Accent

From UniLang Wiki

The word accent is ambiguous. It can stand for the stressed part of a word, but also for the typical pronunciation of a certain region.

This page deals with stressing.

Accentuation can be used to discern words, but is also used for intonation. There was a discussion about this in the UniLang forum.

There are two main types of accentuation: stress accent and pitch accent.

[edit]

Stress accent

To create a stress accent the (pressure) intensity of the stressed syllable is increased. The stressed part of a word is actually louder then the unstressed part - loud in the sense of pressure rather than perception. This is the most common way of stressing in Indo-European languages.


[edit]

Pitch accent

Other languages, such as Japanese, have a relatively constant pressure intensity in speech, but they stress syllables by varying the pitch.


[edit]

Translations

  • German: Akzent m, Betonung f
  • Swedish: accent c, betoning c, tryck n
  • Dutch: accent n, nadruk c
  • Greek: τόνος (tónos) m

Back to phonetics glossary

Retrieved from "http://home.unilang.org/wiki3/index.php/Accent"
Personal tools