English is a stress-timed language. The rhythm of English is given
by the regular repetition of stresses; and however many unstressed
syllables there are between two stressed syllables, they will take
(more or less) the same time to utter. Try saying the following
phrases, keeping the same time interval between the two stressed
syllables:
STRESS Unstress STRESS
This is fun.
This is so fun.
This is so much fun.
This is ever so much fun.
Spanish and Italian are syllable-timed languages where the rhythm is
imposed by the regular repetition of syllables - in other words, each
syllable takes more or less the same time to utter.
Donna
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 21-Dec-07, at 12:02 AM, Raul Miller wrote:
But people speaking
spanish tend to speak faster than people speaking english
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