betonte

Betonte is a German word with two main uses: as a verb form and as an adjective. As a verb, betonte is the simple past tense (Präteritum) of betonen, meaning to emphasize or to stress. This form appears in forms such as ich betonte and er betonte, while other persons have betontest, betonten, and so on. In everyday usage, the simple past of betonen is common in written language and formal speech, whereas the present tense form betont is used for current emphasis.

As an adjective, betonte is the inflected form of the adjective betont, meaning emphasized or stressed. When used attributively with a definite article, the feminine singular nominative form is betonte, as in die betonte Silbe, meaning “the stressed syllable.” The same adjective can appear in other genders, numbers, and cases with corresponding endings, for example unbetonte Silbe (unstressed syllable) or betonten Silben (stressed syllables, genitive/plural forms vary with case).

Common usage and examples:

- Er betonte die Wichtigkeit seines Vorschlags. (He emphasized the importance of his proposal.)

- Die betonte Silbe liegt auf der zweiten Silbe des Wortes. (The stressed syllable falls on the second syllable of the word.)

- In der Phonetik wird oft zwischen betonten und unbetonten Silben unterschieden. (In phonetics, a distinction is often made between stressed and unstressed syllables.)

See also: Betonung, betont, unbetont. Betonte is primarily a standard German form and does not function as a separate independent noun in common usage.