homework stressed syllable

Stress Placement in English

What are the rules for stressing words.

Table of Contents

Two Fundamental Rules for Stress Placement

Stress placement based on word type, stress placement with compound words, stress placement based on word endings, widget for pronouncing words.

(Rule 1) One stress per word

(rule 2) always a vowel, what is a syllable.

• "Dog," "cat," and "mouse" are one-syllable words.
• "Donkey," "dolphin," and "parrot" are two-syllable words.
• "Elephant," "kangaroo," and "chimpanzee" are three-syllable words.

(Rule 3) Stress the first syllable of a two-syllable noun

• WINdow, PENcil, BUCKet, SUNset, CAStle, RIVer, BASket, BUTton, FORest, TUNnel

(Rule 4) Stress the first syllable of a two-syllable adjective

• HAPpy, QUIet, MODern, YELlow, ANcient, HOLlow, RIGid, SHIny, MELlow

(Rule 5) Stress the last syllable of a two-syllable verb

• to reLATE, to reTURN, to inSIST, to beCOME, to deNY, to preSENT, to exPORT, to deCIDE, to incLUDE, to arRIVE

Stress Is Important

(Rule 6) Stress compound nouns on the first part

• BOOKstore, FIREfly, GREENhouse, TOOTHbrush, HAIRbrush

(Rule 7) Stress compound adjectives on the second part

• old-FASHioned. long-LASTing, high-PITCHED, short-TEMPered

(Rule 8) Stress compound verbs on the second part

• to breakDOWN, to cutBACK, to log IN, to give UP, to overFLOW, to underSTAND

More about Compound Words

(Rule 9) Stress the penultimate syllable of words ending "-ic," "-sion," and "-tion"

Words ending "-ic"

• athLETic, BAsic, cerAMic, geoGRAPHic, GRAPHic, metALlic, MYStic, orGAnic, STAtic, TROpic

Words ending "-sion"

• comPRESsion, conFESsion, deCISion, erOsion, PASsion, teleVIsion, TENsion

Words ending "-tion"

• ACtion, atTENtion, creAtion, eduCAtion, MOtion, NAtion, reveLAtion, situAtion, solUtion, tradItion

(Rule 10) Stress the ante-penultimate syllable of words ending "-cy," "-ty," "-phy," "-gy," and "al"

Words ending "-cy"

• BurEAUcracy, deMOcracy, LEGacy, diplOMacy

Words ending "-ty"

• dependaBILity, opporTUnity, simPLICity, uniVERsity

Words ending "-phy"

• biOGraphy, calLIGraphy, phoTOGraphy, toPOGraphy

Words ending "-gy"

• ALlergy, biOLogy, geOLogy, radiOLogy, STRATegy

Words ending "-al"

• ANimal, CRItical, DIGital, FESTival, geoLOGical, HOSpital

CONtroversy or conTROversy?

• controversy

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15 Rules for Stressed Syllables in English

Understanding Stressed Syllables

1. Stress the last syllable in most two-syllable verbs and prepositions

2. Stress the penultimate syllable in words ending in -ic, -sion, and -tion

3. Stress the syllable before the suffixes -cial, -ity, -ious, and -eous

4. Stress the penultimate syllable in words ending in -ial and -ual

5. Stress the antepenultimate syllable in words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy, -gy, and -al

6. Compound nouns usually stress the first word

7. Stress in words beginning with dis-, mis-, and re-

8. Stress the first syllable in most two-syllable nouns and adjectives

9. Stress the suffixes -eer, -ese, -ique, and -ette

10. Don't stress prefixes un-, in-, pre-, and dis-

11. Content words are usually stressed

12. Function words are generally unstressed

13. Words with the suffix -ive stress the penultimate syllable

14. Loanwords tend to retain their original stress patterns

15. Long words and sentences follow rhythmic stress

How to Improve Your Syllable Stress in English 

Level-Up Your English with Stress Rules

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3 Chapter 3 – Syllable Stress in Words

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, readers will learn about syllable stress in words. By the end of the chapter, readers will be able to…

• explain the structure of a syllable
• distinguish between stressed-timed languages like English and syllable timed-languages such as Mandarin Chinese and Spanish
• notice three kinds of syllable stress in English words: primary, secondary, and unstressed syllables
• learn rules for stressing the correct syllable in words
• produce words and phrases with a variety of syllable stress

WHAT IS A SYLLABLE?

Individual speech sounds organize into groups or syllables.  So, we can think of syllables as a unit of speech.

Syllables have an organization or structure. All syllables have a vowel or a vowel-like consonant. For example, the word kitten has two syllables. The first syllable has the high front lax vowel [ι] and the second syllable has a vowel-like or syllabic consonant, which is indicated by a dot under the [ņ].

[kι – Ɂņ]

Syllables can also have consonants before and after the vowel. Consonants before the vowel form the onset of the syllable. In the word kitten , the velar stop [k] comes before the first vowel and the glottal stop [Ɂ] comes before the syllabic consonant [ņ] acting as a vowel.

The vowel and following consonants form a unit that is called the rhyme . The rhyme can be divided into a vowel or nucleus of a syllable and a coda , which is made up of consonants that follow the vowel nucleus.

In the diagram below, σ stands for “syllable.” The capital letters C and V stand for “consonant” and “vowel.”

This is the syllable structure for the word  strengths,  which is pronounced as [strɛŋθs].

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/09/Strenghts.mp3

Some speakers pronounce the word  strengths  with four consonants in the coda. The pronunciation looks like this [strɛŋgθs]. In his video, Andy McMillin pronounces the word with four consonants in the coda. Watch Andy McMillin’s video to hear this pronunciation and review the structure of the syllable.

STRESS-TIMED LANGUAGES AND THREE KINDS OF SYLLABLE STRESS

English is a stress-timed language, which means that the syllables in English vary in length, loudness, and vowel quality. This is in contrast to syllable-timed languages, which have syllables that do not vary as much as English syllables.

There are three kinds of syllable stress in English: primary stressed syllables, secondary stressed syllables, and unstressed syllables. Primary stressed syllables are louder and longer than the other syllables in the word. Unstressed syllables are reduced and short. Vowels that carry secondary stress are not as long or loud as the primary stressed vowels and not as reduced as an unstressed vowel.

By using the different syllable types, a kind of rhythm emerges. This rhythm is characteristic of North American English speech. 

This video from  Learn American English   introduces the difference between stress-timed languages and syllable-timed timed language. Most of the video is about the three kind of syllable stress.

A three-syllable word with all three kinds of stress is understand. 

un + der + stand

[ secondary stress ] + [ unstressed ] + [ primary stress ]

When you watch the video, look for the stress patterns of these words and notice how the pronunciation changes in the last syllable of the word estimate . If the last syllable carries primary or secondary stress (verb), then the syllable is not reduced. If the last syllable is unstressed (noun), then the syllable is reduced.

• ‘ɛs-tə- ˌ meιt
• ‘ɛs-tə-mιt
• ˌ æb-sə-‘lut-li

DETERMINING THE STRESSED SYLLABLE IN WORDS

English has complex word stress. There are rules and also exceptions. Here are three techniques for learning to stress the correct syllable.

• Listen for stressed syllables
• Use online dictionaries
• Apply rules for word Stress

The best way to acquire syllable stress is to be aware of the different kinds in your own speech. As you listen to other speakers, use online dictionaries and apply rules, your speech will start to change.

Listening for Stressed Syllables

One way to determine which vowels are stressed is to listen for stress in the speech of native speakers. Click on the words below to hear the stressed syllable. Listen for the primary stress in the words listed below. The first line give the word. The next two lines show the syllable stress pattern.

PHO-to-graph

[primary stress] + [unstressed] + [secondary stress]

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/Photograph.mp3

Photographer

pho-TO-gra-pher

[unstressed] + [primary] + [unstressed] + [unstressed]

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/Photographer.mp3

Photographical

Pho-to-GRAPH-i-cal

[secondary stress] + [unstressed] + [primary stress] + [unstressed] + [unstressed]

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/Photographical.mp3

Online Dictionaries

A quick way to determine stressed and unstressed syllables is to use an online dictionary such as Dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster .  The pronunciation for these words come from Merriam-Webster .

Dictionaries use their own versions of the International Phonetic Alphabet or other system to represent pronunciation in writing. You may want to learn the system of your favorite online dictionary. Here is an example from Merriam-Webster for the word economics.

ˌe – kə -ˈnä – miks

The lower line at the beginning of the word signals secondary stress. The raised line before the syllable [na] represents primary stress and the two dots or umlaut over the [a] simply refers to the [a] sound.

Listen to the pronunciation of this word and related words from Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Notice that the stress pattern changes.

Rules for Syllable/Word Stress

There are many rules for syllable stress.  The main point is that syllable stress is related to grammar . Some grammar categories that affect syllable stress are: nouns, suffixes, verbs, compound nouns, and suffixes.

Rules for Syllable Stress in Words

• The Two-Syllable Noun Rule with exceptions
• Suffix Rules
• The Compound Noun Rule
• The Two-Syllable Noun-Verb Rule

This short video from After School English gives some examples of these rules. The Suffix Rules are more complicated because English has many suffixes. Additional examples of the Suffix Rules are given below.

The Two-Syllable Noun Rule : The first syllable is stressed in most two-syllable nouns. There are a few exceptions.

Stress on First Syllable:

Exceptions:

Suffix Rules:  Some suffixes are stressed and other suffixes move the stress one or two syllables to the left of the word.

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/09/Stressed-Suffixes.mp3

• Stress the syllable before suffixes for words ending in: “-cian,” -“tion,” “-sion,” “-ic,” and “-ical.”  
• elec TRI cian
• pre CI sion
• radi A tion
• moti VA tion
• e LEC trical
• proble MA tic
• proble MA tical
• me THOD ical
• he RE tical

  3. Stress two syllables before suffixes such as “- ate ,” “- ary, ” and “- ize. “

• COM pensate
• co OR dinate
• Vo CA bulary

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/09/suffixes-ate-ary-ize.mp3

Exceptions include docu MENT ary and CHAR acterize.

The Two-Syllable Noun/Verb Rule : In nouns, the first syllable has primary stress and the second syllable is unstressed. In verbs, the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable has primary stress.

• the RE cord
• to pre SENT

The Compound Noun Rule : Compound nouns are two words that are put together, such as: “thunder” + “storm” = “thunderstorm.”  In the examples below, the first syllable in the first word has primary stress and the first syllable in the second word has secondary stress.  We can see this in the example for “thunderstorm.” The first syllable of the first word is THUN, which has primary stress. The first syllable of the second word is  STORM, which has secondary stress. The syllable “der” is unstressed. So, the stress pattern is:

thun  + der + storm

[ primary stress ] + [ unstressed ] + [ secondary stress ]

These examples from the video have PRIMARY stress on the first syllable of the word and secondary stress on the first syllable of the second word in the compound.

• PLAY ground
• BLACK board

UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES AND WORD REDUCTIONS

Unstressed syllables are important because they contribute to the rhythm of spoken English. They are also important because the vowel in unstressed syllables is reduced to a schwa or [ə], which is neither a high nor low vowel. It is neither a front nor back vowel. It is a mid, central vowel.

An example from the video Learn the American Accent uses the word banana to illustrate unstressed syllables. This word have two unstressed syllables, the first syllable and the last one.

The pronunciation of the word looks like [bə-næ-nə]. The unstressed syllables, [bə] and [nə], are shorter than the stressed syllable and pronounced with less volume. The stress pattern is:

[unstressed syllable] + [stressed syllable] + [unstressed syllable]

Unstressed Syllables

The sound of a vowel can change depending on whether the vowel is in a stressed or unstressed syllable. Specifically, the high vowels [i] and [u] and the low vowels [æ] and [a] can change to a schwa when they are in unstressed syllables. Consider this image from the video Learn the American Accent on unstressed syllables.

Vowel in Unstressed Syllables

Example  “object”

An example of the low back vowel [a] reducing to a schwa is in the word “object.” As a noun, the first syllable is stressed and sounds like [ AB-jekt ]. When the word is used as a verb, however, the stress moves to the second syllable. The first syllable of the verb is unstressed and sounds like a schwa [ əb-JEKT ].

Word Reductions

In speech, function words are typically reduced. Function words are prepositions, pronouns, helping verbs, articles, and conjunctions. Near the end of this video, the speaker illustrates word reduction with the preposition “for,” the pronouns “it” and “your”, the helping verbs “can” and “are,” and the prepositions “to” and “at.”

Consider these sentences:

• I bought this for you.
• I can do it.
• What are you doing?
• This is your book.
• We’re meeting at noon.

SYLLABLE STRESS IN WORD FAMILIES

A good place to hear syllable stress is in word families. Word families are groups of words that share the same stem but have different suffixes and/or prefixes. The examples below are academic words that come from a list compiled by Avril Coxhead to create an Academic Wordlist. Notice how the suffixes affect the syllable stress in the words.

Listen to the family of words related to CONCEPT . Notice the first syllable is stressed and pronounced as [kan-] when there are no suffixes. When the suffixes are added, the stressed syllable changes and the first syllable is reduced to [kən-].

• con CEP tual
• conceptuali ZA tion
• con CEP tualize

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/CONCEPT.mp3

Here are more examples.

