English Intonation - Fun English Intonation Examples - Business English Success

In English, intonation can be used to change the meaning of sentences. This video takes a fun look at this, without ignoring the serious consequences.

What is intonation?
As in music, intonation is the melody, the way in which the tone varies in pitch and the way in which certain words or syllables are stressed or emphasised.

As a quick example, think about the word 'Hello' and the various different ways in which this one word can be spoken.

Think of how you would say this word when:

- greeting your boss
- greeting your best friend
- answering the phone
- approaching an attractive (wo)man you don’t know
- talking to a small baby

By all means say these out loud, so that the differences are really clear.

If you saw the sentence “I didn’t say you stole my money” in an email, how would you understand it?

This sentence can have seven different meanings, based on the intonation and which word is stressed.

This makes written communication so difficult. It's worth taking the time to makes sure that the reader understands what you write, in the way that you meant it.

Even when learning a new language, try not to neglect this important aspect.

It might even keep you out of jail and help you avoid telling the policeman “I didn’t burn down THAT house”

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About this video:
In this English learning video, Derek Smith from ESFORAY GmbH and Business English Success takes a light-hearted look at English intonation and gives examples.

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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

[wellnesswithinsolutions]

Looking more relaxed each video Derek. 😁

[MartaKeller]

It's amazing how intonation makes a difference in how we interpret what others say! Thanks for sharing!

[GregMichael]

Fantastic Video! Subscribed and will definitely check all your videos. I have been speaking English full time only for the last 14 years so there's still lots to learn. Thanks for posting!

[collegekitchen]

This is so true! This is exactly why we need to teach our kids to have conversations and not live their lives only through texts because it's really hard to tell the meaning behind some texts.