Unit 1 — Ancient civilizations › Words and sounds
Words and sounds: weak/strong ‘was’ and ‘were’, ‘ch’ and final ‘-ed’, stress shift
- تمييز الصيغة الضعيفة من الصيغة القوية للفعل المساعد was / were، وبيان متى تُستعمل كلّ واحدة
- نطق النهاية ed في الأفعال المنتظمة نطقا صحيحا، وتعليل اختيارك
- تحديد نطق الحرفين ch في كلمة لم تصادفها من قبل
- تصحيح إملاء الأفعال المنتظمة حين تُغيّر النهايةُ جذرَ الفعل
- الماضي البسيط والماضي التامّ للفعل be وللأفعال المنتظمة
- معنى المقطع المنبور، وأنّ الإنجليزية لا تنبر كلّ كلمات الجملة
- قراءة رمز صوتي بين شرطتين مائلتين
1. Weak and strong forms of was and were
Auxiliaries are almost never stressed in an English sentence: the meaning sits on the content words, so the auxiliary is squeezed and its vowel is reduced. That squeezed pronunciation is called the weak form. But an auxiliary can also be stressed — and then it recovers its full vowel: that is the strong form. The rule is not about the word, it is about its position and its stress. An auxiliary takes the strong form when it is negative, when it ends the clause, or when the speaker insists on it. Everywhere else it is weak.
| Word | Weak form | Strong form |
|---|---|---|
| was | wəz | wɒz |
| were | wə | wɜː |
| wasn't | — | wɒznt |
| weren't | — | wɜːnt |
A: When was Christopher Columbus born ? B: It was in 1451. A: Was he a Spaniard ? B: No, he wasn't. He was Italian. A: Were there many good Italian navigators and explorers in Columbus's time ? B: Yes, there were quite many. Amerigo Vespucci was one of them. America was named after him. A: Does that mean that Italian explorers were the only ones who explored North America ? B: No, they weren't the only ones. There were also Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, and British explorers.
Task 1 — How do you expect speakers A and B to pronounce the past forms of be ?Task 1 — How do you expect speakers A and B to pronounce the past forms of be ?كيف تتوقّع أن ينطق المتحاوران صيغ الماضي للفعل المساعد ؟
- « When was Christopher Columbus born ? » → weak /wəz/. The stress is on Columbus and born, not on the auxiliary.
- « It was in 1451. » → weak /wəz/. The new information is the date.
- « Was he a Spaniard ? » → weak /wəz/, even though it opens the question.
- « No, he wasn't. » → strong /wɒznt/. Two reasons at once: it is negative, and it ends the clause.
- « He was Italian. » → weak /wəz/. The speaker contradicts the nationality — not Spanish, Italian — so the stress falls on Italian, not on the auxiliary.
- « Were there many … ? » and « there were also Portuguese » → weak /wə/.
- « No, they weren't. » → strong /wɜːnt/, because it is negative.
Notice that not one of these choices depends on the word itself. The same was is weak in line 1 and strong in line 4 (« wasn't »). What changed is the stress.
2. The final –ed of regular verbs
A regular past ending is written the same way every time — –ed — but it is said in three different ways, and the choice is decided entirely by the last sound of the stem, never by its spelling. After /t/ or /d/, a vowel has to be inserted, otherwise the ending could not be heard at all: that gives /ɪd/. After a voiceless sound the ending goes voiceless too: /t/. After anything else — a voiced consonant or a vowel — it stays voiced: /d/.
| Ending | When | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| ɪd | the stem ends in t or d | permitted · dated · decided |
| t | the stem ends in a voiceless sound | developed · stopped · watched |
| d | the stem ends in a voiced sound or a vowel | studied · believed · turned · enjoyed |
Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) studyed Egyptian hieroglyphics. At the begining he thought that he could decipher this system of writing by useing the Coptic language from which he believeed Ancient Egyptian developped. But he was provd to be terribley wrong. When he realized that he was just lieing to himself, he stoped triing to decipher the hieroglyphics with the help of the Coptic language, and turnned to their study as an independent system of writing. The study of the Rosetta Stone, a slab of basalt with inscriptions datting from 196 B.C. permited him to discover the mysterys of the hieroglyphic system of writting in 1824. Champollion enjoied great popularity among his contemporarys. Today he is considerred the founder of Egyptology.
Task 1 — the eighteen correctionsTask 1 — the eighteen correctionsصحّح الأخطاء الإملائية الثمانية عشر في الكلمات المكتوبة بالخطّ الغليظ.
Three spelling habits explain almost all of them: a final y after a consonant becomes i (study → studied, mystery → mysteries) but stays after a vowel (enjoy → enjoyed) ; a short stressed syllable doubles its last consonant (stop → stopped, permit → permitted) while an unstressed one does not (develop → developed) ; and a silent final e is dropped before –ing (use → using, date → dating).
Task 2 — classify the –ed verbs of the textTask 2 — classify the –ed verbs of the textاستخرج الأفعال المنتهية بـ ed وصنّفها في الجدول حسب نطقها.
| Ending | Verbs from the text |
|---|---|
| ɪd | permitted |
| t | developed · stopped |
| d | studied · believed · proved · turned · enjoyed · considered · realized |
Only one verb takes /ɪd/, and it is the one whose stem already ends in /t/ — permit. That is the whole rule in one example.
3. The letters ch
The letters ch are said /tʃ/ in words English took from French or built at home, and /k/ in words it took from Greek. You cannot hear the origin, but you can often see it: a Greek word usually carries a Greek meaning — arch- as “chief” or “ancient”, -ology as “study of”.
Task 3 — the two columnsTask 3 — the two columnsصنّف الكلمات حسب نطق الحرفين ch.
| Sound | Words |
|---|---|
| tʃ | church · coach · arch · archer · archway · archduke · artichoke |
| k | archives · architect · architecture · alchemy · archaic · archipelago · archetype · epoch · archaeology · Archimedes · archangel |
Watch the trap: archer is /tʃ/ but archangel is /k/, though both begin with the same four letters. Archer comes from the Latin arcus, a bow ; archangel from the Greek arkhi-, chief. The spelling is the same, the ancestor is not.
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