own time. And then we have several live activities every week. So you get both and you can join whatever you prefer. So let me take you to the camera. I'm going to move you there. Hello, class. Now, the secret that I have to tell you is that I cannot really erase. Let's see if you can hear me, you can see me. Hello. Okay, so let me erase that. And it's going to take me a second to get it dry. So in the meantime, please give me some example sentences that you'd like me to analyze. Okay, so I'm going to give you the first example. I'm not happy. Can you see it. With. I'm already dividing it. Just because it's easier to write on the board that way with what you did. So we divided it to. I can't see your comments because it's all the way here. Hold on. Now I can see it. I'm not happy with what you did. So I already divided it into two units. In the first phrase, right? In the first unit, what would be. What would you stress? If we follow the rule of the last content word of the phrase, that would be happy, right? I'm not happy. Notice what I'm doing at the beginning. I'm not happy. I'm not happy. Not describes happy. Happy is stressed. Not as stressed, but not as stressed as happy. So the intonation is something like this. I'm not happy. Now, what you're hearing here is my rising, falling, rising intonation. That means that I'm stressing it by going up and down, but then at the end, I'm raising it a little bit up because there is something else coming up. I'm not happy versus I'm not happy, period. Do you hear this? I'm not happy. If I ended up. Ended it with this rising, falling intonation all the way to the bottom of my pitch. I'm not happy. Then it would feel like I'm saying this, but if I'm saying I'm not happy, I know that there is something else coming up. With what you did. With what you did. With what you did. So did gets the most emphasis then. You can definitely hear how it goes up and then down. With what you did. There is no lift here. Right? I'm not saying. With what you did and. Right, that's it. That's the end of the sentence. I could, but I don't have anything else to say. And here, look at those reductions. With what Y. Schwa, schwa, schwa. With what you did. I'm not happy. With what you did. Not happy. Did you. These are the stressed words. Not happy. Did. I'm not happy with what you did. Say it with me now. I want you to say it. And don't think of the meaning. Don't think of the content. Just think of the rhythm and think of the melody. Here. Can you see me here? Yeah. I'm not happy with what you. With what you did. Not happy with what you did. Now, if we want to get even fancier, you might hear people saying, with whatcha. Whatcha. Whatcha. I'm not happy with what you did. Why? Because when we connect and we connect all the words within the phrase, that's connected speech. What's connected speech? A phrase, a unit, a thought group, a breath group is connected. You connect one word to another. I'm not happy. I'm not separating it with what you did. So when we connect words together and we have a T and a y sound connecting. Not always. Usually in colloquial speech, in American English, the T and the Y becomes a new. Become a new sound, which is with whatcha, with whatcha. With whatcha. I'm not happy with what you did. Sorry. It is what it is. Okay, let's look at another example. Let me share with me a sentence that you'd like me to analyze. This is a horrible whiteboard, just so you know. And I need to use this, which is not this, like swipe. How do you call it? A wipe. Wiper. Wiping. Wipe, wipe. I forgot. Anyway, wipes. Wet wipes. Wet wipes. It's called wet wipe. Wet wipes. Okay. All right. You're not giving me any examples. I'm going to give you another one. When you're. You're visiting Mom, Tell her I'm going to call her later. Okay? Can you see it? Not ideal, but it is what it is. When you're visiting Mom. Right? Let's agree that this is one unit when you're visiting mom. Now look at what happens. Let's say I decide to do this, right? Stressing the last content word of the phrase, just so you know, following the rule of, like, what's not, what's neutral intonation. I could also decide to stress this when you're visiting mom, right? Stressing the word when when you're visiting mom. Which then the emphasis is more about not the fact that I want you to do it, but the timing of when I want you to do it. So it's so nuanced and ultimately in many cases, it wouldn't matter, really. But I want you to start hearing those differences and asking those questions. Because if you can't hear it, you can't say it, right when you're visiting mom. Okay? So when you're doing it, maybe in the past you have forgotten to do it. So I can raise the pitch here and create more interest when you're visiting mom, But I can also decide that it's the last content word when you're visiting mom. Your is reduced when you're visiting and then visiting. It is a, is a verb, but it's a. And it's a content word. Content word. Content word and content word. Right? These two are content words. But again, see how it makes sense that it's the last content word that is stressed and that when you're visiting mom instead of maybe when you're calling mom. So if I choose to stress visiting, I need to ask myself another question. If. If I stress mom when you're visiting mom, then it's. It's kind of like straightforward. It's obvious. I don't need to challenge it. I don't need to ask myself, okay, what did you intend to say? Because I'm using that neutral intonation where it's just the last content word when you're visiting mom. Tell her. Let's say this is another unit. Tell her one content word, one function word that I'm reducing when you're visiting mom, tell her I'm going to call her later. Okay, what happens here? What do we do with this? Going to turns into can you see me? Let's see the comments. Oh, I see a lot of good examples now. I'm going to. So going to ends up being gonna. That's a reduction of a very common phrase. I'm going to. