Re: Strong and weak sounds in verbs????

Novalee — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:21:06 GMT

Some words, not only verbs, that are used a lot in speaking, have one weak sound and one strong sound.
Weak forms are used in 'connected speech', that is, when you are having a normal, everyday conversation or when they are in the middle of a sentence.
For example, the weak form of the verb 'have' is /hev/ or /ev/, e being the unstressed sound called 'swcha' (usually written as an inverted 'e'), which you can hardly hear. This form is mostly used when the verb 'have' is functioning as an auxiliary verb as in They have been doing the hovering or in sequences such as should have, could have, would have.

Strong forms are normally used when we say a word isolated from speech with an emphasis on the vowel. These forms are used by native speakers of English when talking to a foreigner, for example, or in questions.
The strong form of 'have' would be /haev/ (the ae symbol is the standard short 'a' sound).

Modal verbs usually have these two forms. But, negative forms of these verbs only have a strong pronunciation, for example aren't, can't or won't.
Words that also have strong and weak pronunciation are: he, his, she, her, is, are, some, a, an, the, of, for, and or to.

There are many more examples. In any pronunciation dictionary you can find the weak and strong forms of a particular word, if it has both forms, that is.

Hope it helps.

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Re: Strong and weak sounds in verbs????