• dis TRI bute
• dis TRI buting
• distri BU tion
• redistri BU tion

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/distribute.mp3

• specifi CA tion
• speci FI city

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/specific.mp3

• eco NO mics
• e CO nomist
• eco NO mical
• uneco NO mical

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/economy.mp3

• identifi CA tion
• identi FI able
• unidenti FI able

https://opentext.ku.edu/app/uploads/sites/61/2023/06/identity.mp3

A Short Introduction to English Pronunciation Copyright © by marcellinoberardo and marinagreene is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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English Word Stress Rules – with Jennie Reed

To help shed some light on the topic of English word stress rules, I recently interviewed English pronunciation coach Jennie Reed. Jennie is an experienced English teacher from southern England. 

Before introducing Jennie, I will briefly introduce the topic of English word stress. After sharing a short biography of Jennie, I will share the interview. Then, I will go into some of the rules of English word stress, ably assisted by some excellent articles and books I’ve read. I shall round things off with one of Jennie’s exercises on word stress, followed by some closing thoughts.   

An Introduction to English word stress

In a nutshell, word stress is the term used to describe the emphasis or accent given to a particular word when pronouncing it. Aside from ‘emphasis’ and ‘accent’, stress may also be referred to as ‘prominence’ (Rogerson-Revell, 2011, p.137). In English words which contain more than one syllable, we don’t usually pronounce each syllable with the same weight. Therefore, syllables in a word may either be stressed or unstressed. 

Longer English words may have more than one stressed syllable. Nevertheless, one of them tends to be emphasised more than the other(s). This is where primary and secondary stress come into play. The syllable with the primary stress attached to it obviously stands out the most. 

Apart from primary and secondary stress, it’s also worth mentioning unstressed syllables.  In English, almost all unstressed syllables have schwa [ə] for their vowel, though [i] will also often be unstressed, like the [i] in nippy [/ˈnɪp.i/]. Proficient speakers of English tend to shorten the unstressed syllables so much that the vowel sound almost entirely disappears.

In this post, I approach the topic of English word stress rules with some caution. Oftentimes, when it comes to language learning, there are no hard and fast rules. Indeed, as Kelly (2000, p.68) and Underhill (2005, p.55) argue, it’s more appropriate to describe word stress in terms of “tendencies” as opposed to rules. More to come on these tendencies throughout this post.

All about Jennie Reed

Originally from Essex, England, Jennie now lives in Alloa, Scotland. 

Soon after graduating in German and Italian, Jennie got her TEFL certificate with the International TEFL Academy in 2010. Some of her first assignments in TEFL included a two-and-a-half-year stint teaching English in Italy, a ten-month position teaching English in Munich and a stretch teaching international students in Chester, UK. Jennie subsequently worked as a teacher of English, Interim marketing manager and Interim Director of Studies at Conlan School Ltd, also in Chester. 

Between June 2016 and July 2020, Jennie worked as an English teacher at British Study Centres in Edinburgh. During that period of time, she completed The Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (DipTESOL).

In August 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Jennie turned her attention to freelance tutoring online. That’s when she set up Excellence in English Education . Essentially, Jennie is focused on helping students to develop their pronunciation skills. She also helps passionate English Teachers deliver inspiring and engaging lessons so that they can create positive, long-lasting changes in the classroom. 

These days, Jennie also volunteers as an ESL teacher for the non-profit organisation RefuAid. RefuAid assists refugees and asylum seekers all over the UK to access higher education, requalification and employment.

Interview - English word stress rules with Jennie Reed

1. when it comes to english word stress rules, there are rather mixed feelings in the literature. dauer [2005, p.548] argues in favour, stating that “students need to be taught word stress because it does not appear in the writing system and many are not aware of its importance.” in fact, dauer [2005] takes another writer jenkins [2000, in dauer, 2005] to task. jenkins believes that word stress is unteachable, unlearnable, and unnecessary from the perspective of a non-native speaker. dauer fights back, giving the example of polysyllabic words. according to dauer [2005, p.547], a handful of basic rules can account for 85% of polysyllabic words [see dauer, 1993, pp.67-68]. , with dauer at one end of the spectrum, and jenkins at the other, where do you stand on the debate surrounding the teachability of word stress.

I think it can be helpful for some students to understand English word stress rules. Some students need the rules to be able to apply them and use them well. For other students, it’s not so important. They’re more interested in using the language as they find it. It’s very much student-dependent. From a student’s perspective, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to know the rules. Sometimes, just having one or two of the rules can be helpful. However, it’s important to remember that there are always exceptions to most of the rules we have. When we stress a certain syllable in a word, it’s always the vowel that’s stressed – never the consonants. I never even realised that word stress worked like this until I began to find my feet as a teacher.

2. Just extending question 1 a little. Adrian Underhill shoots straight down the middle in his book Sound Foundations: Learning and Teaching Pronunciation. Underhill [2005, p.55] emphasises that “Some rules are complex to apply, and even then have many exceptions. In fact, tendency may be a better term than rule.” 

Underhill went on to note that “the best rule is to be alert, to notice what you are doing and what the language is doing, and to reflect.” so, associated with such noticing and reflection, underhill [ibid.] believes teachers can foster the development of learners’ “intuitive learning faculties so that underlying tendencies can emerge within each learner without necessarily having to be described or explained”. do you think low-level learners really have the capacity to resort to such “intuitive learning faculties”.

I believe that unless students are given some guidance and actually asked to notice specific things, it can be really difficult for students to think about word stress. This is because they have so many other things to consider, from lexical selection right through to whether they’ve got the grammar right. Frankly, I think word stress is one of the last things that they think about.  My argument remains the same as in my answer to your first question. From a teacher’s perspective, I do think that it’s worth focusing on word stress with a particular student if it will be helpful for them.

3. I’ve had a hard time teaching word stress to Polish learners of English as word stress falls on the penultimate syllable in their mother tongue? Can you describe your experience with imparting English word stress rules to learners of first languages where accent or word stress is fixed?  

Most of my experience recently has been with Italian students. Like Polish words, Italian words also have a very fixed word stress. Indeed, stress is placed on the second last syllable in the majority of Italian words. For Italians learning English, it’s even more important to highlight the fact that there can be variations when it comes to English word stress. For example, we stress two-syllable English words that can be both a noun and a verb differently; nouns on the first syllable and verbs on the second syllable. It’s important to teach English word stress rules to Italians, for example, otherwise they’d tend to pronounce every word the same way. With two-syllable nouns and verbs, Italians usually stress the first syllable for both word classes, unless an accent is present on the final syllable. I’m not sure that this causes confusion or miscommunication but it can make communication that bit slower if they’re dealing with native speakers. That’s probably why people using English at a high level need to be aware of English word stress rules. The Italian people I’m working with are mainly teachers of English. Therefore, it’s important for them to be able to understand word stress tendencies so they can put the theory into practice in the classroom. 

4. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach teaching the very complex stress placement rules for different grammatical categories of a word, such as two-syllable nouns and verbs as well as compound nouns?  

I think any approach to teaching such stress rules should revolve around listening and repetition rather than looking at any individual words. As you mentioned earlier, we don’t have any way of recognising word stress in written English. Most of the word stress exercises I do are based on listening and getting students to look at words and mark where they hear the stress. This can take quite a bit of practice but it’s much more effective than just reading the words. After all, they’re not going to see word stress highlighted with capital letters or bold script when they’re reading material. Therefore, for me, the practical aspect of learning word stress is more important.

5. How difficult is it to teach word stress when it comes to longer words, for example, those with three, four and five syllables? Do you get involved much with pointing out where primary and secondary stress occur in a given word?

I do touch upon the issue with my higher level learners. It’s mainly so they’re aware of it because word stress is heavily connected with sentence stress. As we don’t have fixed stress patterns which depend on the number of syllables, it’s more important to learn the function of a word or the ending of a word. For example, when words end in -sion, -logy or -graphy – plus many more endings – the previous syllable is stressed: compreHEnsion, psyCHOlogy or phoTOgraphy. So I don’t tend to ask my students to learn these so-called English word stress rules off by heart. It’s more about grouping some words together and just getting them to listen to the words and repeat the words. Overall, if students get the stress in the wrong place with longer words, it’s not likely to cause a huge breakdown in communication.

6. We often talk about a group of words in English that have two stress patterns - that is ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms. Many of these words are function words, such as prepositions and pronouns. The vast majority of the weak forms are characterised by the reduced schwa vowel /ə/ for example, a /ə/ book - not a /ei/ book. Where do weak forms rank in terms of importance in your pronunciation courses?  

The schwa is the one phonemic symbol I insist all of my students know. Being able to reduce that sound when you’re speaking can enhance your communication and comprehensibility of your spoken language. Schwa definitely contributes to fluency in that, within sentence stress, you need both stressed and unstressed words working in perfect harmony with one another. Schwa is essential when it comes to maintaining a regular rhythm in the language. I’d like to add that I think it’s more important to learn chunks of language than it is to focus on rules. For example, ‘listen to’ sounds more like ‘listen tuh’, with a schwa in the preposition ‘to’, rather than ‘listen to’ [ /tuː/].

7. Can you share some final words of wisdom when it comes to word stress in English?

I encourage my students to make a recording of themselves copying what’s been said when they’re listening to something. Ideally, the speakers should be proficient speakers of English. Students can then make a comparison of the two recordings, thinking about word stress, sentence stress and intonation. These areas should be analysed one at a time. After comparing recordings, students should try to adjust what they’ve said so it matches the interlocutors’ speech. This is not about sounding a certain way or exactly the same as a proficient speaker, be it a native speaker or not. Our accents are an integral part of who we are and we should be proud of them. The purpose of making these voice recordings is to make speech more intelligible.

A summary of English word stress rules

In this section, I shall provide an in-depth summary of English word stress rules. I will highlight the conditions that influence which syllable is stressed in a word. First of all, it seems appropriate to provide a general introduction to word stress based on a review of the literature.

A Brief Overview of English Word Stress

To begin this overview of English word stress rules, or tendencies, it seems appropriate to consider the structure of an English word. First of all, English words consist of one syllable, two syllables, or many syllables. In all words of two or more syllables, one syllable is more prominent, louder or more noticeable than the other syllables in that word. Therefore, this strong syllable is stressed , or accented, while the other weaker syllables are unstressed , or unaccented:

• Stressed syllables - Stressed syllables sound louder, tend to be longer, and have clearer vowels and stronger consonants. When a word is uttered in isolation, stressed syllables adopt a higher pitch. In sentences, a pitch change (a shift in melody from high to low or low to high) often occurs on stressed syllables.
• Unstressed syllables - Unstressed syllables sound softer, are usually shorter and are often reduced. This means that the vowels tend to adopt the qualities of schwa (/ə/) or reduced sounds such as /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, while the consonants are weaker. The pitch doesn’t change direction on unstressed syllables.

Stress is not fixed to a particular syllable in English words, thus making English a free-stress language. Even though stress can occur on first, second or third syllables and so on, the placement is almost always fixed for individual words, regardless of the context. The word ‘perceived’, for example, is always perCEIVED, never PERceived.

To round off this introduction to English word stress, it’s worth highlighting a major difference between rhythm and word stress, as put forward by Levin (2018, p.39):

… word stress typically is limited to multi-syllabic words, whereas rhythm includes stress for single-syllable words. In English, for example, content words (e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, negatives), including those of one syllable, are normally stressed in discourse. Single-syllable function words (e.g. prepositions, auxiliary verbs, pronouns, determiners) are typically unstressed in discourse .

The Importance of Word Stress in Communication

A plethora of authors (see, for example: Fudge, 2016; Dauer, 1993 and Levis, 2018) have highlighted the importance of word stress in communication. 

Fudge (2016, p.4) leads the way in his assessment of the seriousness of word stress. According to Fudge (ibid.), a faulty stressing will lead to a “wrong and misleading rhythm” due to the fact that English rhythm is stress-timed. Rhythm rather determines comprehensibility. Therefore, the placing of stress within words can significantly impact how well a native English hearer will understand the foreigner.

Dauer (1993, p.61) claims that stressing the correct syllable in a word is equally important as pronouncing the sounds correctly. This is particularly the case with heteronyms - words that have the same spelling but different pronunciation. Two examples Dauer offers include:

a. in valid /ˈɪn.və.lɪd/ = a sick person

b. in va lid /ɪnˈvæl.ɪd/ = not valid or not correct

a. con sole /ˈkɒn.səʊl/ = a surface or device with controls for electronic equipment, a vehicle, etc

b. con sole /kənˈsəʊl/ = to make someone feel better

Levis (2018, p.100) admits that misplaced word stress in English can halt communication entirely:

When a word, especially a word central to the understanding of the message, cannot be recognised, listeners may stop all other processing to decode the word that was not understood .

Oh what an atmosphere

Levis (ibid.) describes a study he ran on the ways that teaching assistants (TAs) transformed a written text into spoken language. Essentially, TAs were provided with a paragraph from a basic physics text on the kinds of energy and how they were related. They had a short amount of time to prepare their spoken presentation, which was video-recorded. A research assistant (RA) transcribed each presentation. In one case, the RA could not identify a word in the first sentence of a presentation from a speaker from India (“Well, we have a very good ____________ today”).

Fortunately, the researchers knew the topic and worked out the category of the word due to the fact that the sentence was otherwise grammatical. The biggest issue was that the speaker stressed the three-syllable word on the middle syllable, which sounded like must or most . After several days of listening and trying to decode the word, one of the researchers broke down the segmentals, coming up with things such as ‘ at most here ’. Eventually, the researcher cracked the code with the word atmosphere . Intelligibility arose because this word is stressed on the middle syllable in Indian English.

What are the main acoustic signals of stressed syllables?

