JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Mentor Questions Forum May be a stupid question, regarding emphasis

Is there such a thing online as a dictionary that shows with words where the emphasis would be on the spoken English word?

I am having a bear of a time trying to learn more about emphasis and where it is sometimes. Sometimes I hear it clearly, sometimes it's not as obvious. . I can be told over and over the ta dum ta dum, but this is still not doing it for me, it is like greek to me for some reason, I can not grasp it as well as I need to.
any suggestions?
anyone else ever have trouble with this?

KIM

Not stupid at all, Kim.

Actually, any decent dictionary will show where the words are emphasised. You can also google for pronunciations. For instance, google "how to pronounce hydrofoil'. Here's a link to a site where you can search for pronunciations.
http://www.howjsay.com/

And as an aid to creating vocal melodies with the emphasis on the appropriate words, Pat Pattison has a wonderful video on natural phrasing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x--VgC0_UI&feature=channel

I can really recommend it. So many songs are spoiled because the wrong words are emphasised, e.g. prepositions rather than the nouns, and the sense and significance of a lyric and individual words are weakened. Basically lyrics should be sung pretty much the way they'd be spoken and emphasised in conversation.

Donna

Kimberly, there are no stupid questions. Only stupid answers, I hope this isn't one.

Most dictionaries give pronunciation keys. I'll use the word "Carolina" as an example from the free dictionary

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Carolina

As I pronounce it, the main accent is on the "i" and there is a secondary accent on the "Car" notice how the dictionary uses a strong apostrophe looking thingy on the i and a thinner apostrophe looking thingy on the car? That's how you determine the stresses. Different dictionaries may use slightly differing methods. Some will put the accent mark before the syllable. Some will only stress the main accent. The Free Dictionary is good about giving secondary stresses.

I hope that helps...and is not stupid.

Mike

I believe most dictionaries will show the emphasis with either bold font or capital letters on the syllable that should be emphasized. www.thefreedictionary.com does it with bold fonts. If you want to learn how to pronounce words then I would take a look at the phonetic alphabet (and avoid thefreedictionary.com because they use a very odd pronunciation thing).

I took a linguistics class in college and we used one. The only link I can find is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

and it seems to be FAR more complicated than I remember.

Summary - look for the bold or capitalized syllables!!

Thanks to each and every one of you for your in-depth information and mostly your kind responses.

One more question to clear things up for me a bit more.

I have been looking up words, word by word, as I am working on a song where I am trying very hard to do the correct emphasis on words..and place them correctly to do a song with emphasis pattern of
4,3,4,3...


Now, when there is a sentence, can I still go by what the dictionary says on that specific word or does being in a sentence or the placement in the sentence change anything?

So far all the one syllable words are not in bold, so does that mean one syllable words are always left unemphasised in a sentence......?
Does stressed syllable and emphasised mean the same thing? Is it different in speaking than in singing?

I am so mixed up


Sorry to be so uneducated in this...man, I have forgotten all this since school...

Kimberly

Don't feel bad, Kimberly. I never learned it in school. I just go by how it sounds and play it by ear. I can't even figure out what you folks are talking about.

'Course I'm not a singer either.

I knew this would come in useful one day!

emphasis

my feeble attempt to make a joke about the emphasis within the word emphasis

Just to deliberately confuse things, there will be exceptions to what the dictionary says.

Sometimes in a particular vernacular or style, the emphasis could be different. The phrasing should feel "natural" -- but what is natural can vary.

I was advised that there are some vowel sounds that take up extra syllables in country writing, for instance.

Kim,

The emphasis on a word should usually line up with a beat in the song. Many lines can be sung a number of ways and the singer/writer will usually phrase the line to fit with the beat. I saw an example where someone sang the word wheelCHAIR with the emphasis on the chair because it lined up with the beat, but that is not how we pronounce the word so it sounded odd or forced.

Think about the first line of the Beatles Yesterday....sing and tap your foot.....

YESterday, ALL my TROUbles SEEMed so FAR aWAY.....the emphasized syllables fall on the beats of the rhythm.....and the words are emphasized the same way we would say the sentence in everyday speech. It would be possible to fit the words to the same music with the emphasis elsewhere but it would not sound right.

The trick is to write the lyrics so that the emphasis and the music fit together properly. Not sure you get that from a dictionary - just gotta feel it!

Emphasis is very important. I immediately notice when a song uses the wrong emphasis to make a word work with the music - bad move. To me it is a sign of third rate song writing. (Exceptions exist of course - I know that Taylor Swift uses the wrong emphasis for "funny" (she sings funNEE) in one of her songs but I don't like it there even if it is her).

Tom

I'm with you on correct emphasis, Tom. I've heard so many nice songs spoiled because words have been pronounced incorrectly/unconversationally just so they'll work with the music.

Here's a good video from Pat Pattison on preserving the natural shape of language in songs. It touches as well on placing emphasis on the important words (e.g. not on prepositions, unless justified).

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid23873432001?bclid=23842339001&bctid=23935489001

Donna

Hi Kim

The thing is, if you speak a language you already know where the correct emphasis is (or should do), but I suspect the question relates more to what you can get away with as a songwriter. The bottom line is, does it sound forced? If the emphasis is wrong it may grate in much the same way as a forced rhyme. However, one of the great things about being a songwriter is that you can mess with the form and sometimes emphasising the wrong bit can strengthen your song.

For example if you take the word ‘yesterday’ – Paul McCartney sings it fairly straight (i.e. you would say it that way) in the song of the same name. However if you take Stevie Wonder’s Yester-me Yester-you Yesterday he puts the emphasis very much on the ‘day’ part, otherwise his hook wouldn’t work nearly as well. Now I don’t expect anyone to go around using the SW emphasis in normal speech, but it works brilliantly for the song.

