MOOD AND PERSONALITY
This is an extremely important aspect of intonation, as it goes beyond what you are trying to say--it dictates how your listener will relate to you as an individual. In fact, intonation determines if you will be considered charming or rude, confident or nervous, or informed or unfamiliar.
An extremely important part of intonation is inside a one-syllable word. You may wonder if intonation exists in a one-syllable word at all. However, we often put little sounds in a one-syllable word that are not in the written language, but that convey a great deal of information in terms of who we are. These extra sounds are explained in the following sections under the heading of liaisons.
When we contrast two similar words, one ending with a voiced consonant (d, z, g, v, b) and the other with an unvoiced consonant (t, s, k, f, p), you will hear the difference in the preceding vowel, specifically in the length or duration of that vowel.
Simply put, words that end in a voiced consonant have a doubled vowel sound. For example, if you say bit, it is a quick, sharp sound—a single musical note. If you say bid, however, the word is stretched out, it has two musical notes, the first one higher than the second, bi-id.