The hearer perceives an accented syllable as more prominent than an unstressed syllable. Prominence is connected with the amount of muscular energy used to produce a syllable (Rogerson-Revell, 2011, p.138). The main acoustic signals of prominence are:

(1) Pitch change - If a syllable is said with a change in pitch, that is either higher or lower, the syllable will be more prominent to the hearer.

e.g.        ba

e.g. ba   baa   ba   ba

Rogerson-Revell (ibid.) points out that long vowels (/i:/ /ɔ:/ /ɑ:/ /ɜ:/ /u:/) and diphthongs generally appear more prominent than shorter vowels. However, long vowels and diphthongs also crop up in unaccented syllables. In the examples below, they are not stressed; however they still give an impression of prominence (the stressed syllable is marked with a ˈ).

phon eme   /  ˈ fəʊni:m/

pla card   /  ˈ plækɑ:d/

rail way   /  ˈ reɪlweɪ/

pill ow   /  ˈ pɪləʊ/

(c) Vowel quality - The most important aspect of differences in vowel quality is that unstressed syllables typically contain a reduced vowel (either /ə/ or /i/ or /u/). Hence, stressed syllables tend to stand out due to the fact that they have a full vowel.

e.g.        bi 

(d) Syllable loudness - It is important to realise that it is difficult to increase loudness without altering other qualities such as pitch level:

e.g. ba  BA  ba  ba

Levels of stress

So far, I’ve only really touched upon syllables in terms of being either stressed or unstressed. In fact, syllables can have different degrees of stress within longer words. Therefore, when dealing with words as they are said in isolation, we need to consider all syllables in terms of their level of stress.

There are commentators who have outlined more degrees of stress than is probably necessary when it comes to longer words. For instance, Daniel Jones (1922, p.111) highlights the word opportunity , which has five levels of stress as seen below. ‘1’ indicates the greatest level of stress, and ‘5’ the least:

(In Kelly, 2000, p.69)

When it comes to teaching or studying word stress, Jones (1922, p.111) is quick to concede that “it is generally sufficient to distinguish two degrees [of stress] only, stressed and unstressed.” However, he goes on to mention that it may sometimes be necessary to distinguish three degrees of stress. According to Kelly (2000, p.69), commentators tend to settle on a three-level distinction between primary stress, secondary stress and unstress for multi-syllable words, as is observable in the following examples:

In terms of marking stress in written form, primary stress is indicated by a high mark [ ˈ ]:

Secondary stress may be indicated by a low mark [ ˌ ] , as in:

ˌ reve ˈ lation / ˌ revə ˈ leɪʃn/

con ˌ tamiˈnation /kən ˌ tæmɪn ˈ eɪʃn/

To round off this section, it’s worth paying heed to Jones’s (1922, p.111) observation that, when it comes to multi-syllable words, “foreigners usually put the secondary stress or even the primary stress of the first syllable”. This is the case with words such as examination , peculiarity and administration , all of which contain a secondary stress on the second syllable. 

The placement of stress within an English word

Finally, we have come to the main focus of this post about English word stress rules. This question causes exceptional difficulty to English language learners:

How can one select the correct syllable or syllables to stress in an English word?

As Jennie and I touched upon in the interview, it’s not possible to pinpoint word stress in the English language simply in relation to the syllables of a word. As Roach (1991, p.88) puts forward: 

Many writers have said that English is so difficult to predict that it is best to treat stress placement as a property of the individual word, to be learned when the word itself is learned . 

Hence, it’s hard to disagree with Rogerson-Revell (2011, p.141) who states that: “Stress placement rules exist for English but they are rather complex.” The English language learner is best advised to not think in terms of English word stress rules but rather general tendencies for stress placement. Practically all of the rules have exceptions. 

Stress placement depends on a variety of factors, including:

• whether a word is morphologically simple (i.e. words consisting of a single morpheme), complex (a word made up of two or more morphemes and containing prefixes or suffixes) or a compound (two or more words that have been grouped together to create a new word that has a different, individual meaning, e.g. foot + ball = football).
• the grammatical category of a word (noun, verb, adjective, etc.)
• the number of syllables in a word
• the phonological structure of the syllables (e.g. final syllables with short vowels, one final consonant, or a schwa sound (/ə/) are not stressed).

I will now highlight those general tendencies for stress placement in simple lexical words.

Two syllable words

Most two syllable nouns (most notably proper nouns) have stress on the first syllable:

ˈ Peter 

ˈ Christmas

Nevertheless, if the second syllable is strong (i.e. it has a long vowel or a diphthong or ends in two consonants), then the second syllable is stressed.

Overall, it’s rare for two syllable nouns to be stressed on the second syllable. It tends to be related to borrowed words:

la ˈ goon 

Most two syllable verbs have stress on the second syllable, if that syllable is strong . That means if the second syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong, or it ends with more than one consonant, that second syllable is stressed.

per ˈ suade

re ˈ strict

Conversely, if the final syllable is weak (i.e. containing either a short vowel or schwa and one, or no, final consonant), then the first syllable is stressed. A final syllable is also unstressed if it contains /əʊ/, as in ‘borrow’ /ˈbɒrəʊ/. 

When we consider those two-syllable verbs that are exceptions to the above rules, the words might be perceived as being morphologically complex (e.g. per ' mit).

c. Adjectives

Two syllable adjectives tend to follow the same pattern as verbs.

aˈlive 

English word stress rules are not set in stone. Therefore, there are quite a few exceptions to established tendencies when it comes to the stress placement in two-syllable adjectives. 

Finally, other two-syllable words such as prepositions and adverbs appear to behave like adjectives and verbs.

Word-class pairs

Mastering English word stress rules becomes even trickier when the foreigner begins to grapple with a group of words known as word-class pairs (homographs). Essentially, these words operate as both nouns and verbs and have identical spelling. They differ from each other in terms of stress placement:

Source:  https://cte.univ-setif2.dz/moodle/pluginfile.php/166334/mod_resource/content/0/Stress%20in%20Homographs.pdf

The mis-stressing of noun-verb pairs does not seem to affect intelligibility or comprehensibility for native listeners (Levis, 2018, p.116). 

Three-syllable words

When it comes to three-syllable words, there is a tendency to put the stress towards the end of the word on verbs and the front of the word for nouns.

In verbs, if the final syllable is strong (with a long vowel, diphthong, or more than one consonant), it will be stressed, as in:

enter ˈ tain    under ˈ stand

In contrast, if the last syllable is weak (with a short vowel and ends with not more than one consonant), that syllable will be unstressed and the stress shifts forward to the preceding (penultimate) syllable, if that syllable is strong, as in:

de ˈ velop         di ˈ rection

su ˈ rrender      e ˈ xamine

When it comes to stress placement tendencies for three-syllable nouns, it is useful to consult Roach (1991, p.90).

First of all, if the final syllable contains a short vowel or /əʊ/, it is unstressed. If the syllable which comes before this final syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong, or if it ends with more than one consonant, that middle syllable will be stressed.

e.g.  

potato /pə ˈ teɪ.təʊ/

disaster /dɪ ˈ zɑː.stə/

Nevertheless, if the final syllable contains a short vowel and the middle syllable also contains a short vowel and ends with not more than a single consonant, these two syllables are unstressed. Stress placement should fall on the first syllable:

quantity / ˈ kwɒn.tə.ti/

cinema / ˈ sɪn.ə.mə/

The aforementioned rules pertaining to nouns show stress tending to go on syllables which contain a long vowel or diphthong and/or ending with more than one consonant. When it comes to three-syllable nouns, if the last syllable is of this type, the first syllable is usually stressed. The last syllable tends to be prominent meaning that secondary stress comes into play.

intellect / ˈ ɪn·təlˌekt/

alkali / ˈ æl·kəˌlɑɪ/

Many adjectives tend to follow the immediately preceding rule pertaining to nouns. The first syllable tends to be stressed while the last syllable usually adopts secondary stress:

derelict / ˈ der·əˌlɪkt/

Stress in complex words

Thus far, we have considered English word stress rules relating to ‘simple’ words, namely words comprising a single grammatical unit. However, there are plenty of words which consist of more than one grammatical part. For instance, ‘hope’ + ‘less’ = ‘hopeless’ and ‘fool’ + ‘ish’ = ‘foolish’. Such complex words fall into two categories:

  (a) Words constructed from a basic stem together with an affix (i.e. a prefix     such as ‘un’ + pleasant = unpleasant, or a suffix such as ‘able’ + suit = suitable

  (b) compound words (e.g. ice-cream, armchair)

(a) Words with affixes (prefixes and suffixes)

Affixes can affect word stress in three ways:

(i) the affix is stressed - e.g. ˌJapa ˈ nese

(ii) the affix has no effect - e.g. ˈ market - ˈ marketing

(iii) the affix is not stressed but the stress on the stem shifts - e.g. ˈ magnet - mag ˈ netic

(i) The affix is stressed = ‘Autostressed’ Suffixes

There are cases when the primary stress falls on the suffix (e.g. entrepre ˈ neur) or moves onto a suffix, as in:

Ja ˈ pan – ˌ Japa ˈ nese

ˈ mountain – ˌ mountain ˈ eer

Words containing more than two syllables may see their root acquiring a secondary stress, as in the examples above.

Single-syllable prefixes do not usually carry stress (e.g. mis ˈ judge). However, longer prefixes may carry secondary stress (e.g. ˌ anti ˈ clockwise).

Fudge (2016, p.41) provides a complete list of autostressed suffixes. Among them are:

(ii) Suffixes that do not affect stress placement

There are many cases in which the suffix does not affect stress placement. For instance:

 -able - under ˈ stand - under ˈ standable; ˈ comfort - ˈ comfortable

 -age - ˈ cover - ˈ coverage, ˈ bag - ˈ baggage

 -al - eco ˈ nomic - eco ˈ nomical; geo ˈ graphic - geo ˈ graphical

 -ful - ˈ care - ˈ careful; ˈ wonder- ˈ wonderful

(iii) Suffixes that influence stress in the stem

Here, the suffix causes the stress on the word stem to move. For example:

 -eous - ad ˈ vantage; advan ˈ tageous

 -ic - e ˈ conomy, eco ˈ nomic; ˈ strategy, stra ˈ tegic

Further reading on suffixes

Fudge (2016, p.52-103) devotes over 50 pages of his book to a comprehensive list of suffixes with their properties. Such extensive coverage proves why the student of English should not get bogged down with English word stress rules because they’re seemingly endless in number.

Roach (1991, p.98) deals with the topic prefixes very succinctly. He states that the effect of prefixes on stress does not have the “comparative regularity, independence and predictability of suffixes”. Moreover, there is no prefix of either one or two syllables which always carries primary stress. Therefore, Roach (ibid.) concludes that “stress in words with prefixes is governed by the same rules as those for words without prefixes”.

(b) Stress in compound words

In Fudge’s (2016, p.34) eyes compound words are unique in that they are: 

… combinations of words that may occur independently elsewhere, and hence must be two words; at the same time, they are combined in such a way that they form a single relatively close-knit whole with a number of characteristics that indicate rather clearly that they are one word . 

Fudge (ibid.) goes on to mention that compounds possess many of the accentual and rhythmic traits of single words. Therefore, they tend to have a main stress near the beginning of the combination. Similarly, single words tend to bear penultimate or antepenultimate stress rather than final stress. In contrast, phrase constructions, which afford the individual words much more independence, generally have main stress on their final element.

Fudge (2016, p.34) illuminates the difference between compounds and phrase constructions through the examples of blackboard and black board . The compound noun blackboard (i.e. a board for writing on with chalk) takes primary stress on the first element black . As for the noun phrase black board , it normally has nuclear stress on the second element board .

Compound words may be written in a variety of ways:

(a) as one word - e.g. ‘sunflower’, ‘typewriter’ and ‘doorbell’

(b) with the words separated by a hyphen - e.g. ‘car-ferry’ and ‘fruit-cake’

(c) with two words separated by a space - e.g. ‘battery charger’ and ‘desk lamp’ 

Compounds which combine two nouns

As previously alluded to with the compound noun blackboard, compounds which comprise two nouns and function as nouns, generally put the stress on the first noun:

ˈ typewriter

ˈ greenhouse

Compounds which function as adjectives, verbs or adverbs

Compounds which function as adjectives (with the -ed morpheme at the end), verbs or adverbs, commonly put the stress on the second element:

bad- ˈ tempered (bad = adjectival)

ill- ˈ treat (compound which functions as a verb with an adverbial first element)

North- ˈ East (compound functioning as an adverb)

Problems with English Word Stress Rules

On a number of occasions, this post has highlighted the fact that English word stress rules are awash with inconsistencies, surprising twists and exceptions. It would be fair to replace the word ‘rules’ with ‘tendencies’.

Levis (2018, p.102) sums up the situation very aptly indeed:

Accounting for English word stress requires a hodgepodge of different patterns related to the length of the word, its lexical category, etymological origin, types of affixation, when the word became part of English.

Levis (2018, p.256) also concedes that English word stress is a heavily under-researched category of study:

… there is much that we do not know about word stress and its role in intelligibility. For example, we do not know exactly what word-stress problems are common for learners of various proficiency levels, which word-stress problems affect understanding for NS and/or NNS listeners, whether learners can perceive stress but not produce it, or vice versa.

