Which language is described as a stress-timed language in the material?

• A. English
• B. Spanish
• C. Japanese
• D. Chinese

Answer: (A)

A stress-timed rhythm means speech is paced around stressed syllables that arrive at roughly regular time intervals, while unstressed syllables vary in length or are shortened. English fits this pattern because many function words and weak vowels in unstressed syllables are reduced (think the vs. a, or to in fast speech), so the rhythm is built around the timing of stressed content words. This creates a beat-like cadence where the key beats come from the stressed syllables rather than every syllable taking the same amount of time. In contrast, languages like Spanish tend to have more evenly timed syllables (syllable-timed), and Japanese and Chinese are typically described as mora-timed or syllable-timed, not stress-timed.