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2.5.- Weak and strong forms.

In English, there are words like determiners, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs which can have both a weak and a strong pronunciation unlike any other parts of speech like nouns, adjectives, adverbs and main verbs which have only one possible pronunciation. All words which have weak and strong pronunciation are monosyllables without any stressed syllable and are normally function words.

Muñeco haciendo muecas como de sorpresa.

Look at the difference between their weak and the strong form:

Weak and strong forms
WORD WEAK FORM STRONG FORM
A /ə/ /eɪ/
And /ən/ /ænd/
Be /bi/ /bi:/
Is /z/ /s/ /ɪz/
Of /əv/ /ɒv/
Than /ðən/ /ðæn/
The /ðə/ /ði:/

As you can see from the table, weak forms are pronounced with the English vowel schwa/ə/or with a short vowel /i/so they are very weak and sometimes very difficult to be heard properly in speech.

Strong forms are used in the following cases:

  • When the word is pronounced isolated.
  • When the word happens at the end of a sentence.
  • When we want to emphasize the word.

You should know

As the English vowel schwa /ə/ is so common in English, watch the following video which may help you to pronounce it correctly.

BBC Learning English: pronunciation of English vowel schwa. Text summary

A step ahead

For a complete list of weak and strong forms you can have a look at the following web page:

Weak and strong forms.

Ejercicio Resuelto

Click to read the Spanish translation.