Some of the most serious issues related to English word stress include:

1. Interference from the learner’s L1

There are countless issues related to the learner’s L1 which often prevent the production of correct word stress in English. Rogerson-Revell (2011, pp.151-52) lists some of the reasons learners frequently have difficulties with word stress due to interference from their L1, including:

(i) There may be a propensity to give both stressed and unstressed syllables full vowels (i.e. vowels in unstressed syllables are not weakened), as for instance in the Italian and French languages.

(ii) Word stress may be fixed in the L1 (i.e. stress tends to fall on a particular syllable). For example, the final syllable in French and Thai and the penultimate syllable in Swahili and Polish.

(iii) The L1 may have variable rather than fixed stress placement (as in English) but different rules, as in Turkish, Italian and Arabic. This may lead to particular problems with cognates.

(iv) The L1 may only have primary stress, as in Russian and Greek. This may cause problems with multisyllabic words.

(v) In many languages there is no compound word stress distinction, for example, white ‘house’ vs ‘White House’. The difference is rather signalled by word order as opposed to word stress.

(vi) Compound word stress may always be on the first syllable (e.g. ‘prime minister’, ‘front door’), as in German and Scandinavian languages.

(vii) ‘International’ words, namely cognates such as ‘television’, are subject to interference from the learner’s L1. ‘Television’ does not have penultimate stress and has five rather than four syllables in many languages.

2. Word stress is often studied/taught artificially as words tend to be analysed as they are said in isolation

English word stress rules relate to words as they are said in isolation. Certainly, as Roach (1991, p.95) points out, studying words in isolation does reveal stress placement and stress levels more clearly than analysing them in the context of rapid, continuous speech. Nevertheless, it’s still a somewhat artificial situation to focus on the stress of isolated words. After all, we rarely say words in isolation, apart from, for instance, ‘possibly’, ‘yes’, please’ and interrogative words such as ‘what’.

As one begins to analyse how word stress varies depending on the position of a word in a sentence, then it becomes easier to appreciate why it’s often a fruitless task to study the stress of words as they’re said insolation.

Dauer (1993, p.105), for instance, looks at how the stress in some words and compounds stressed on the last syllable may shift position depending on their location in a sentence. Essentially, words are stressed on the last syllable (or last “word”) when it occurs at the end of a sentence or phrase. In contrast, one should stress the first syllable (or first “word”) when it is immediately succeeded by another word in the same phrase . This is often the case when the word functions as an adjective and is followed by a noun that is stressed on the first syllable. Dauer (ibid.) offers the following sentences as a means to emphasise words with variable stress:

in Dauer, 1993, p.105

3. Bewildering complications and exceptions plague most areas of word stress in English

I would surely need another 25,000 words to cover all the exceptions to, and complications of, what appear to be even the most stable of English word stress rules. 

However, to illuminate the difficulties both learners and teachers face when it comes to tackling English word stress, we should return to the topic of stress in compounds. On the face of it, there is a clear-cut distinction between phrases (taking final stress, e.g. black ˈ board ) and compounds (taking initial stress, ˈ black ˌ board). However, as Fudge (2016, p.136) questions, what about constructions which are syntactically similar to compounds yet they take phrasal stress patterns? Fudge (ibid.) compares ˈ Christmas ˌ cake (with the regular compound stress-pattern), and Christmas ˈ pudding and Christmas ˈ pie (with the phrasal type of pattern and stress on the second word). 

With the aforementioned examples of Christmas foods in mind, it is apparent that there are very few English word stress rules that are of a hard-and-fast nature. Fudge (2017, pp.144-49) offers 22 main regularities related to the assignment of initial or final stress to compounds. Unsurprisingly, a great many of these regularities contain exceptions. This suggests that learners should focus on noticing stress patterns of individual phrases and compounds etc. when they engage in listening practice rather than consciously aim to ‘learn’ or memorise English word stress rules.

Word stress exercise with answers and audio files

Jennie kindly shared an exercise related to word stress. Download the exercise, which also contains answers, in PDF form using the link below. Do also download the audio files. 

Word stress exercise

Audio - exercise A

Audio - exercise B

Audio - exercise C

Final Thoughts on Word Stress Rules

This post has established that teachers of English face a genuine quandary when it comes to teaching English word stress rules. Given that these rules, or tendencies, are subject to a great many exceptions, one really has to consider whether it’s worth dedicating significant instruction time specifically to word stress. 

Still, I believe that teachers should not completely overlook word stress. As for teachers who do have knowledge of the phonology of the student’s first language, then they are in a strong position to at least draw attention to why negative language transfer from the student’s mother tongue may be preventing the production of correct word stress in English. All in all, I think it’s a case of instructing and drip-feeding information to students when serious instances of intelligibility do occur and when the time is otherwise right.

Dauer, R.M., (2005). The Lingua Franca Core: A New Model for Pronunciation Instruction? TESOL Quarterly , Vol. 39, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 543-550

Dauer, R.M., (1993). Accurate English: A Complete Course in Pronunciation , Prentice Hall Regents: USA

Fudge, E., (2016). English Word-Stress , Abingdon: Routledge

Jones, D., (1922). An Outline of English Phonetics , New York: G.E. Stechert & Co.

Kelly, G., (2000). How to Teach Pronunciation , Harlow: Pearson Education Limited

Levis, J.M., (2018). Intelligibility, Oral Communication, and the Teaching of Pronunciation , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Roach, P., (1991). English Phonetics and Phonology: A practical course , Second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Rogerson-Revell, P., (2011). English Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching , New York: Continuum International Publishing Group

Underhill, A., (2005). Sound Foundations: Learning and teaching pronunciation , Oxford: Macmillan Education

Learning strategies

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Free English Lessons

Syllables and word stress – english pronunciation lesson.

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In this lesson, you can learn about syllables and stress in English.

Do you know what stress means it’s one of the most important pronunciation points in english., when you speak english, do other people find it difficult to understand what you’re saying if so, you might not be using stress correctly., pronouncing words with the correct stress can make a big difference to your english: your english will immediately sound clearer and more natural., quiz: syllables and word stress.

Now, test your knowledge of what you learned in the lesson by trying this quiz.

For some questions, you need to listen to the audio in order to answer. In other cases, you can listen to the audio as extra help.

You will get your score at the end, when you can click on ‘View Questions’ to see all the correct answers.

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Well done! You have understood a lot of the material in this lesson. Check the correct answers and think about why you didn’t get them right.

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Congratulations! You have understood the content of this lesson perfectly.

1 . Question

Put these words in order of how many syllables they have, starting with the word that has one syllable.

• unbelievable
• information

View Answers:

2 . Question

Read or listen to five words and mark the one that does not have the same number of syllables as the others.

If you’re not certain, listen carefully to the recording, which reflects the most common pronunciation of these words.

3 . Question

Read these phonetic transcriptions of words you saw in the lesson. Which one has the most syllables?

• /jʊːnɪˈvɜːsɪti/
• /ˈbrekfəst/
• /ʌnˈkʌmftəbəl/
• /saɪənˈtɪfɪk/
• /fəˈtɒgrəfiː/

Remember that a syllable contains one vowel, which may be a monophthong or pure vowel, or it may be a combination of sounds that glide together (a diphthong or triphthong). Also, look carefully at the phonetic transcription: some letters in the orthographic spelling may be silent, but the phonetic transcription represents the pronunciation exactly – there are no silent letters in phonetics!

4 . Question

Listen to the following words. Which one is not pronounced with three syllables?

https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Computer-interested-temperature-photographed-chocolate.wav

(Note that some of these words have syllables that can either be pronounced or be silent: this question refers to how they are pronounced in this recording, so you cannot answer without listening first!)

• temperature
• photographed

You must listen to the recording before you answer, because the question asks about the pronunciation of this speaker. It is possible (and correct!) to say some of these words in more than one way.

5 . Question

True or false: stressed syllables are louder than unstressed syllables

6 . Question

True or false: unstressed syllables are not as long as stressed syllables

7 . Question

True or false: the pitch of the voice is lower for stressed syllables than for unstressed syllables

8 . Question

True or false: the stressed syllable in English is underlined in the phonetic transcriptions found in most dictionaries.

9 . Question

Which words are stressed on the first syllable? Choose as many as you think are right.

10 . Question

What type of two-syllable words are usually stressed on the last syllable? Choose as many as you think are right.

11 . Question

Which words are stressed on the last syllable? Choose as many as you think are right.

12 . Question

Which of these nouns are exceptions to the normal rule for two-syllable nouns? Choose as many as you think are exceptions.

In case you need a reminder, here’s the rule: two-syllable nouns are usually stressed on the first syllable.

Some of these words can also be a verb or an adjective, and the pronunciation may differ, but the question asks about nouns, so answer in terms of their pronunciation as nouns.

13 . Question

Which of these words from the lesson is stressed on the first syllable? Choose as many as you think are right.

14 . Question

Where is the stress on the words ‘relation’, ‘discussion’ and ‘optician’?

• The first syllable
• The second / second-last syllable
• The last syllable

15 . Question

Which of these word groups is not stressed on the second-last syllable? Choose as many as you think are right.

• dramatic, Atlantic, magic, enthusiastic
• activity, opportunity, photography, university
• education, television, station, politician

16 . Question

Which of these words are stressed on the first syllable? Choose as many as you think are right.

• comfortable
• uncomfortable
• comfortably

17 . Question

What is the phonetic symbol for the most common vowel in English, the neutral vowel sound known as the schwa?

18 . Question

On which syllables is there a schwa in the word ‘information’? Choose as many as you think are right. Listen to the recording to help you.

https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Information.wav

• The second syllable
• The second-last syllable

19 . Question

On which syllables is there a schwa in the word ‘banana’? Choose as many as you think are right. Listen to the recording to help you.

https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Banana.wav

20 . Question

On which syllables is there a schwa in the word ‘understandable’? Choose as many as you think are right. Listen to the recording to help you.

https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Understandable.wav

• The third syllable

1. How to Count Syllables

You’ll learn all about stress in this lesson, but first, we need to talk about syllables . Listen to four words:

Do you know how many syllables these words have? Fast has one syllable: fast. /faːst/ Person has two syllables: per-son. /ˈpɜːsən/ Beautiful has three syllables: beau-ti-ful. /ˈbjʊːtɪfəl/ Information has four syllables: in-for-ma-tion. /ɪnfəˈmeɪʃən/ A syllable has one vowel sound (and only one vowel sound) and one or more consonant sounds. Let’s do some more practice. Look at four more words:

How many syllables do they have? Breakfast has two syllables: break-fast. /ˈbrekfəst/ Banana has three syllables: ba-na-na. /bəˈnaːnə/ Tomorrow has three syllables: to-mor-row. /təˈmɒrəʊ/ University has five syllables: u-ni-ver-si-ty. /jʊːnɪˈvɜːsɪti/ So, this lesson isn’t really about syllables; it’s about stress. What’s the connection between syllables and stress? Think about the word banana. Banana has three syllables.

Do you pronounce all the syllables the same: bah-nah-nah? No, you don’t—one syllable is stronger: ba-NA-na. This is stress. If a word has one syllable, you don’t need to think about stress. But, if a word has two syllables or more, one syllable is always stressed: it has a strong, clear pronunciation.

Let’s practice pronouncing word stress correctly.

2. How to Pronounce Stress

Let’s look at an example you just saw.

Do you remember where the stress is? It’s on the second syllable: ba-NA-na. What makes the stressed syllable different? There are three things you need to do to pronounce stress correctly. One: the stressed syllable should be louder. Two: the stressed syllable should be a little higher. Three: the stressed syllable should be a little longer in time. Let’s practice. First, listen to three words you saw before:

• inforMAtion

Here, I was exaggerating the stress so that you can hear it clearly. You don’t need to pronounce the stress this strongly. However, when you practice, it’s a good idea to try to overpronounce the stress a little bit. This will make sure that you are pronouncing it correctly. So, where is the stress in these three words? Listen again, and this time, repeat the words after me: PERson, BEAUtiful, inforMAtion. Let’s try one more time: PERson, BEAUtiful, inforMAtion. How was that? Could you pronounce the stress clearly? Next, let’s look at four more words you saw before:

This time, I pronounced the stress in a more natural way. Could you hear it? Where is the stress in these four words? Listen again, and this time, repeat the words after me: BREAKfast, baNAna, toMOrrow, uniVERsity. Let’s try one more time: BREAKfast, baNAna, toMOrrow, uniVERsity.

When you look up a word, you can find the stress by looking at the phonetic transcription. The thing that looks like an apostrophe /ˈ/ shows you where the stress is. When you see this apostrophe, the next syllable is the stressed syllable. When you write down new English vocabulary , make sure you record the stress, too. You can put a mark over the stressed syllable, or underline it.

At this point, you might be thinking: are there any rules about word stress? How do I know where the word stress is if I don’t have a dictionary? Let’s talk about that.

3. Stress in Two-Syllable Words

We’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that there are some rules about word stress in English. The bad news is that the rules don’t cover everything, and even the rules which you do have don’t work all the time. Here’s one rule which is quite useful. It’s about words with two syllables. Look at five words:

All these words have two syllables. Where’s the stress? In all the words, the stress is on the 1st syllable. There’s a reason for this: can you work it out? What connects these five words? These words are all nouns. Nouns with two syllables usually have stress on the 1st syllable. Let’s practice saying the words together. Repeat after me: PICture, MInute, MOney, DOCtor, WAter. This is also true for most adjectives with two syllables:

What about verbs? Look at some examples and try to work out the rule:

Can you hear the stress? The stress is on the second syllable. Let’s practice saying the words together. Repeat after me: deCIDE, forGET, exPLAIN, arRIVE, rePEAT. So, most nouns and adjectives with two syllables have the stress on the first syllable, and most verbs have the stress on the second syllable. Be careful, because there are many common exceptions, like hoTEL, HAPpen, exAM, or FINish.

