What Is a Stress Timed Language?

A stress-timed language is a language where the stressed syllables are said at approximately regular intervals, and unstressed syllables shorten to fit this rhythm. Stress-timed languages can be compared with syllable-timed ones, where each syllable takes roughly the same amount of time.

How English is a stress-timed language?

English is a stress-timed language. That means some syllables will be longer, and some will be shorter. Many languages, however, are syllable-timed, which means each syllable has the same length. ... When you give us nice shape in your stressed syllables, you're giving us the meaning of the sentence.

What is stress timing in English sentence?

The English language is often referred to as stress-timed. This means that stress in a spoken sentence occurs at regular intervals and the length it takes to say something depends on the number of stressed syllables rather than the number of syllables itself.