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. Sometimes you'll hear this. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna call her later. I'm gonna call her later. Sounds like a reduction, but I actually dropped everything. I'm gonna. Now, I'm not. I'm not suggesting that you use that. I would totally say I'm gonna. That's what I do. I don't reduce it more than I'm going to, but I want you to be aware that people reduce it so much that sometimes that's what you're going to hear. Sometimes even that's what you're going to hear. I'm a. I'm a call later. I'm a caller later. Right. So you're reducing it. This is just a side note. As a listening exercise for now, we're going to do this. I'm going to. Gonna. Nothing to stress here. I'm gonna call her later. So if this is the entire phrase, if we follow the last content word of the phrase, then later is going to be the last content word. I'm gonna call her later. So we have a content word here, but this is a little. A little more stressed. I'm gonna. When you're visiting mom, up, down, up. Can you hear it, Mom? Mom. When you're visiting mom Teller, tell her you see that lift at the end versus Teller, which feels like I'm commanding you to do it. When you're visiting Mom. I hope you're doing it with me. When you're visiting mom Teller. I'm gonna call her later. I'm gonna call her later. Now, here's one more important thing I want you to remember. We're seeing a few content words here. Mom, tell. Call later. One more important thing to remember. And I'm gonna wrap up with that. Right? Yes. Because I have another Live in just a few minutes on Instagram, when you stress content words and you have a few, make sure that you don't hit the same note every single time. Let me. Let me give you an example. When you're visiting mom, tell her I'm going to call her later. When you're visiting mom, tell her I'm going to call her later. Because what I'm doing is I'm hitting the same note every single time. And as a result, what happens is that again, I sound monotone. So even though I already know that there is the hierarchy between content words and function words. So some are stressed, some are unstressed. Even within the content words, some words are going to be higher, usually the more stressed ones, and sometimes some words are going to be a little lower. Call later. Call later, Mom. Tell. Call later. But also to create this versatility, this musicality when you're speaking. So it's not always the same. Now, how do we do that? I'm going to move back to my computer and I'm going to tell you all about it. Camera. Bring it back. I don't know. I don't know if you were even able to see me properly because I couldn't see my. My camera. But what I'm trying to say is that this is a huge part of speaking. It's important to pay attention to it. It's important to understand that there is reason behind the madness and that you can practice it. Now, a great practice would be shadowing, speech analysis, things that we do. I have a bunch of videos online that help you with that. But what really helps is understand how it's all structured, understand those elements, understand how to raise your pitch right to stress a word. Because a lot of times it's just like, how do I even use my pitch? Maria is giving me that in a minute. I'm Anita. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I hear small reductions all the time from native speakers. So the thing is that, yes, start paying attention to reductions, but also start paying attention to what words are stressed. If it's the last content word in the phrase, and if not, why? Ask yourself why. Start challenging it, and then maybe you'll start noticing some nuances more in the conversation. And then also I want you to pay attention to the different notes of the stress words. I promise that when you pay attention and when you practice it, then you're able to do it. Now, I hope that gave you a little bit more clarity, because I know a lot of you have been asking me about prosody, so this is a little bit of the foundations of prosody. Now, of course, if you want to learn more and if now you're starting to understand what this is and how important that is for sounding compelling and persuasive and interesting, and it not only helps with your native language, but with English, but also with your native language. Then I'm inviting you to join New Sound because we have two full modules about prosody and a lot of live sessions that support you with that. And. And we are closing doors on Friday, so you still have a chance to join. And I'm gonna put the link here. As you already know, we only open. We're only open until Friday and we're starting on Monday. So if you are interested, go check it out. There isn't a lot more time. And in the meantime, please share with me in the comments and your questions and ideas about Prosody. I'm going to go now. I have a live interview with one of my students. You're invited to join me on Instagram with Tram. But if you have any follow up questions about intonation and or about new sound, feel free to write it in the comments and I'd be happy to answer it. And my team is here. They're going to be happy to answer it. Go watch the prosody module. The Prosody practice group with Jelena if you want to practice what we've learned right now, like you know, paying more attention to the melody because again, when you repeat it, you're able to notice it. This is why pronunciation is so important when we learn sounds and when we learn prosody. Thank you all so much for being here. It's been a pleasure and take care. I'm going to see you around later today I'm going to be live on my in my YouTube if you have more questions or you want to hear more about new sound. If you just joined us, we have a lot of new members who have not been inside the festival. So if you're watching this right now, know that this is happening later on today at 1:30pm Eastern time. Thank you so much everyone. Have a beautiful rest of the day and I'll talk to you soon.