Some differences between English and Russian intonation
I’ve already written about why paying attention to intonation is important. You can read about that here. Now here are a few examples:
- there are two tones in Russian (falling and rising). Mostly, everything is simple.
- in English, there are (according to some) six tones (rise-fall, for example, and fall-rise). It’s fun =)
- in Russian, all stress words in a sentence are emphasized equally
- in English, there’s also a nuclear word that’s emphasized more strongly than the other stressed words
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All of these factors make Russian intonation generally flatter. The problem is that Americans use a flat intonation to express their dissatisfaction. And that’s what I was talking about in my previous article. And the British change their intonation even within individual words!
Shadowing helps to make the intonation in English more natural. I’ll write about the technique in the next few days