What about longer words? Are there any rules you can use to find the stress?

4. Stress in Longer Words

In three-syllable words, the stress can be anywhere; it can be at the beginning:

It can be in the middle:

It can also be at the end, although this is less common:

Let’s practice! Repeat after me: BEAUtiful, toMOrrow, emploYEE. Let’s try three more: ANyone, comPUter, JapanESE. In words with four or more syllables, the stress is almost always in the middle of the word, not on the first or last syllable. For example:

• comMUnicate
• phoTOgrapher

Try saying the words after me: inforMAtion, comMUnicate, phoTOgrapher. There are some other rules which can help you to find the stress in longer words. Let’s look together. If a word ends -tion, -sion or -cian, then the stress is always on the second last syllable:

Can you think of three more words like this? There are many, but here are three more suggestions: situAtion, reVIsion, elecTRIcian. The same rule is true for words ending -ic:

Again, all these words have the stress on the second last syllable. If a word ends with the letter -y and has three or more syllables, then the stress is two syllables before the last one. For example:

• possiBILity

That means, if a word has three syllables and ends in -y, the stress is almost always on the first syllable:

There’s one more rule which could help you here: if a longer word is made from a shorter root word, then the stress is generally in the same place as the root word. For example:

• COMfortable
• unCOMfortable
• COMfortably

In all these words, the stress is in the same place as the root word, COMfort. However, the rules you saw before take priority. This means that the stress can move when you make a longer word from a root word. For example:

• PHOtograph -> phoTOgraphy -> photoGRAphic
• eCOnomy -> ecoNOmic
• EDucate -> eduCAtion

Okay, now you’ve learned about stress, how to pronounce it, and how you can find the stress in different words. But, there’s still one more very important thing you should know about.

5. Contrasts and Vowel Reductions

Want to know a secret that will improve your English pronunciation really fast? Here’s the most important point about word stress: it’s about contrast. That means, when you pronounce word stress, it’s not just about the stressed syllable. You also need to think about the unstressed syllables. Remember that to pronounce stress, you make the stressed syllable louder, higher and longer. Stress is about contrast, so the opposite is true for unstressed syllables: you need to make them quieter, lower and shorter.

Let’s look at three words you’ve already practiced:

To pronounce the words well, you need to think about the unstressed syllables, too. Often, the vowel sounds in the unstressed syllables are reduced to schwa sounds–/ə/, or short /ɪ/ sounds. ‘Reduced’ means the vowel sounds are shorter and weaker. For example, in the word banana, the stress is on the second syllable: ba-NA-na. The stressed ‘a’ has an /aː/ sound, but the other two ‘a’s’ have schwa sounds: b/ə/nan/ə/. In the word person, the first syllable is stressed, and the second syllable has a schwa sound: pers/ə/n. And in information, the syllables before and after the stressed syllable reduce to schwas: inf/ə/mat/ə/n.

Get more practice with vowels in this Oxford Online English lesson: How to Pronounce Vowel Sounds .

Unstressed syllables can’t always be reduced, but they often can be. If a vowel sound is reduced, it most often shortens to a schwa sound. We’ll finish with a simple tip to help you pronounce word stress clearly and naturally. Focus on the stressed syllable, and put more stress on it than you think you need. Pronounce the unstressed syllables as fast as you can. If you do this, you’ll have contrast in your pronunciation, and this will make your word stress sound natural and clear.

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Word Stress Quiz

You can do this quiz online or print it on paper. It tests your understanding of the word stress pages. For each question, the correct choice is the one in which the stressed syllable is capitalized, as in voCABulary.

1. Can you pass me a plastic knife?

2. I want to be a photographer .

3. Which photograph do you like best?

4. He was born in China .

5. Whose computer is this?

6. I can't decide which book to borrow.

7. Couldn't you understand what she was saying?

8. Voting in elections is your most important duty.

9. We had a really interesting conversation .

10. How do you pronounce this word?

Your score is:

Correct answers:

Lesson 12 – Sentence stress

In today’s lesson, we will start learning about sentence stress.

The only way you are going to get good pronunciation is by doing copious amounts of listening.

This isn’t a children’s course, but listening to children speak is a good way to practice your pronunciation. Stop the video after every sentence and try to repeat it the same way the speaker said it. If you need to, you can also slow down the audio in the settings.

Your homework last time was to find words with matching stress patterns.

minus, judgment, atom, muffin, earner, pencil, student, number, insight, summer, ferry, perfect, princess, Monday, London, people, couple, window

disease, around, reply, apply, involve, attend, provide, employ, imply, deny, insane, hotel, revise, perform, require, demand, supply, today, July, respect, above, complete, today

vigilance, emphasis, personal, industry, actually, challenging, concentrate, happily, hastily, wonderful, melody, critical, sympathy, frequently, cognitive, Africa, animal, Canada, consonant, triangle

abandon, delicious, prestigious, pajamas, electric, formation, linguistic, uncover, disclosure, accustomed, informing, advantage, disorder, semester, expensive, conviction, connection, Melissa, potato, tomato, amazing, vacation, protection, location

guarantee, overlook, kangaroo, understand, undertake, interfere, Japanese, out of work, wildest dreams, well behaved

personally, operator, noticeable, ultimately, carpenterworm, dandelion, isolated, melancholy, similarly, competency, dictionary, mandatory, necessary, supervisor

Note that the following words are usually read with a ‘1-2-3 pattern in spoken English:

memorable, desperately, dangerously, literature, comfortable, interesting, obviously

mechanical, catastrophe, apostrophe, unfortunate, significance, incapable, unpopular, continuous, autonomy, autonomous, photographer, photography, intelligence, monopoly, identify, community, degenerate, insoluble, certificate, appreciate

education, economic, mathematics, uninvited, hyperactive, inspiration, satisfaction, understanding, monolingual, undefeated, independence, innovation, academic, animation, navigation, recognition, execution, obligation, population

ˌ1-2-ˈ3-4-5

mathematical, indeterminate, university, aboriginal, opportunity, biochemistry, archeology, universally, undesirable, technological, geometrical, longitudinal, revolutionize, capability, anniversary, unidentified, intermediate, curiosity, architectural, immemorial

• 1-ˌ2-3-ˈ4-5

communication, pronunciation, participation, examination, procrastination, imagination, discrimination, determination, denomination, Illuminati, ecclesiastic, intoxication, alliteration

A few notes about marking stress:

You usually put the stress mark before the consonant in the stressed syllable:

• ˈstudent, aˈbout, adˈvantage

If there is a double letter then put it between the letters:

• atˈtend, supˈply,  acˈcustom, comˈmunity, conˈnection, alˌliteˈration

Vowels determine the syllable:

• sport (one syllable)
• ˈsupport (two syllables)

Sentence stress

Look at the following stress patterns:

• proˌnunciˈation
• It’s ˌnice to ˈmeet you.

It’s the exact same stress pattern in all three examples. Even though a sentence is split into different words, you can say it as if it were a single word.

More examples

Listen to the pronunciation of the following sentences. Which words are stressed?

• I’m glad to see you.
• What do you do?
• What’s your telephone number?
• That’s a nice car.
• What school do you go to?

Sentence stress patterns in different languages

Some languages have very regular word stress in a sentence. It could almost be likened to marching solders. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Languages like this include the following:

• Filipino (Tagalog)

Find audio recordings of these languages online to listen to them.

Sentence stress pattern in English

English has a much more irregular stress pattern.

This the picture above the little people represent unstressed words or syllables, and the big people represent stressed words or syllables.

di-DA-di-di-DA-di-di-di-DA-di-di-DA-di-di-di-DA

English Poetry

Take a look at the first two lines of this poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

Break, break, break,          On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

ˈBreak, ˈbreak, ˈbreak,          On thy ˈcold gray ˈstones, O ˈSea!

Sentence rhythm

Have a look at the following sentence:

When you read this the stressed syllables (big people) are said at a regular rhythm. The unstressed syllables (little people) get squished together when there are a lot of them between the stressed syllables.

Another poem

Listen to the stressed words in this poem. How many stresses are in each line? Which words have a primary stress?

Sea Fever by John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Listen again to the poem read by the original author. Which words does he stress?

• Mark the stressed words in Sea Fever and practice reading it yourself with a regular rhythm.
• Find 30 seconds of English audio. Transcribe it in IPA and mark the stressed words.

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Syllables and Stress

English syllables and stress patterns.

Syllables and stress are two of the main areas of spoken language. Pronouncing words with the stress on the correct syllables will help you improve your spoken English, make your sentences easier to understand and help you sound more like a native speaker .

English syllables are stress-based. English is classed as a ‘stress-timed’ language, which means the meanings of words can be altered significantly by a change in word stress and sentence stress. Some syllables in English are long and some syllables are short. This is why it is important to learn how to use word stress in English and develop an understanding of sentence stress and English stress patterns.

The English language is heavily stressed with each word divided into syllables. Here are some examples of English words with different numbers of syllables. These sets of words are followed by a series of examples using the correct stress placement:

Words with one syllable  

The, cold, quite, bed, add, start, hope, clean, trade, green, chair, cat, sign, pea, wish, drive, plant, square, give, wait, law, off, hear, trough, eat, rough, trout, shine, watch, for , out, catch, flight, rain, speech, crab, lion, knot, fixed, slope, reach, trade, light, moon, wash, trend, balm, walk, sew, joke, tribe, brooch

Words with two syllables

Party, special, today, quiet, orange, partner, table, demand, power, retrieve, doctor , engine, diet, transcribe, contain, cabbage , mountain, humour, defend, spatial, special, greedy, exchange, manage, carpet, although, trophy, insist, tremble, balloon, healthy, shower, verbal, business, mortgage, fashion, hover, butcher, magic, broken

Words with three syllables

Fantastic, energy, expensive, wonderful, laughable, badminton, idiot, celery, beautiful, aggression, computer, journalist, horrify , gravity, temptation, dieting, trampoline, industry, financial , distinguished, however, tremendous, justify, inflation, creation, injustice, energise, glittering, tangible, mentalise, laughable, dialect, crustacean, origin

Words are made up of syllables  – image source

Words with four syllables

Understanding, indecisive,  conversation , realistic, moisturising, American , psychology, gregarious, independence, affordable, memorandum, controversial, superior, gymnasium, entrepreneur, traditional, transformation,  remembering , establishment, vegetation, affectionate, acupuncture, invertebrate

Words with five syllables

Organisation, uncontrollable, inspirational, misunderstanding , conversational, opinionated, biological, subordination, determination, sensationalist, refrigerator, haberdashery, hospitality, conservatory, procrastination, disobedience, electrifying, consideration, apologetic, particularly, compartmentalise, hypochondria

Words with six syllables

Responsibility, idiosyncratic, discriminatory, invisibility, capitalisation, extraterrestrial, reliability, autobiography, unimaginable, characteristically, superiority, antibacterial, disciplinarian, environmentalist, materialism, biodiversity, criminalisation, imaginatively, disobediently

Words with seven syllables

Industrialisation, multiculturalism, interdisciplinary, radioactivity, unidentifiable, environmentalism, individuality, vegetarianism , unsatisfactorily, electrocardiogram

English Stress Patterns

When thinking about syllables and stress in English, usually we find that one syllable of a word is stressed more than the others. There are always one or more stressed syllables within a word and this special stress placement helps words and sentences develop their own rhythm .

Syllables and stress patterns in English help to create the sounds , pronunciations and rhythms that we hear all around us.

Word Stress in English

We come to recognise these English syllables and stress patterns in conversations in real life interactions and on the radio and television . Using the correct stressed syllables within a word is an important part of speech and understanding.

Pronouncing words with the right word stress will make your language sound more natural to native speakers. Here are some words from the previous lists with the stressed syllable in bold:

Two syllable words stress patterns:

Qui et,  par ty,  spe cial, to day ,  or ange,  part ner,  ta ble, de mand ,  po wer, re trieve ,  en gine,   di et,  gree dy, ex change , man age, car pet, al though, re lax, com fort

Three syllable words stress patterns:

Fan tas tic,  en ergy, ex pen sive, ag gre sion,  won derful,  laugh able, bad minton,  cel ery, temp ta tion, trampo line,  in dustry, din tin guished, fi nan cial, how ev er, tre men dous, li brary

Four syllable words stress patterns:

Under stand ing, inde cis ive, conver sat ion, rea l is tic,  mois turising, Am er ican, psy cho logy, inde pen dence, entrepren eur, transfor ma tion,  fas cinating, com fortable

Five syllable words stress patterns:

Uncon troll able, inspir at ional, misunder stand ing, conver sat ional, o pin ionated, bio log ical, alpha bet ical, subordi nat ion, re fri gerator,  hab erdashery, hospi tal ity

Six syllable words stress patterns:

Responsi bil ity, idiosyn crat ic, invisi bil ity, capitali sat ion, dis crim inatory or discrimi nat ory, antibac ter ial, superi or ity, autobi og raphy, ma ter ialism, biodi ver sity, criminalis at ion, i mag inatively,

Seven syllable words stress patterns:

Industriali sat ion, multi cul turalism, interdisci plin ary, radioact iv ity, uni den tifiable, environ men talism, individu al ity, vege tar ianism, unsatis fac torily, electro card iogram

Syllables and Stress Patterns in English Speech

Using clear syllables and stress patterns is an important part of speech. The correct word stress in English is crucial for understanding a word quickly and accurately.