Nige

Thanks guys, I guess it is something that may come more naturally once I do it more often..I hope..

Kim

Kim, I believe that the issue is not on the emphasis but on the emotions of the words the music conveys.
Poetry and pros live in two different worlds, what is right for one may not be for the other.
How a father tells a child, "I love you" and how a lover tells the story of love to their lover is quite another.
A song or poem is a short story of something very intense and personal or extremely impersonal.
Why does one word in a song make you cry and in another make you laugh.
Pink Floyd "On the Turning Away", if you've never heard it , get the lyrics and read them in as many ways as you can think of. Read them in anger, in fear, in loathing and indifference then listen to the song.
Just a point or two to ponder, Wyndham

You guys have covered it well. May be a case of too much information though.:)
I'm with Donna Tom and maybe some others--Hesring a word stressed unaturally in a song, especially at the end in order to "Force it into meter or rhyme " just kills me. Right, some big names will do it sometimes but that's just cause THEY can get away with it.
I will add to the info overload, that it depends on what part of the country someone comes from on how the word is pronounced.
When I was in OK I was checking out at this restaurant and commented on the nice weather and the girl said. yeah but it's supposed to get Nay' esty stressed and pronouned like that, I actually couldn't understand what she said and asked her again. Then I understood she was saying the weather was going to get nasty. It sounded just fine to her I'm sure, she just had the heavy OK brogue.
Speaking of brogues, I love to her a REAL Irishman sing with the heavy brogue. The Irish album I was lucky enough to get a song on, (Good Irish co writers.Thanks Char and John),most people couldn't understand the biggest part of the words without the lyric and most of them were regular English words.
Scuse the novel but it's a slow day on the boards--Down with
B T!!!
Wy

Just to throw a spanner in the works dialects and accents can often have different ways of pronouncing words and some words in different accents/dialects have different ephasis points. It is also true that some sentences can have different emphasis on diff words to display diff emotions.
Eats shoots and leaves....LOL
or two letters exactly the same but are they?
Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?
-Jill

OR perhaps she maybe meant to say the same but with different emphasis and pauses.
Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn! For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,Jill

Ouch, what the interesting thread, I missed it before but now have something to tell you and ask .
Look at this line of a lyrics:

"Always so polite and nobody’s fool"

Is it possible to do this emphasis: 'polite
or only this is right:: po' lite?

This is a line from my first song co-written with a lyricist from London Joel Rockman
and there is a story behind a demo of this song.
Once finished a song we begun to find a demo service in UK...and I found it after
our unhappy search (all the services asked too much for a demo) and more -
Pete (studio owner and singer) and Joel co-worked on demos almost 20 years ago.
Well, I sent everything I had ( midi demo, sheet music and lyrics) to Pete and 2 weeks
later he sent me a demo (as well as to Joel).
Just 2 hours later Joel called me with angry statement: " They don't know English!!!
Emphasis in word "polite" should be on a 2nd slab not on the 1st"
I thought: "What is a difference?" (ha-ha)
Well, Pete rerecorded a song in the same day with a right emphasis,
you can hear it there:

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10617089

What thoughts about all this?

Alek, if the song had been country, you might have gotten away with polite, as I believe it's pronounced this way in some areas of the US (in vernacular speech).

But the correct pronunciation is with the accent on the second syllable: polite.
Here's a link you can check out for the pronunciation of various words.
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/british/polite

Donna

I think it's fine as you have it here. In that particular arrangement you are running at over 140bpm so both 'po' and 'lite' fall on beats. 'Polite' is the sort of word that could work as po-lite, po-lite or equal stress po-lite.

Just to throw another spanner in the works the accent on polite changes depending on different dialects. There is no real correct pronuciation.
Nigel is right it would not be out of place and perfectly OK to use all three stresses.....
PO-lite..... po-LITE.......PO-LITE.

Jim, DonnaMarilyn and Nigel, thanks for your time, well, we could leave a demo as it was with an emphasis on the 1st slab cuz it's more suitable for melody line.

Isn't it nice to have three different but equally correct answers?

The bottom line - at least for me - is that context is important. In the case of this song, I'd stress the second syllable, since it's the more common pronunciation and there's nothing in the lyric to suggest it's regional.

On the other hand, Nige makes a good point about the tempo and the beat falling on both syllables.

Donna

To add with something.. I think Bob Dylan is a master of emPHAsis. A dictionary may take your so far, but emphasis is also a highly creative and interpretive thing, that can carry meaning in itself. For that kind of creative use, Bob is the MAN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZgBhyU4IvQ

That is a fine and funny example of the correct use of punctuation.......an art which is in rapid decline.

With regards to appropriate punctuation. The example my dad always used was:

King Charles walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off.

I'll let you work out where the comma should go

If talking about singing a song?: Whatever sounds and feels best, for any word. Be instinctive about that, so to focus work on all other aspects of songwriting and performing. Just go by what sounds good!

Sometimes, saying a word different can be effective in it's line. If it works, (sounds great),,,,use it!

Hi Kim:

Looks like you've drawn us "out of the woodwork" on this interesting thread. Emphasis is important... but sometimes, to make the song work, ya hafta cheat a little. I don't recommend straying too far from the "King's English" but if it ends up sounding right... and it takes off on the charts... it'll be okay... LOL!

Thanks for being "unafraid" to ask a question you feel might bring you those sneering, snobbish, condescending answers. No question is dumb when you need an answer. You know how men tend to be when we are driving and get lost... gee whiz, I've wasted alot of gasoline because of foolish pride. Navigator indeed!