As you’ve probably noticed, many of our students have a hard time mastering word stress. Some linguists even call this “stress deafness.” But do students really not hear anything?

After all, there are four aspects of stress:

1. volume (loud or soft)
2. length (short or long)
3. pitch (high or low)
4. vowel quality (full or reduced*)

Maybe our students hear some aspects of stress but not others? To find out, let’s take a look at how native speakers perceive stress and then compare it to how English learners from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – home to many of our students – do this.

*Note: ”Full” and “reduced” vowels are also known as “strong” and “weak” vowels.

Native Speakers

If you listen to a recording of the word “potato,” you’ll notice that the stressed syllable is longer, louder, higher in pitch, and has a full vowel sound.

For native speakers, the most important aspect of stress is “vowel quality” (whether a vowel is full or reduced). All stressed vowels keep the full vowel sound, while unstressed vowels often become reduced. For example, in “potato,” the first vowel is reduced: instead of saying “poh-tay-toh,” we say “puh-tay-toh.”

Vowel quality is so important that even if the length, pitch, and volume are correct, a native speaker may still not understand the word. For example, once a student was telling me about something's "per-pose." I had no idea what they were saying until I realized they were saying "purpose" (pronounced "per-puss") without reducing the unstressed syllable.

So vowel quality has the greatest impact on what native speakers detect as word stress.

Japanese Students

When Japanese people listen to pairs of words that differ only in stress (e.g. OBject and obJECT), they mainly detect differences in pitch. In other words, they hear that the first syllable of OBject is higher in pitch than the second syllable in obJECT.

This is because pitch is very important in the Japanese language. For example, the Japanese words for “bridge,” “chopsticks,” and “tip” only differ in their pitch patterns.

In addition, Japanese people can also detect differences in length and volume. They most likely hear length, because it is crucial to the rhythm of the Japanese language. For example, the words “toru” and “tōru” (with a long “o” sound) mean two different things: “to take” and “to pass.”

So Japanese students aren’t actually deaf to stress. At least when listening to words in isolation, they can hear three features of stress: pitch, length, and volume!

Korean Students

Just like the Japanese, Koreans mainly rely on pitch to hear stress. This can be explained by the fact that pitch is an important feature of the Korean language as well. Pitch differences mainly occur at the start of a Korean phrase, depending on the type of consonant sound that starts a word.

Since length and intensity are less important in the Korean language, Korean listeners are much less able to detect differences in these two aspects of English stress.

Taiwanese Students

Similarly, Taiwanese people also mainly think of stress in terms of pitch. This is because pitch is an important part of the tones in various Chinese languages spoken in Taiwan. (Speakers of Vietnamese, also a tonal language, detect pitch as well.)

However, the fact that Taiwanese people hear pitch doesn’t mean they hear it the way native speakers do. There are four tones in the Mandarin language, and when Mandarin-speakers hear stress, they think of it in terms of the first tone, which roughly corresponds to the pitch that English-speakers use when they say the word “ummm.”

For example, listen to this Taiwanese child reading out the ABCs, and you will hear that she uses a high, flat pitch to read out each letter, which sounds slightly foreign to most of us. That is because the child is applying the high, flat pitch of the first tone to English!

👋 That’s it for now!

To sum up, whereas native speakers rely mainly on vowel quality to hear stress, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin speakers of English mainly think of it in terms of pitch! Next time you encounter a student who struggles with stress, ask them to listen carefully to your pronunciation. Then, ask what differences they hear between the stressed and unstressed syllables.

Chances are, they’ll at least be able to hear differences in pitch! You can then help them hear the other aspects: length, volume, and vowel quality. Happy tutoring!