Even if you cannot hear a word well and are not familiar with the context, you can often still work out what the word is, simply from listening to which syllable is stressed.

In the same way, if a learner pronounces a word differently from the accepted norm, it can be hard for a native speaker to understand the word. The word or sentence might be grammatically correct, but if they have used the wrong (or an unexpected) stress pattern or the wrong stressed syllables, it could make it unintelligible to a native.

English Word Stress Rules

Here are some general rules about word stress in English:

• Only vowel sounds are stressed (a,e,i,o,u).
• A general rule is that for two syllable words, nouns and adjectives have the stress on the first syllable, but verbs have the stress on the second syllable.

For example:  ta ble (noun),  spec ial (adjective), de mand  (verb).

• Words ending in ‘ic’, ‘tion’ or ‘sion’ always place their stress on the penultimate (second to last) syllable. (e.g. super son ic, At lan tic, dedi ca tion, at ten tion, transfor ma tion, compre hen sion).
• Words ending in ‘cy’, ‘ty’, ‘gy’ and ‘al’ always place their stress on the third from last syllable. (e.g. acc oun tancy, sin cer ity, chro nol ogy, inspi rat ional, hypo the tical).
• Words ending in ‘sm’ with 3 or fewer syllables have their stress on the first syllable (e.g. pri sm, schi sm, aut ism, bot ulism,  sar casm) unless they are extensions of a stem word. This is often the case with words ending ‘ism’.
• Words ending in ‘ism’ tend to follow the stress rule for the stem word with the ‘ism’ tagged onto the end (e.g. can nibal = can nibalism, ex pre ssion = ex pre ssionism, fem inist = fem inism, oppor tun ist = oppor tun ism).
• Words ending in ‘sm’ with 4 or more syllables tend to have their stress on the second syllable (e.g. en thu siasm, me ta bolism).

Words ending in ‘ous’

• Words ending in ‘ous’ with 2 syllables have their stress on the first syllable (e.g. mon strous, pi ous, an xious, pom pous, zeal ous,  con scious,  fa mous, gra cious, gor geous, jea lous, joy ous).
• English words ending in ‘ous’ with 4 syllables usually have their stress on the second syllable (e.g. gre gar ious, a non ymous, su per fluous, an dro gynous, car niv orous, tem pes tuous, lux ur ious, hil ar ious, con tin uous, cons pic uous). There are some exceptions using different stressed syllables, such as sacri leg ious, which stresses the 3rd syllable.

Words ending in ‘ous’ with 3 or more syllables do not always follow a set stress pattern. Here are some common English words with 3 syllables ending in ‘ous’ and their stress placement:

Words ending in ‘ous’ with stress on first syllable

fab ulous, friv olous, glam orous,  cal culus, du bious, en vious, scan dalous, ser ious, ten uous, chiv alrous, dan gerous, fur ious

Words ending in ‘ous’ with stress on second syllable

e nor mous, au da cious, fa ce tious, di sas trous, fic ti cious, hor ren dous, con ta gious, am bit ious, cou ra geous

Stress can changing the meaning of a word

Remember, where we place the stress in English can change the meaning of a word . This can lead to some funny misunderstandings – and some frustrating conversations!

Words that have the same spelling but a different pronunciation and meaning are called heteronyms . Here are a few examples of words where the stressed syllable changes the meaning of the word:

The word ‘object’ is an example of an English word that can change meaning depending on which syllable is stressed. When the word is pronounced ‘ ob ject’ (with a stress on the first syllable) the word is a noun meaning an ‘item’, ‘purpose’ or ‘person/thing that is the focus’ of a sentence.

For example:

• She handed the lady a rectangular ob ject made of metal
• He was the ob ject of the dog’s affection
• The ring was an ob ject of high value
• The ob ject of the interview was to find the best candidate for the job
• The ob ject was small and shiny – it could have been a diamond ring!

But if the same word is pronounced ‘ob ject ‘ (with the stress on the second syllable) the word is now a verb , meaning ‘to disagree with’ something or someone.

• They ob ject to his constant lateness
• The man ob ject ed to the size of his neighbour’s new conservatory
• She strongly ob jects to being called a liar
• We ob ject to the buildings being demolished
• No one ob ject ed to the proposal for more traffic lights

Original image source

When the word ‘present’ is pronounced ‘ pre sent’ (with the stress on the first syllable) the word is a noun meaning ‘a gift’ or an adjective meaning ‘here / not absent’.

• She handed him a beautifully wrapped pre sent
• The book was a pre sent from their grandparents
• Everyone was pre sent at the meeting

But when the word is pronounced ‘pre sent’ (with the stress on the second syllable) the word is now a verb meaning ‘to introduce’ something or someone, ‘to show’ or ‘to bring to one’s attention’. It can also be used when talking about presenting a TV or radio show (i.e. to be a ‘presenter’).

• May I pre sent Charlotte Smith, our new store manager
• Bruce Forsyth used to pre sent ‘Strictly Come Dancing’
• I’d like to pre sent my research on the breeding habits of frogs
• They pre sent ed the glittering trophy to the winner
• She was pre sent ed with the Oscar
• This new situation pre sents a problem

To present or a present? Image source

Another example of an English word changing meaning depending on where you place the stress is the word ‘project’. This can be the noun when the stressed syllable is at the start – ‘ pro ject’ (a task).

• They started work on the research pro ject immediately
• She looked forward to her next pro ject – repainting the house
• He enjoyed writing restaurant reviews – it was his current passion pro ject

However, this word becomes a verb when the stressed syllables moves to the end – ‘to pro ject ‘ (to throw/launch, to protrude, to cause an image to appear on a surface, or to come across/make an impression).

• The object was pro ject ed into the air at high velocity
• The film will be pro ject ed onto the screen
• The chimney pro jects  3 metres from the roof
• She always pro jects  herself with confidence

Stress patterns in compound words 

Compound words  are single words made up of two distinct parts. They are sometimes hyphenated. Here are examples of stress patterns in compound words in English:

• Compound nouns have the stress on the first part: e.g.  sugar cane,  beet root,  hen house,  trip wire, light house,  news paper, port hole, round about, will power
• Compound adjectives and verbs have the stress on the second part: e.g. whole hearted , green- fingered , old- fashioned , to under stand , to in form , to short- change , to over take

English sentence stress 

Once you understand word stress in English, you need to think about sentence stress . This means deciding which words to stress as part of the sentence as a whole. Stressed syllables can create a distinctive, rhythmic pattern within a sentence. This is how English stress patterns are related to the rhythm of English  and help create the ‘music’ of a language .

English speakers tend to put stress on the most important words in a sentence in order to draw the listener’s attention to them. The most important words are the words that are necessary for the meaning of the sentence. Sentence stress is just as important as word stress for clarity. For example:

‘The cat sat on the mat while eating its favourite food’

The most important words here are: ‘cat’, ‘mat’, ‘eating’ and ‘food’. Even if you only hear those words, you would still be able to understand what is happening in the sentence simply from hearing which words are stressed.

Clearly, it is the nouns and verbs that are the most important parts of the sentence , as these are the ‘content words’ that help with meaning. Content words are usually stressed.

The adjectives , adverbs and conjunctions all add flavour to the sentence, but they are not absolutely necessary to understand the meaning. These ‘helper’ words are usually unstressed.

In our example sentence: ‘The cat sat on the mat while eating its favourite food’ , we have already used the word ‘cat’ so we do not need to emphasise the word ‘its’ (or ‘he/she’ if you want to give the cat a gender), because we already know who is eating the food (i.e. the cat).

Image source

English word stress within a sentence

Stress patterns affect words and sentences in English.

The stress on a word (the word stress) is the emphasis placed on that word. In the sentence below, “I never said he ate your chocolate”, the stressed word will change the meaning or implication of the sentence:

Stressing the first word ‘I’ implies that I (the speaker) never said it. It might be true or it might not be true – the point is, I never said it – someone else did.

Stressing the second word ‘never’ emphasises that I never said it. There was never an occasion when I said it (whether it is true or not).

Stressing the third word ‘said’ means that I never  said it. He might have eaten your chocolate, but I didn’t say it. I might have thought it, but I never said it out loud (I may only have implied it).

Stressing the fourth word ‘he’ means I didn’t say it was  him that ate your chocolate, only that someone did.

Stressing the fifth word ‘ate’ means I didn’t say he had eaten it. Perhaps he took it and threw it away or did something else with it.

Stressing the sixth word ‘your’ means it wasn’t your chocolate he ate –  it could have been someone else’s chocolate.

Stressing the seventh word ‘chocolate’ emphases that it was not your chocolate he ate – he ate something else belonging to you.

So the sentence stress in English makes all the difference to the meaning of the whole sentence. The stressed word in the sentence is the one we should pay the most attention to.

Stress placement affects the whole understanding of the English language. This issue is strongly related to the rhythm of English . Getting the right word stress , sentence stress and rhythm leads to the perfect communication of your intended message.

So who ate your chocolate? –  image source

Stressed Vowel Sounds and Weak Vowels in English

The necessary words in an English sentence are stressed more by increasing the length and clarity of the vowel sound .

In contrast, the unnecessary words are stressed less by using a shorter and less clear vowel sound. This is called a ‘weak’ vowel sound .

In fact, sometimes the vowel sound is almost inaudible. For example, the letter ‘a’ in English is often reduced to a muffled ‘uh’ sound. Grammarians call this a ‘shwa’ or /ə/.

You can hear this ‘weak’ vowel sound at the start of the words ‘about’ and ‘attack’ and at the end of the word ‘banana’. They can sound like ‘ubout’, ‘uttack’ and ‘bananuh’ when spoken by a native English speaker. The article ‘a’ as a single word is also unstressed and reduced in this way to a weak ‘uh’ sound.

For example: ‘Is there a shop nearby?’ sounds like ‘Is there-uh shop nearby?’ This shwa can also be heard in other instances, such as in the word ‘and’ when it is used in a sentence. For example: ‘This book is for me and you’ can sound sound like ‘This book is for me un(d) you’.

The reason for this weak stress pattern in English is to help the rhythm and speed of speech . Using this weak ‘uh’ sound for the vowel ‘a’ helps the speaker get ready for the next stressed syllable by keeping the mouth and lips in a neutral position.

To pronounce the ‘a’ more clearly would require a greater opening of the mouth, which would slow the speaker down.

The giraffe on the right holds its mouth and lips in a neutral position, ready to speak again – image source

As English is a stress-timed language , the regular stresses are vital for the rhythm of the language , so the vowel sounds of unstressed words in English often get ‘lost’.

In contrast, syllable-timed languages (such as Spanish) tend to work in the opposite way, stressing the vowel sounds strongly, while the consonants get ‘lost’.

Click on the highlighted text to learn more about how English word stress and sentence stress relates to the  rhythm of English  and intonation in English .

What do you think about syllables and stress in English?

Do you find the syllables and stress patterns a difficult part of learning a new language?

Have you had any funny misunderstandings from stressing the wrong syllable in English? We’d love to hear your stories!

Are there any English words or sentences with odd stressed syllables or difficult stress patterns that you would like advice on?

Can you think of good way to remember or practise correct English word stress and sentence stress?

Do you have any ideas to help EFL students improve their understanding of syllables and stress?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments box.

123 thoughts on “ Syllables and Stress ”

Thank You very Much For this information.. It Helps a lot..

Can you suggest me a song which its lyrics has syllables and pattern?

A good way to practise the syllables and patterns of the English language is to use nursery rhymes and children’s songs. These usually have simple vocabulary so the student can listen to the patterns rather than concentrate on the meaning. http://www.myenglishlanguage.com/2012/08/24/teach-efl-using-nursery-rhymes/

Another useful tool for music fans is pop music from the 1950s and 1960s. Artists like Elvis Presley have simple, effective lyrics that are easy to understand, leaving the listener free to focus on the sounds of the words.

Do any readers have other suggetsions for great listening practice?

Best wishes, Catherine

Thanks so much,its help a lot,now i have cover all the problems on this topic

Hi Utile, I’m really glad you found the article helpful! You might also our articles on Phonology and Speaking/Listening skills 🙂

hi would u tell me how syllables relates to stress , rhythm, and intonation???please

Hi Asmaa, Stress determines which syllable is emphasised the most and the least during speech, rhythm concerns the gaps between syllables during speech and intonation is all about voice pitch (e.g. the voice rises at the end of a sentence to form a question). We will be publishing an article about this topic soon, so watch this space 🙂 Best wishes, Catherine

why is word like nation sounds (sh)?

The ‘tion’ at the end of many English words is thought to have developed from Norman French influence (you can see our History of English section for more about the influence of the Norman Conquest ). English words ending in ‘tion’ are usually pronounced with a ‘sh’ sound but when the letter ‘s’ precedes the ‘tion’, the word is normally pronounced with a ‘ch’ sound. For example, ‘intention’ and ‘position’ have a ‘sh’ sound, but ‘question’ and ‘suggestion’ have a ‘ch’ sound’. I hope this helps 🙂

How would you break procrastination? since I blv the type of English you speak would influence the pronunciation.Which syllable would then be stressed?

Hi Sherin, the word ‘procrastination’ follows the 5 syllable pattern for a word ending in ‘tion’, so the stress comes on the 4th or penultimate syllable – procrastiNAtion (just like the word ‘pronunciAtion’).

thanks for the information.

You’re welcome, Victor. I hope you enjoy the rest of our Phonology section where we have more information on rhythm and intonation in English 🙂 Best wishes, Catherine

Great job here.

