Name: Word Stress: 1 Sentence, 7 Different Meanings!
Uploaded: 2025-07-23T17:53:19.000Z
Duration: 4 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Hey, my name's Ronnie, and I'm going to teach you a really important lesson today, so stay glued to your YouTube or your phone.

This is sentence stress or emphasis of certain words in a sentence.

So depending on what word we stress or emphasize, it's going to actually change the meaning of the sentence.

So, the flow or the intonation of an English sentence, you have to be careful about this and learn how to do it.

If I take this sentence, for example, I never said he ate my cookie.

I've said that with a very straight, flat intonation.

I don't give one or more words more emphasis or stress than the other.

So, generally, you get the idea that, yeah, okay, well, the cookie, someone took Ronnie's cookie, but if I say I, if I emphasize the first subject, I never said he ate my cookie.

So if I emphasize here, it means someone else said that he ate my cookie.

Now, if I emphasize the word never, I never said he ate my cookie.

If I put the stress or the emphasis on the word never, it's suggesting that that is not even in my style to talk about things.

Maybe I texted it to you or I sent you an email about it, but I didn't verbalize it.

So, if I emphasize the verb here, we can play with the verb.

This is how to be snarky with people and win arguments.

If I put the emphasis on the person here, I never said he ate my cookie.

I'm telling you that somebody else did it.

He could have took my cookie or maybe touched it or took a little nibble, yum, yum, yum, little bite out of the cookie, but I didn't say he actually ate it.

So, he could be a dirty little cookie monster, and he could have eaten someone else's cookie.

I'm saying that he ate a cookie, but I didn't say it was mine, so I'm emphasizing whose cookie was it?

So, he ate something else, but it definitely wasn't my cookie.

He ate something else of mine, maybe, but it definitely was not my cookie.

When you're learning the intonation of sentences, be very careful where you put the stress on each word, because you're going to convey different meanings with each emphasis...

So, if you struggle with this, go down to the comments, leave me some examples, and I'll let you know if you're on point with that or if you've got it.