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12 Weak forms

Chapter 9 discussed the difference between strong and weak syllables in English. We have now moved on from looking at syllables to looking at words, and we will consider certain well-known English words that can be pronounced in two different ways, which are called strong forms and weak forms. As an example, the word ‘that’ can be pronounced óaet (strong form) or Ó8t (weak form). The sentcnce ‘I like that’ is pronounced ai laik óaet (strong form); the sentence ‘I hope that she will’ is pronounced ai haup óet Ji wil (weak form). There are roughly 40 such words in English. It is possible to use only strong forms in speaking, and some foreigners do this. Usually they can still be understood by other speakers of English, so why is it import ant to learn how weak forms are used? There are two main rcasons; firstly, most native speakers of English find an ".111 sirong łonu” pronunciation unnatural and foreign-souiuling, soinething that most learners would wish to avoid.

Si a i mdły, and morę importantly, speakers who are not familiar willi ihe use <>f weak forms are likely to have difficulty imderstanding speakers who do use weak forms; sińce practically all native speakers of British English use them, learners of the language need to learn about these weak forms to help them to understand what they hear.

We must distinguish between weak forms and contracted forms. As is well known, certain words are shortened so severeły (usually to a single phoneme) and so consistently that they are represented differently in informal writing, e.g. ‘it is’ -‘it’s’; ‘we have’ — ‘we’ve’; ‘do not’ - ‘don’t’. These contracted forms are discussed in a later chapter, and are not included here.

Almost all the words which have both a strong and weak form, belong to a category that may be called grammatical words - words that do not have a dictionary meaning in the way that we normally expect nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to have. These grammatical words are words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, eu all "I which are in certain circumstances pronounced in t lir 11 •amii|- h»im . Imi

wliu li ii i ....... Ii< i |ii« 1111 y pronounced in their weak forms. It is

iinpori.ini i«• u nu inlu i ili.u there are certain contexts where only i Ik mkmg form is acceptable, and others where the weak form is i lic normal pronunciation. There are some fairly simple rules; we can say that the strong form is used in the following cases:

i) For many weak-form words, when they occur at the end of a sentence. For example, the word ‘of’ has the weak form av in the following sentence:

‘I’m fond of chips’ aim 'fond ev 'tjips but when it comes at the end of the sentence, as in the following example, it has the strong form dv:

‘Chips are what I’m fond of’ 'tjips 0 'wot aim 'fond

Many of the words given below (particularly the first nine) never occur at the end of a sentence, e.g. ‘the’, ‘your’. Some words (particularly the pronouns numbered 10-14 below) do occur in their weak forms in finał position.

ii) When a weak-form word is being contrasted with another word, e.g.:

‘The letter’s from him, not to him’ 60 ¹ let0Z 'from im not 'tu: im

A similar case is what we might cali a co-ordinated use of prepositions:

‘I travel to and from London a lot’ ai 'traevl 'tu: on 'fram 'lAndan 0 'lot

iii) When a weak-form word is given stress for the purpose of emphasis, e.g.:

‘You must give me morę money’ ju 'mASt 'giv mi 'mo: 'rmni

iv) When a weak-form word is being “cited” or “ąuoted”, e.g.:

‘You shouldnT put “and” at the end of a sentence’ ju 'Jodrnt pot 'aend 0t ói 'end 9v 0 'sent0ns Another point to remember is that when weak-form words whose spelling begins with ‘h’ (e.g. ‘her’, ‘have’) occur at the beginning ol .1 sentence, the pronunciation is with initial h, even though this is oinitled in ot her contexts.

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