Thanks, Dayo. I’m glad you found the article useful.

Hi. which syllable carries the stress in this words? Pronunciation, homogenous, determination, education. Thanks

Hi Olakunle, thanks for your question. These words are pronounced as follows with the stress falling on the letters in bold :

Pronunci a tion, hom o genous, determi na tion, edu ca tion

Ho mo genous (4 syllables) is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable. There is another very similar word, homo gen eous (5 syllables) which is pronounced with the stress on the third syllable. The difference is all in the extra ‘e’.

The words ending in ‘ation’ always have a stress on the penultimate syllable (‘a’)

I hope this helps!

I cant close this page without saying a big thank you. infanct you make me understand this concept to the best of my knowledge.

Thanks for your comment, Idasho – that’s great you found the article so useful. You might also enjoy our Rhythm of English page. 🙂

Thank you so so much. Pls I still need clarity on words ending n with ‘sm” and “ous” Thank you

Thanks for your comment, Amy. We have added a section about words ending in ‘sm’ and ‘ous’ in the English Stress Rules section. I hope this helps.

wow! this is great and really helpful. can there be stress on other parts of speech in a sentence other than nouns and verbs? if yes, examples pls

I’m glad you found the page useful! Normally a sentence stresses the nouns and verbs because these are the most important ‘content’ words. Other words can also be stressed, such as adjectives and adverbs. For example: ‘She bought a big, red car’ – here the adjectives ‘big’ and ‘red’ and the noun ‘car’ would all normally be stressed. In the sentence: ‘They walked quickly to the office’ the adverb ‘quickly’ would also be stressed alongside the verb ‘walked’ and the noun ‘office’.

Structural words, such as conjunctions and prepositions, are rarely stressed. The exception to this is when emphasising a point or correcting information. For example: ‘He cooked chicken and beef for dinner’ – here the most important aspect of the sentence is not that he cooked dinner (that information is expected or already known by the listener), but that he cooked both meats. Stressing the conjunction ‘and’ helps us understand this meaning.

I hope that helps!

hi admin, what about words ending in “ing”. How are they stressed

Hi Ijeoma, the ‘ing’ ending adds another syllable to the word but the ‘ing’ ending is always unstressed. For example: ‘drive’ (1 syllable) becomes ‘ dri ving’ (2 syllables) and ‘ mois turise’ (3 syllables) becomes ‘ mois turising’ (4 syllables).

i really love this. pls what is the stress of the word that end wit MENT example goverment

Thank you very much for this knowledge you imparted on me.. feel like staying here forever

Thanks for your comment, Marcell. I’m really pleased the article helped you! It means a lot to know that learners are benefiting from the content. You might also find our pages on intonation and rhythm of English useful. Good luck with your language learning!

In the word ‘government’ the stress is on the first syllable: gov ernment. This is because ‘ment’ is used here as a suffix and does not change the stress of the original word ( gov ern – gov ernment). ‘Ment’ is often used as a suffix like this to change a verb into a noun, but the new word will always follow its original stress rule – the ‘ment’ is never stressed.

Other examples of this: ‘an nounce ‘ – ‘an nounce ment’, ‘disap point ‘ – ‘disap point ment’, ‘com mit ‘ – ‘com mit ment’, ‘de vel op’ – ‘de vel opment’.

For words ending in ‘ment’ where the ‘ment’ part is not a suffix, the stress can be more difficult to place. Here are some examples: ce ment , fig ment, aug ment , sed iment, par liament, im ped iment, com pliment.

If the word is longer than 2 syllables and the ‘ment’ is not a suffix, the stress will not be on ‘ment’. In words with 2 syllables the stress can be on either the first or last syllable and sometimes this can change the meaning of the word (e.g. ‘ tor ment’ (noun) and ‘to tor ment ‘ (verb).

Can any readers think of any word with more than 2 syllables ending in ‘ment’, where the ‘ment’ is not a suffix and the stress is on the ‘ment’? This is an interesting challenge!

Hope this explanation helps, Abu 🙂

I Really Appreciate These..But According To The Rule,two Syllable Words that is”verb and adjective” Will Have Their stress on the second sylable then why is it GOVern and nt govERN

Hi Ayomide, thanks for your comment! The word ‘govern’ is a verb (‘to govern’) but not an adjective. The related adjective would be ‘governed’. For words with two syllables that are adjectives and verbs the stress will usually be on the second syllable, but this is only a general rule and you will find exceptions.

Some examples of exceptions are: ‘open’ – ‘to open’ (verb) and ‘an open book’ (adjective); ‘better’ – ‘to better’ (verb, ‘to better something’ means to improve on it) and ‘a better book’ (adjective); ‘baby’ – ‘to baby (someone)’ (verb, meaning to pamper/mollycoddle) and ‘a baby sparrow’ (adjective) All these words are also nouns – could this be why they are pronounced on their first syllable? Can anyone think of other two-syllable words that are stressed on the first syllable and are both adjectives and verbs – but are not also nouns?

Thanks……how to divide the word int syllabus

Hi Karima, to divide a word into syllables we break down the word into units of speech. Each syllable contains a vowel sound and the start/end of vowel sounds act as the breaks between syllables. The syllables help in creating the rhythm of the language . It’s worth noting that prefixes and suffixes will always add a syllable (e.g. rewriting = re-writ-ing).

Hi my name is Elizabeth I am confused with the stress placements for these names increase in salary,increase in premium,they contract the dreaded disease at sea,my record was kept in the school,the principal advised the students at assembly

Hi me again can you explain to me about the bound morphemes because i dont understand why they say these words are not examples of bound morphemes . caption,amuse,image

Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for your question. The word ‘increase’ changes its stress placement depending on whether you are using it as as a verb (to in crease ) or a noun (the/an in crease). The verb stresses the second syllable and the noun stresses the first syllable, so this would determine how your first two sentence fragments are stressed. (Incidentally, the stress for the other words here would be sal ary and prem ium) The words ‘contract’ and ‘record’ work in the same way (verbs – ‘to con tract ‘ and ‘to re cord ‘, nouns – ‘a con tract’, ‘a re cord’) In this context, ‘contract’ is a verb, so the stress placement would be: ‘they con tract the dread ed dis ease at sea ‘. In the other sentence, ‘record’ is used as a noun, so the stress placement would be: ‘my re cord was kept at school ‘ The last sentence would have this stress pattern: ‘the prin cipal ad vised the stu dents at as sem bly’. I hope this helps! If you send the full sentences for the first two fragments containing the word ‘increase’ we can determine if they are used as nouns or verbs and therefore the exact stress placement.

Hi again Elizabeth 🙂 A bound morpheme is a word element that cannot stand alone as a word. This includes prefixes and suffixes. Examples of bound morphemes are: ‘re’, ‘pre’, ‘ing’, the pluralising ‘s’, the possessive ‘s’,’er’, est’ and ‘ous’. They can be added to another word to create a new word. For example: pre arrange, re write, copy ing , pencil s , Elizabeth `s , strong er , strong est , danger ous . The words in your question (caption, amuse and image) are not bound morphemes because they can stand alone as words in their own right. I hope this explanation helps!

Thanks so much I have learnt a lot. But how can words such as guarantee, decompose, afternoon, fortunate, inundate, computer, alternate, efficient, galvanize, convocation, habitable, momentary be stressed.

Hi Arinze, I’m glad the page has helped you learn more about syllables and stress 🙂 The words in your list are stressed as follows: guaran tee , decom pose , after noon , for tunate (from the noun ‘ for tune’), in undate, com pu ter, al ternate (verb), al ter nate (adjective), ef fi cient, gal vanize, convo ca tion, ha bitable, mo mentary (from the noun ‘ mo ment’).

How can we stress the words that end with ‘ay’ as in always, ‘lt’ as in result, malt, belt, ‘ce’ as in reproduce, peace, lice, pierce, ‘and’ as in understand, ‘it’ as in permit, vomit …. Hope to hear from you Sir/Ma Thanks

Hi Adebola, Here are the words you requested with the stressed syllable highlighted: al ways, re sult , malt , belt , repro duce , peace , lice , pierce , under stand , per mit (noun), to per mit (verb), vom it. The words with only one syllable (belt, malt, peace, lice, pierce) are irrelevant to the issue of word stress because stress only becomes apparent when there is a contrast with another unstressed syllable within the same word. I hope this helps!

How to stress words or phrases without sending offensive msaage? Please help.

Hi Sara, Are you worried about any words or phrases in particular? If the listener knows you aren’t a native speaker, they will make allowances for any mispronunciations and 99.99% of native speakers won’t be offended if you say something cheeky by mistake, so please don’t worry 🙂

pls help me stress dis words..communicate,investigate,advocate

Hi Taiwo, here is how those words are stressed: com mun icate, in ves tigate, ad vocate

Thanks so much, this really helped me.

I’m glad the page helped, Peace – thanks for taking time to comment 🙂

Please how are words that ends in OR stressed.

Hi Cynthia, Thanks for your question. Words ending in OR usually denote a property of something or someone. For OR words with 2 syllables (e.g. debt or, sail or, auth or, act or, tract or, terr or, error, mirr or, maj or, ten or, don or, sen sor), these nearly always have the stress on the first syllable. One exception is ab hor . It is worth noting that in British English we often have a ‘u’ between the ‘o’ and ‘r’ but American English doesn’t usually have the ‘u’ (e.g. hon our, trem or, pall our, lab our, ard our, glam our, col our).

Words ending in OR that have a root word are stressed the same as the root word. Adding OR to the root is often a way of giving a noun agency. For example: pro ject or, de tect or, gen erator, con duct or, ac cel erator, ad min istrator, rad iator and gov ernor all come from the root verbs: to pro ject , to de tect , to gen erate, to con duct , to ac cel erate, to ad min istrate, to rad iate and to gov ern.

If there is no root word, the stress will often be on the third from last syllable. So if there are 3 syllables in total, it will be on the first syllable e.g. met aphor, mon itor, sen ior). Another example is ‘am bass ador’ with 4 syllables.

You have helped me greatly madam, God bless you

I’m glad you found the page useful – thanks for stopping by!

Thank you so much ..for your very helpful article. Please give us some simple tips on how to perfect the English stress pattern. Almost all the general rules have so many exceptions.

Hi Ralphael, glad you found the page helpful. English is full of exceptions unfortunately, but some simple tips include:

• Stress the most important words in the sentence.
• Modulate your voice to add emotion to important words – don’t keep it flat and monotone.
• Keep stressed syllables slightly longer, higher in pitch and louder than unstressed syllables.
• Identify how many syllables a word has so you can break it up – and remember the stress will fall on a vowel sound.
• Speak clearly and slowly – even without perfect stress patterns, slow and clear voices are much easier to understand.
• Focus on the general rules – you will learn about the exceptions with practice.
• Read and listen to a text at the same time – an audio book with transcript is perfect (also try TV with subtitles) so you can hear how a sentence is pronounced and get used to the sounds and rhythm of English .

God bless you rabbi ..I really wish I am in your college. I have so many questions, some not pertaining to this topic.

Hi, what are relationship between syllables and stress in English language

What is the name of the stress symbol called as in café with the symbol over the (e)? And is it on any keyboard to type? I just noticed it on my sentence above and it was there automatically, how do I get each time I type café?

Hi David, the accent slanting forwards in the word café is called an acute accent (the accent slanting backwards is a grave accent). The right Alt key (sometimes marked Alt Gr) can create this accent when pressed with the e key. The apostrophe key ‘ + e also works in the same way. You can also create the letter e with an acute accent using the shortcut keys Alt + 0233. Let me know if these worked for you!

It didn’t give me what I wanted

I’m sorry you didn’t find the information you needed Felix. Did you have a specific question about syllables and stress you wanted help with?

i have been waiting such an opportunity, thank god it has come; madam, i have been finding it tough to understand stress on my own, though, i got some rules that helps me while dealing with stress like: if a word end with the following; ic, sion, tion, nium, cious, nics, cience, stress mark falls on the second syllable from the end if counting backward eg eduCAtion. stress mark falls on the third syllable from the end if counting backward, these words end with the following; ate, ty, cy, gy. eg, calCUlate. but with all this, i still find it tough to stress most of the polysyllabic words, pls can you help me? words like; educative, agreement,philanthropist, understandable, and several others, i can’t stress them with dictionary aid, pls help me!

Thanks for your message Lorkyaa. The pronunciations for the words you mention are: ed ucative (from the verb ‘to ed ucate’), a gree ment (from ‘to a gree ‘), phil an thropist and under stand able (from ‘to under stand ‘). The word ‘calculate’ is pronounced cal culate with the stress on the first syllable, which is indeed the third from the end!

Hi thanks a lot, it really helped me with some issues

Thank you for the knowledge

Academic has a stress on the second syllable and academic has a stress on the second to last symbol. Academic follows the ic rule. How do I explain that the middle syllable of academy is stressed?

Hi Jenna, We can explain the difference in stress pattern between the adjective ‘academic’ (stress on the penultimate syllable) and its related noun ‘academy’ (stress on 2nd syllable) because these words have different roles in a sentence. Adjectives ending in ‘ic’ will stress the penultimate syllable, but it doesn’t follow that their related nouns will follow this stress pattern. Can any other teachers offer insight into this adjective/noun relationship when it comes to word stress?

