词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Pronunciation in American English

Broadcast on "Coast to Coast": April 24, 2003

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble and this week on WORDMASTER -- we answer some questions we've gotten about how to pronounce words in American English.

RS: We'll start with a question from an American expatriate in Thailand. Bob Wildman writes, "Listening to VOA helps me keep up with the current state of the American language." He tutors some students in English, so he gets a little worried when he hears things that clash with his own usage.

AA: Bob writes: "Where I come from (the Midwestern U.S.) the word 'protest' is stressed in the first syllable¹ as a noun and on the second syllable as a verb. Ditto for words like 'combat,' 'suspect,' and many others. But I frequently hear VOA newsreaders say something like: '500 people were PROtesting outside the U.S. Embassy' instead of '500 people were proTESTING outside the U.S. Embassy.' ... Is this first/second syllable stress distinction falling out of American English?"

RS: We checked with Dennis Baron², head of the English Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Baron says patterns of stress are indeed shifting with some pairs of words. Case in point: You can pro-TEST all you want, but often people will say "PRO-test" for both the noun and the verb.

AA: Another question -- Snowman, a listener in China, wants to know why the "p" in the word "spread" is pronounced like a "b." Professor Baron says this has to do with the nature of sounds that are "voiced" -- that is, they vibrate the larynx, versus³ those that do not.

BARON: "If you put your finger on your throat when you pronounce the 'p' and the 'b' sounds, you can actually feel the vibration⁴ with the 'b.' And what's happening in the word 'spread' is that the 'p,' which is without voice, it's voiceless, is picking up some voicing from the sound that follows it, the 'r' sound, and that's why it sounds to some people like a 'b.'"

RS: Here's a different example. Take the word spelled l-a-t-e-r. In natural conversation, English speakers do not pronounce it "lay-ter." They say "lay-der."

BARON: "It's almost like a 'd.' Pronouncing it with a very precise 't' sounds ... too correct."

AA: In other words, wrong. Professor Baron says this is why it's important to listen to native speakers -- whether in real-life, on radio or TV, or in the movies -- to hear how they pronounce words in the course of natural, connected speech.

BARON: "Schoolbook language learning tends to give you only a very limited slice of the language, and so the big focus on language learning now is to try to put yourself in natural language situations rather than artificial ones -- preferably interactive⁵ ones, so that you could actually be talking with a speaker of the language or writing back and forth⁶ to a speaker of the language, so that you're not simply an observer but are a participant in the interaction."

AA: "And I suppose what makes all of this harder is that there are no national, official rules for how you say 'in-SUR-ance' versus 'IN-sur-ance' or 're-SEARCH-er' versus 'RE-search-er.'"

BARON: "Exactly. We don't have an academy, we don't have a group of people who ratify⁷ or establish correctness."

RS: "The pronunciation police."

BARON: "We don't have the pronunciation police or anything like that. And as a result there's a concern to be correct, but there's also a sense that people don't want to be corrected. So it's a social issue, correctness, rather than a legislative⁸ one."

RS: "Exactly. And prejudice, of course ... "

BARON: "Prejudice can arise. There was a commercial, an advertisement [ad-VER-tis-ment] for a vocabulary improvement tape that they were trying to sell people, and the phrase that they used -- a very ominous⁹ voice comes on saying, 'People judge you by the words you use.'"

AA: "Well, not to judge you, but you said 'ad-VER-tis-ment' and yet I've always pronounced that 'ad-ver-TISE-ment' because that's how it looks."

BARON: "'Ad-ver-TISE-ment'? I would say 'AD-ver-tise-ment' or 'ad-VER-tis-ment."

RS: "Let's go on. I'm going to stop you two. (laughter)"

BARON: "And you're saying 'ad-ver-TISE-ment'? Talk about stress over stress!"

RS: Dennis Baron is a professor of English and linguistics¹⁰ at the University of Illinois and the author of several books. And that's Wordmaster for this week.

AA: Our e-mail address is [email protected] and we're on the Web at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 syllable   

n.音节；vt.分音节

参考例句：

• You put too much emphasis on the last syllable.你把最后一个音节读得太重。
• The stress on the last syllable is light.最后一个音节是轻音节。

2 baron   

n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王

参考例句：

• Henry Ford was an automobile baron.亨利·福特是一位汽车业巨头。
• The baron lived in a strong castle.男爵住在一座坚固的城堡中。

3 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

4 vibration   

n.颤动，振动；摆动

参考例句：

• There is so much vibration on a ship that one cannot write.船上的震动大得使人无法书写。
• The vibration of the window woke me up.窗子的震动把我惊醒了。

5 interactive   

adj.相互作用的，互相影响的，（电脑）交互的

参考例句：

• The psychotherapy is carried out in small interactive groups.这种心理治疗是在互动的小组之间进行的。
• This will make videogames more interactive than ever.这将使电子游戏的互动性更胜以往。

6 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

7 ratify   

v.批准，认可，追认

参考例句：

• The heads of two governments met to ratify the peace treaty.两国政府首脑会晤批准和平条约。
• The agreement have to be ratify by the board.该协议必须由董事会批准。

8 legislative   

n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的

参考例句：

• Congress is the legislative branch of the U.S. government.国会是美国政府的立法部门。
• Today's hearing was just the first step in the legislative process.今天的听证会只是展开立法程序的第一步。

9 ominous   

adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的

参考例句：

• Those black clouds look ominous for our picnic.那些乌云对我们的野餐来说是个不祥之兆。
• There was an ominous silence at the other end of the phone.电话那头出现了不祥的沉默。

10 linguistics   

n.语言学

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。