We all lead complex lives in a complex world. Languages allow us to express a complex variety of meaning. And because sounds determine this meaning, you can guess that they will be complex as well.

Fortunately, there are only three features of speech sound that determine meaning:

• Rhythm (amplitude)
• Intonation (frequency/wavelength)
• Phonemes (timbre) 

In this lesson, we are going to focus on the most fundamental of these three features: Rhythm.

People who study speech (phoneticians) have many different approaches to learning speech rhythm. None of these are friendly enough for the average language learner.

That’s why we’re taking a simple but practical approach – The “Syllables” Approach.

Or if you prefer a clean 12 syllables, you may mispronounce my name like many people insist on doing 🙂

Syllables are the building blocks of speech, and they come in three general categories:

• Stressed Syllables
• Unstressed Syllables
• Silent Syllables

A Stressed Syllable is louder than the unstressed syllables around it. 

For example, the first syllable of the word “happy,” the “ha” is slightly louder than the second one “ppy.” You can even see this visually on the waveform below:

The “ha” is higher because it has a higher amplitude, i.e. “loudness.” 

In the same way, an Unstressed Syllable is quieter than the stressed syllable, such as the “ppy” syllable is in the word “happy,” or the first syllable – ‘i’ in the properly-pronounced version of my name – Idahosa (i-DOW-sah)

This silent syllable is just as important as the syllables before and after it and the removal of the silent syllable would make “hot-dog” sound strange to a non-native.

Take a mental bite of this distorted hotdog and let its foul taste be a bitter reminder to you of the importance of silence in speech rhythm.