标准美语发音的13个秘诀 CD 1 Track 18

（单词翻译）

Exercise 1-11: Translation                                                                      CD 1 Track 18

Take the sentence I didn't say he stole the money  and translate it into y our native language. Write it down below, using whatever letters or characters you use in your language. 

_______________________________ 

Now that you have written your sentence down, try shifting¹ the stress around in your ownlanguage by going through the stress patterns 1-7 in Exercise 1-9. Don't try to put on a particularly American or other accent; just c oncentrate on stressing a di fferent word in the sentence each time  you say it.  

For example, if your  language is German,  Ich habe nicht gesagt daß  er das Geld gestohlen hat,  you would change the stress to: Ich  habe nicht gesagt daß er das Geld gestohlen hat,  or Ich habe  nicht gesagt daß er das Geld gestohlen hat.  

If you translated it in to French, you would say,  Je n'ai pas dit qu'il a vole l'argent, or Je n' pas dit qu'il a vole l'argent. 

In Japanese, many people think that there are no intonation² changes,  but if you hear someone say,  wakkanai,  you'll realize that it has similar ities to every  other language.  Watashi wa  kare ga okane o nusunda to wa iimasen deshita. Or perhaps,  Watashi wa kare ga okane o nusunda to wa 

ümasen deshita.  

No matter how strange it may s ound to you, stress each different word several times in your language. You may notice that with  some words it sounds perfectly³  normal, but with other words it sounds very strange.  Or you may find that in  your language, rather th an stressing a word, you prefer to change the word order or substitute⁴ anothe r word. Whatever you do is fine, as long as you realize where your language patterns are similar to and different from the American English intonation patterns. Then, when  you do it again, in English,  it will be much easier.  

Note An  excellent exercise is to practice speaking your native language with an American accent. If you can sound like an American speaking your native language, imagine how ea sy it would be to speak English with an American accent.  

X  Pause the CD and  practice shifting the stressed wo rds in your native language. 

Intonation Contrast 

Below are two sentences—the first is stressed on the most common, everyday word,  book. Nine times out of ten, people will stress the sentence in this way.  The second sentence has a less common, but perfectly acceptable⁵ intonation, si nce we are making a distinction between two possible locations.  

Normal intonation        Where's the book ?  It' s on the table.  

Chang ed intonation    Is the book  on the table or  under it? It's  on the table.  

X  Pause the CD and  repeat the sentences.