When you wish to ascertain how a friend pronounces some particular sound, do not tell him what this sound is, or he may pronounce it not naturally, but in what he believes, or has been told, is "the correct pronunciation."
Try to ascertain the pronunciation of these sentences: What are you going to do to-morrow morning? I'm going to answer letters.
Wasn't that: was is here in the strong form (§ 47); are weak forms found at the beginning of a sentence? Notice the syllabic [n]; also the simplification of the group of consonants by the omission of [t]. What is the weak form of that? When is it used?
The remaining words present nothing of special interest.
53. We may now consider the stress of the sentence. For this purpose it is sufficient to consider the most sonorous part of each syllable, generally speaking a vowel. We may distinguish stress and absence of stress, which we can designate by the signs / and ×; extra strong stress will be //, and secondary stress \. The first line of Sing a Song of Sixpence, will then run:—
// × / × // \
Here "sing" and "six" have the strongest stress; "song" has ordinary stress.
Secondary stress is given to that syllable of a word which is stressed, but has not the chief stress; thus the stresses in energetic may be written \ × / ×.
The nursery rhyme then shows the following stresses:—
// × / × // \
× // × / × //
// × \ × // \
// \ × //
// × / × // \
× // × / × //
// × / × // × /
× // × / × //