Stress-timing, syllable-timing and mora-timing - what’s the difference?

When thinking about the pronunciation features of different languages, a common distinction is often drawn between ‘stress-timed’ and ‘syllable-timed’ languages. These two language groups make up the majority of languages in the world. The traditional definition of stress-timing and syllable timing relates to how the rhythm of speech is controlled - in stress-timed languages, the rhythm is governed by stressed syllables, with unstressed syllables appearing between the ‘beats’ of the language as it is spoken. By contrast, syllable-timed languages carry approximately equal stress on every syllable, and the rhythm is therefore more regular, with no (or much less) distinction between the strength of each syllable as it is pronounced.

Some examples of stress-timed languages are: English, Arabic, Thai, German, Dutch, Russian and most Scandinavian languages.

Some examples of syllable-timed languages are: Mandarin Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Turkish and Korean.

Stress-timed languages

By the above definition, stress-timed languages such as English, have a rhythm which acts across strings of syllables, and strong syllables are produced at regular intervals, with weak syllables filling the gaps between them. This means that weak syllables must be produced at different speeds, to maintain the same rhythm, despite there being different numbers of syllables between each ‘beat’, for example, in the sentence:

“I looked for them everywhere, but I couldn’t find my keys”

Stress tends to fall on the strong syllables in content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), as follows:

“I looked for them everywhere, but I couldn’t find my keys”

 Other words in the sentence would be unstressed, and act as ‘fillers’ for the rhythm. If we break this down into syllables, with O being a strong syllable, and o representing a weak syllable, this sentence becomes:

o O o o O o o o o O o o o O

In a stress-timed languages, as the rhythm is maintained as a regular ‘beat’ on the strong syllables, there must be an approximately equal length of time between each strong syllable. As the same interval is filled by 1, 2, 4 and 3 weak syllables as the sentence is spoken, these weak sequences of words need to be spoken faster or more slowly, to maintain that same equal rhythm.

However, it is not easy to produce so many syllables quickly enough to pronounce everything fully in this time space of time. The words in the 4-syllable chunk ‘very-where, but I’ in the above example, contains five different vowel sounds and 5 consonant sounds. This is almost impossible to achieve if all sounds are pronounced fully and completely - the muscles in the mouth are not quick or agile enough to do this without slowing right down, and potentially compromising the message being spoken, or losing the chance to speak in an interaction.

In order to be able to produce syllables quickly enough to squeeze four, five or more complex syllables between each strong syllable, the amount of effort and mouth movement needs to be reduced; the less effort, and the simpler the mouth movements required, the quicker speech can be produced. In stress-timed languages (especially English), this compensation strategy is shown by the use of ‘weak forms’ - vowel sounds which act as low-effort placeholders for more complex, effortful sounds. The ‘u’ sound /ʌ/ in ‘but’ from the above weak chunk, when spoken quickly, is reduced to a less effortful schwa sound /ə/. In fact, most vowels spoken at speed can be reduced in this way, either to schwa or to other simpler sounds such as /ɪ/. 

Syllable-timed languages

By contrast, a syllable-timed language such as Japanese carries approximately equal weight on all syllables, as in:

Watashi wa hanbāgā ga sukide wanai (I don’t like hamburgers)

Which would be timed as:

o o o o o o o o o o o o o 

The lack of strong or weak syllables means that there is no need to speed up or slow down when pronouncing the sentence - each vowel sound can be produced as its full form, as the rhythm does not depend on an overarching ‘beat’ or regularity, other than the production of the syllables themselves.

However, is this distinction enough to classify all languages into two groups? In fact, rather than being a strong distinction between two types of language, the timing and rhythm of different languages falls onto a much more complex scale, with some very strictly stress-timed languages (such as English) at one end, and very strictly syllable-timed languages (such as Japanese - see below) at the other.

This scale of timing can be heard when listening to Italian, a syllable-timed language, which nevertheless requires speakers to add prominence to certain syllables, lengthening them or adding pitch or volume to highlight their importance to the meaning of a sentence. This is a similar feature to what we saw above in the English example, where content (important) words carry stress, and structural (less important to the direct message) words are weakened. However, in Italian, there is no weakening of sounds between emphasised syllables, and there is no regular rhythm acting across the emphasised vowels, for example, in the sentence:

Non mi piacciono gli hamburger (I don't like hamburgers)

Stress might fall on the key syllables to meaning:

Non mi piacciono gli hamburger

And could be shown as

o o o OO o o OO o o

With the stronger OO syllables showing emphasis through length and volume. The time interval between the strong syllables may vary, as this is not the mechanism which controls the rhythm of speech.

So this is an example of a syllable-timed language showing features of stress-timing. Listen to French being spoken, and you will hear the same thing, with lengthening or higher pitch used for emphasis, but without the use of weak sounds to maintain rhythm.

Thinking about the lists of stress-timed and syllable-timed languages above, and their varying types of sound, features of rhythm and pace, it is difficult to place all of these ways of speaking into two such distinct categories. It is perhaps more useful to highlight features of stress-timing and features of syllable timing, which can help us to work with learners from these diverse language backgrounds, on areas of English phonology which might be a particular difficulty for them.

Mora-timed languages

A third distinction can be made out of the syllable-timed language features of Japanese. Japanese syllable structure is so systematic that it falls into a separate category of ‘mora-timed’ languages (along with Ancient Greek and Old English). In Mora-timing, each syllable is produced with nearly exactly the same length, though there is a distinction between ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ syllables, which have the same length. ‘Heavy’ syllables cannot be said to be ‘stressed’ as they do not necessarily differ in length or pitch, and their ‘light’ forms contain exactly the same sound features as their ‘heavy’ forms (unlike stress-timed languages, which have strong and weak forms which sound different, and syllable-timed languages, where emphasis is shown through a change of length, pitch or volume on certain syllables).

Implications for English language learners

The intricacies of the English stress system are not intuitive for speakers of languages from any of the timing backgrounds we have looked at. Even speakers from stress-timed language backgrounds will not automatically know the sound patterns of weak forms or connected speech. For this reason we need to incorporate work in these areas into our teaching explicitly, alongside the more traditional direct teaching of grammar, vocabulary etc.

Suprasegmental patterns of pronunciation (stress, connected speech, intonation) are language systems, and have patterns of use just like grammar and vocabulary do. As a result, pronunciation features can be taught directly using similar methods to vocabulary or grammar, though with a focus on sound patterns rather than structural patterns or patterns of meaning. The standard Present-Practice-Produce lesson framework is equally useful for teaching patterns of pronunciation as it is for other language systems, and the same communicative tasks and methodologies can be applied to pronunciation.

By taking time to plan classes focusing on the specific sound patterns that your students struggle with, you can work to meet an important need in your students’ language. Looking at word and sentence stress as a specific, discrete language system can highlight specific areas of need, and help students to work on their pronunciation in a more focused and critical way.

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