They don't have accents on the penultimate syllables, but they do have secondary accents on the penultimate syllables, which I don't have a problem with treating an accent in terminations of only one accent. In terminations of two accents, I usually treat them as if the word had both accents.

equitable

testimonies

etc.

I agree with "not so much" for some. But - for me, at least - I think sensitive singing around these is an easier solution than rewriting the psalm tone.

--Rich

There's a Classical music "urban legend" - so to speak - of a Messiah performance where the soloist sang, "Comfort ye, my people" as "Come fort yay, my pay-oh-play."

When you're chanting, I wouldn't imagine that English language accents actually need to be heard. I mean, it's a whole different prosodic environment than speech or even popular music, because theoretically the only pitch changes you use are the pitches in the music. So logically, the only accents you need to use are the ones already in the chant.

If you make a vowel really exaggerated, that would probably sound like an accented syllable, in English-language chant, without actually accenting it. Something like this:

ay-quit-ta-bowl
saah-ngtu-ayy-ry
coh-vi-tu-snayz

Of course, if you're chanting into a microphone, stuff like this will sound really stupid if you overdo it.

But with chant in English, people seem to have a lot of tolerance for just dropping the syllables into the air like pebbles into the water. They're not really worried much about accents, unless you get into a situation where that makes a difference in understanding the word (and even then, context would probably be sufficient).

I mean, think about the spiel of "Let us pray with confidence to the Father". I've heard priests chant "confidence" plenty of ways and with plenty of different vowel sounds, and I can always tell what they're saying. "-dence" is often longer than "con-", if you actually take the time to think about it, but who does?

(And yes, I don't know a thing about this that's technical.... I just sing what the director tells me.)

The problem with pronouncing English is that we all speak English differently. I was taught to use standardized American English in singing, mostly as taught in Madeline Marshall's English Diction for Singers book.

I feel that in America, English really should be sung with pretty much the same vowels our best speakers use to speak it - with two caveats

1) making sure the vowels are always the most beautiful versions of themselves - I would not change the first syllable of "sanctuary" to an "ah" as in Latin "amen," I would have the choir sing a short "a" sound ([ae] in IPA) - like "bat" - with lots of space. As long as they've got space in the sound, it's not ugly at all - and it doesn't sound like an affected British accent.
2) relegate all "r" sounds and diphthongs to the last possible fraction of a second before the next consonant

Of course this is hard to talk about without demonstrating, but I think the result is beautiful American English.

B-b-b-but SkirpR,
I haven't ever been able to escape Charles Laughton's precise elocution/enunciation from "Hunchback...."

SAHNK-tchew-ware-ee!

Ralph, that is one solution, I suppose. I just think there are so many ways of altering psalmtones, it becomes an issue of where to stop. And I suppose the answer may be Meinrad tones. While they're simple and functional, I don't find them particularly beautiful, and the immediacy of their link to tradition is not abundantly clear at first.

As I said on the other current thread on Latin psalmody (where we [or I] somehow ended up talking about English), I prefer to leave the Gregorian psalmtones unmodified, and seem to manage by treating the shadow accents in words (or phrases) on equal footing with the real accents - for purposes of pointing or writing out the psalmtones. (This means one never encounters more than two unaccented syllables in a row. You're example of ` __ __ __ would not exist, likely becoming either ` __ ` __ or ` __ __ `) However, when singing it, I do encourage my singers to not give undue stress to accents which are merely shadow accents. I find this easy to do simply by telling them to sing the words with full consideration of their meaning (regardless of how they might appear to be pointed.)