Ahh, the music of language.

We’ve all heard the phrase before, but many of us haven’t given much thought to what it actually means. Is it how words sound? The “flow” of a sentence? Or something more?

There are plenty of factors at work that can explain the musicality of a language, but today I’d like to focus on one in particular: The rhythmic stressing of syllables.

We’ll get into what that means in a second, but first, let’s cover a few basics.

In English, whenever we have a word with multiple syllables, one of those syllables will be stressed more than the other. This is always a vowel sound—never a consonant.

• Each word has at least one stress. This is called the primary stress.
• Some longer words contain another, secondary stress that is accented slightly less than the primary.

Just as it sounds, the primary stress dictates how the word is pronounced when spoken. You place more emphasis on the primary stress:

• CANdle
• TURkey
• CAMera

And so on.

It’s a simple enough idea, but starts to become prickly when you compare how we speak to how we write. When speaking, choosing which vowel to stress can actually change the meaning of a word.

Say the following out loud, if you please:

He gave me a present on my birthday.

Makes sense on paper and to our ear. The stressed syllable in this example is on the “pre-” sound.

Next, try reading that same sentence aloud with the stress on the other vowel sound: the “-sent.”

He gave me a present on my birthday.

What?

Another:

I signed the contract yesterday.

Or,

I signed the contract yesterday.

No dice.

So why do they change? In both examples, stressing the first vowel sound creates nouns, while stressing the ending vowel sound creates verbs. Obviously, this distinction only matters when words are spoken aloud, as written meaning must be inferred through context. Still, I find the concept stressing syllables absolutely fascinating, and writers can put it to work in some interesting ways. But, more on that in a minute.

Prosody Primer

The study of how words are stressed, and linguistic meter in general, is called “prosody.” This concept is at work all the time, sneakily acting in the shadows to add emotional weight and nuance to written phrases.

The crazy thing about this is that when it’s done right, you probably won’t even notice it. When people like the way a phrase sounds but can’t explain why, an effective pattern of stressed syllables is usually the reason.

But enough theory; let’s dig into some examples of syllabic stress in action.

The Magic Behind the Word

Consider the following lines from Disney’s classic “Beauty and the Beast.”

We all know the story. Our villain, Gaston, has just been rejected by Belle and is drowning his sorrows. His henchman, LeFou, tries to buoy Gaston’s spirits with the verse that we all know and love:

Gosh it disturbs me to see you, Gaston,

Looking so down in the dumps.

Every guy here’d love to be you, Gaston,

Even when taking your lumps.

It sounds pretty good, right? The phrases have an inherent rhythm, even without an accompanying melody to back it up. But why?

Sure, it rhymes, but the pattern goes deeper than that. It’s more about the rhythm created by syllabic stress. Let’s take a step back and look at it in terms of its syllables.

Here, I’ve taken the same verse and marked the stressed syllables in each sentence, as well as breaking up the syllables in each word to further illustrate the point:

Gosh it dis-turbs me to see you, Gas-ton,

Look-ing so down in the dumps.

Eve-ry guy here‘d love to be you, Gas-ton,

Eve-n when tak-ing your lumps.

To further illustrate this pattern, look at the meter when written out with S representing stressed syllables and U representing unstressed syllables:

S-U-U-S-U-U-S-U-U-S

S-U-U-S-U-U-S

S-U-U-S-U-U-S-U-U-S

S-U-U-S-U-U-S

Clearly, this structure didn’t occur by accident. This is prosody in action. When combined with a well-written melody that is aligned with these stressed syllables, high-impact verbiage is created that sticks in our heads for years.

And while “Beauty and the Beast” has some pretty memorable verse, an even better example can be found in Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

Let’s look at the play’s flagship song, “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”:

At-tend the tale of Swee-ney Todd.

His skin was pale and his eye was odd.

He shaved the face-s of gen-tle-men

Who nev-er there-af-ter were heard of a-gain.

He trod a path that few have trod,

Did Swee-ney Todd, The De-mon Bar-ber of Fleet Street.

And with our other pattern:

U-S-U-S-U-S-U-S

U-S-U-S-U-U-S-U-S

U-S-U-S-U-U-S-U-S

U-S-U-U-S-U-U-S-U-U-S

U-S-U-S-U-S-U-S

U-S-U-S-U-S-U-S-U-U-S-S

Interesting, isn’t it? More complex than our friends over at Disney, yet still following a structured pattern. It’s this formula that allows our ear to detect how the rhythm of the lyrics will likely play out, even without a melody behind them.

But Sondheim didn’t stop there. Consider the double impact of the phrase Fleet Street. By joining two stressed syllables with a rhyme at the very end of the verse, the words produce an auditory (and vicious) one-two punch that perfectly encapsulates the brutality of the story’s protagonist. Through his lyrical and prosodic choices, Sondheim is delivering information directly into our subconscious. Pretty cool, right?

But animated musicals and playwrights aren’t the only ones leveraging these concepts. You can hear the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in nearly every facet of music and language, from The Beatles to Shakespeare himself. The Bard is renowned for his mastery of the style, having composed the majority of his plays in various forms of iambic meter (iambic simply meaning a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables). The most famous of these, iambic pentameter, is one of the most common meters in all of English poetry.

The Music of Language

Examples of how syllabic stress can be used in writing are almost limitless. Although many people don’t think about it, or even realize it’s there, the chosen meter of each phrase can add subtleties of expression that words alone cannot.

In many ways, this is the “music of language” at work. Just as a well-written musical composition is more than the notes on the staff, a well-written bit of prose is more than just the words on the page. There are many factors at work.

You just have to listen.

Greg is a content curator from the Midwest who uses his words almost every day.