INTONATION

• intonation- the rising and falling sounds of the voice when speaking.

• Language conveys very specific information, such as how to get somewhere or what someone is doing. It can be also used beyond the exact meaning of the words to indicate how the speaker feels about what he is saying, or how he personally feels at that moment.

Generally speaking, if English is not your first language, this is where you start running into difficulty. Even if you pronounce each word clearly, if your intonation patterns are non-standard, your meaning will probably not be clear. Also, in terms of comprehension, you will lose a great deal of information if you are listening for the actual words used.

• "Intonation is . . . important: if the word 'right' is said with the pitch of the voice rising, it is likely to be heard as a question or as an invitation to a speaker to continue, while falling pitch is more likely to be heard as confirmation or agreement."
(Peter Roach, English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course, 4th ed. Cambridge University Press, 2009)

• "Intonation is the melody or music of a language. It refers to the way the voice rises and falls as we speak. How might we tell someone that it's raining?
It's raining, isn't it? (or 'innit,' perhaps)
We're telling the person, so we give our speech a 'telling' melody. The pitch-level of our voice falls and we sound as if we know what we're talking about. We're making a statement. But now imagine we don't know if it's raining or not. We think it might be, so we're asking someone to check. We can use the same words--but note the question-mark, this time:
It's raining, isn't it?