Thank you so much. It really helped us. Great job

You’re welcome Sunny, thanks for stopping by 🙂

Such an useful article….concepts are explained so clearly and in a easily understandable way…thanks a lot!! could you throw some light on the stress pattern for the words like chairperson,probably,sentence,insurance,disintegrate,impossible ?

Glad you found it useful, Vani! The stress pattern for these words is as follows: chair person, pro bably, sen tence, in sur ance, dis in tegrate and im poss ible.

Thanks,pls what is the stress word for investigation

Hi Vivian, the word ‘investigation’ has 5 syllables and the stress is placed on the 4th syllable: investi ga tion. The root word here is ‘in ves tigate’ which has stress on the 2nd syllable. The ending ‘ion’ in ‘investigation’ moves the stress to the penultimate syllable.

Good job Catherine, I guess the syllable in accommodation falls on ‘DA’, where does it falls in accommodate? Thanks.

Hi Remi, yes the stress falls on ‘da’ in ‘accommo da tion’ but it falls on the second syllable (‘co’) in ‘a cco mmodate’

I thank God I found this on time

Glad you found the page useful, Promise!

Pls, how can departmental, synonym, university, structure and culture be stress.

Hi Michael, these words are stressed as follows (stressed syllables in bold): depart men tal, syn onym, uni ver sity, struc ture, cul ture

I am glad, thanks a million times for this lesson. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks Catherine, glad i found this article. In this article i learnt that words ending with “ment” like government can be stress on its base word i.e GOvern , but what about Bewilderment?

Hello Tope, glad you found the article useful! Bewilderment also follows this pattern – it is stressed on the second syllable (‘wil’) because the base word is be wil der.

Good contribution, Admin!

Where is the stressed syllable in the word “TRIBALISM”? If asked to underline the stressed syllable, where exactly would the underlining begin and end?

Hi Joseph, the word tribalism is stressed on the first syllable: tri balism

I really appreciate you, I learned a lot

Can you please tell me the real relationship between syllable structure and stress I am missing something out

Hi Thimozana, Stressed syllables are normally longer, louder, clearer and slightly higher in pitch than unstressed syllables. The relationship between syllables and stress will usually follow the patterns explored in this page – for example, nouns with 2 syllables normally have their stress on the first syllable. The English language always has exceptions though, so unfortunately there is no one definitive rule that will work every time.

Hey Catherine, Thank you so much for such a nice explanation. You dedication is superb the way you have been answering the queries of the readers on this platform since 2012. I could read this page continuously for 1 hour without even a single moment of boredom. Hats off to your dedication !!!

Regards Mahender.

Thank you for your kind words, Mahender! I love teaching and helping people understand more about English – hopefully my answers and explanations are useful! It’s great to hear you enjoyed the article so much. Good luck in your language journey!

Am grateful because this article is to rich.. I have been strengthen by this article.

Thanks It really helped

How can I make primary stress in a syllable?

I am want to know more on unstressed vowel sounds and stressed sentence

Hi Yusuff, you might find our page on silent letters useful when learning about unstressed sounds.

I wonder why the word “communicative” stresses on the second syllable.Are there any special rules?

Hi Jocelyn, the word ‘communicative’ comes from the root word ‘communicate’ and keeps the same stress. Both are stressed on the second syllable. Most words that are a variation of another word will continue to be stressed in the same way as their root word.

I need more answer on five syllable words and there primary stress

Thank you very much for this. I really find it helpful.

Please admin do we have five syllable words that have their stress on the fifth syllable? And please can you mention some of the words?

pls list polysyllabic words with stress on penultimate syllable

Thank you for this Great Article…it’s very helpful.

Pls Words ending with “ite”, “phy”, “able”, “ment” can be dressed where?

Please I need a list of five syllable words stressed on the fifth syllables

This is so so helpful! However, I noticed that when words become longer the stress shifts or maybe I am wrong here, look at these examples, forbid – forbidden (do you stress for or bid, transformation – transformational (ma is where the stress fall) right? How about /al-ter-na-ting/?

Hi LG, glad you found the page useful! The longer words will usually have the same stress as their root word, though there are exceptions. In your example, ‘for bid ‘ and ‘for bid den’ both have their stress on the second syllable ‘bid’. ‘Transfor ma tion’ and ‘transfor ma tional’ both have their stress on the third syllable ‘ma’. Words ending in ‘ation’ will stress the ‘a’, instead of their root (e.g. here the root ‘trans form ‘ stresses ‘form’). Your third example, ‘ al ternating’ stresses the first syllable ‘al’, the same as its verb root ‘to al ternate’. There is also an adjective version ‘al ter nate’ which stresses the ‘ter’.

Hi I’m from Nigeria Found dis helpful keep it up

Thanks a lot for this now I can focus on other topics for my JAMB

Thanks for inspiration this articles are very helpful I appreciate

There are three boundary markers: {{angbr IPA|.}} for a syllable break, {{angbr IPA||}} for a minor prosodic break and {{angbr IPA|‖}} for a major prosodic break. The tags ‘minor’ and ‘major’ are intentionally ambiguous. Depending on need, ‘minor’ may vary from a [[foot (prosody)|foot]] break to a break in list-intonation to a continuing–prosodic-unit boundary (equivalent to a comma), and while ‘major’ is often any intonation break, it may be restricted to a final–prosodic-unit boundary (equivalent to a period). The ‘major’ symbol may also be doubled, {{angbr IPA|‖}}, for a stronger break.{{#tag:ref|Russian sources commonly use {{unichar|2E3E|WIGGLY VERTICAL LINE}} (approx. ⌇) for less than a minor break, such as list intonation (e.g. the very slight break between digits in a telephone number).Ž.V. Ganiev (2012) ”Sovremennyj ruskij jazyk.” Flinta/Nauka. A dotted line {{unichar|2E3D|VERTICAL SIX DOTS}} is sometimes seen instead.|group=”note”}}

Hi please be so kind to assist me with the following words i need stress pattern for them for example Character-Ooo Remove? Celebrities’? Currency? Killing? Silly? Waste? Product? Action? Figures? Fight? Please I need to be sure hence I am asking please assist

Hi Sasha, the words in your list are stressed as follows (stress in bold): Cha racter, Re move , Ce leb rities, Cur rency, Kil ling, Si lly, W aste, Pro duct, Ac tion, Fi gures, F ight Note the words ‘waste’ and ‘fight’ only have one syllable.

thanks to this. it helps more than you think

Really helpful ! thanks

I think other site proprietors should take this website as an model, very clean and wonderful user genial style and design, let alone the content. You’re an expert in this topic!

Can you give me a list of 2-syllable words that are nouns when stressed on the first syllable and verbs when stressed on the second? example: PROGress and proGRESS.

To my own simple knowledge of syllable and stress, I think when counting where stress is placed in any word we count from right to left not from left to right. For instance : international =should be stressed in NA that’s interNAtional , Now,when counting we will say international is stress in the 3rd syllable that is counting from right hand side to the left hand side. But in your analysis I discovered you counted from left hand side to right hand side which is ought not to be.

Hi Joanne, here are a few more two-syllable words that follow this pattern: record, permit, content, contest, survey, produce, refuse, protest, conflict

Hi Seun, that’s an interesting thought. I think we count from left to right when counting syllables because we read from left to right in English. It would seem counterintuitive to count from right to left for a native English speaker.

My take on compound word stress is that I go by the rule: Stress falls on what you want to point out in context or what defines the compound word

Therefore it is /OLD fashioned/ and /GREEN fingered/ to me as well as /MARIGOLD Avenue/ and /MARIGOLD Street/. This also brings more clarity.

Similar pattern is the /VICE president/, /MASS graves/, /SELF defence/, /GAZA strip/: the first part distinguishes something from a category. So stress falls on part one, unless I want to point out the other part within a specific context (e.g. saying the Gaza Strip has the geographical shape of a strip of land or you want to go to Marigold Avenue, not Marigold Street).

Any idea what rules may be behind doing it differently?

Hi Steve, thanks for your insights. I think the idea of stressing the other way around is to stress the most important part (or the noun) over the extra description (or the adjective). So to take a couple of your examples, the fact that something is a grave or a form of defence is more important than the fact it is a ‘mass’ grave or ‘self’ defence. So the ‘category’ is the most important part because the other part couldn’t exist on its own to describe the subject. It’s such an interesting topic though and people will always disagree on the ‘right’ pronunciation of some words!

thanks alot

Thank you so much. it really helped me, but how do I stress words with tive, able, ry.

This page helped me with a lot of things. I am so glad I found this page, it is clear and detailed. Thank you ma

Hi help me stress this words 1 Beginning 2 Generous 3 Necessary 4 Reasonable 5 Individual 6 Execution 7 Instigation 8 Television

Hi Don, here are the stress patterns for these words: 1 Be gin ning 2 Gen erous 3 Ne cessary 4 Rea sonable 5 Indi vid ual 6 Exe cu tion 7 Insti ga tion 8 Tele vi sion

invaluable resources in this domain, especially non-native learners. I hope in near future to add audio clips!

Thank you so much this article was really helpful. Please can you add more stress rules like for words ending with ‘able’ and others. Thank you.

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Word stress (/ˈwɜːd ˌ stres/)

There are two small marks in the heading for this guide that you need to be aware of before we begin: ˈ and ˌ . These are the conventional ways to show stress in words and used in what follows.  The raised mark ( ˈ ) is shown immediately before the stressed syllable and the lowered mark ( ˌ ) comes before a secondary (or less obvious) stress. For example, in the word pronunciation , there are two stresses (a secondary one on the second syllable and a main stress on the penultimate syllable: /prə.ˌnʌn.sɪ.ˈeɪʃ.n̩/ .  It sounds like pro NUN ci A T ION . (An alternative way to mark stress sometimes used by professional phoneticians is to place an acute accent over the onset vowel of a stressed syllable and a grave accent over a secondarily stressed item.  In this case, the syllable borders are usually ignored.) If you are not familiar with phonemic transcription, do not worry now.  In what follows, we will be using very little except these two stress indicators. There is a course in learning to transcribe English sounds phonemically on this site (new tab).

Where's the main stress in the following?  Click on the table when you have marked it in your head.

As you can see, we can stress the first, second, third or fourth syllable on words in English (and even the fifth or sixth) and there are, unfortunately, no hard-and-fast rules for which is right.

It is often assumed that stressed syllables are simply spoken in a louder voice but that's only partly right.  There are, in fact, three elements which vary:

• Loudness : how much force is used when saying the syllable
• Pitch : stressed syllables are often pronounced in a higher tone
• Length : stressed syllables take longer to utter than unstressed ones

You'll find more on pitch and tone in the guide to intonation .

We also need to be aware of the concept of unstress. Clearly, if we can have stressed syllables in a word, the other syllables will, by definition be unstressed.  For example: In a word like geographical , we have a primary stress on the third syllable ( graph ) and a secondary stress on the first syllable ( ge ). The stress pattern looks like this: GE o GRA phical.  This word transcribes as /ˌdʒɪə.ˈɡræ.fɪk.l̩/ and even if the phonemic transcription is mysterious to you, you need to notice two important phenomena:

• The pronunciation of the second syllable is not an 'o' as in open but is reduced to a very short sound /ə/ which is the same sound as begins words like a bout and a live .
• The pronunciation of the final syllable is transcribed as /k.l̩/ showing that there is no vowel at all between the /k/ sound made by 'c' and the /l/ sound made by the letter 'l'.  This is known as a syllabic consonant, by the way.

These two changes to the sound expected from the spelling of the word happen because they occur in the unstressed syllables of the word.  Weak forms like the /ə/ and the loss of a vowel as in /k.l̩/ can only occur in unstressed syllables.  Compare this with, e.g.:

• A: Did you say biographical?
• B: No.  I said ge ographical!

In this, the first syllable is now taking the main stress and the pronunciation of the 'o' assumes the form of the 'o' in go or show ( /ɡəʊ/, /ʃəʊ/ ).  The secondary stress has now moved to the third syllable.

No.  There are some rules and we are going to look at them here.  It will however, remain true that in many cases the stress in a multisyllable word cannot be guessed or deduced from any rule at all so our learners will need all the help they can get. A simple rule of thumb, and certainly the way to guess, is to assume that any common two-syllable word in English will be stressed on the first syllable (unless it's a verb, when the stress falls on the second syllable, conventionally [see below]).

Occasionally, stress may be moved on a word for contrastive reasons as in, for example:     A: Why did you shut the door?     B: Because of the noise you were making.     A: Oh, sorry about that.     B: I was COM plaining, I was EX plaining. in which the stress in B's second contribution is unusual because the speaker is placing emphasis on the first syllables of the words complaining and explaining to mark the difference.  In normal circumstances the words are stressed on the second syllable, of course.

Words which have early roots in English are the simplest to stress because the stress generally remains fixed on the stem regardless of how many affixes we use with them.  For example:

The problem for learners, of course, is to recognise such words and that is not easy. Learners from Germanic language backgrounds often have fewer difficulties because they can look for cognates and these will normally be words which maintain the stress. Those from Romance language backgrounds can often make guesses because of a lack of a cognate in their languages. Those from non-European language backgrounds have no such resources to call on but words like these are often short, describe simple concepts and are non-academic or non-technical. That helps a little. An even simpler rule is that in English we rarely stress an affix:

Words which are more formal, academic or technical often have their roots in Latin or Greek and with these words the stress may shift with affixation but all is not lost because there are some rules. It is also true that many thousands of words fall into these categories and, once learnt, the rules can be applied with almost 100% success.

A simpler (but not fully accurate) way to explain this in the classroom is to say that in all these penultimate / antepenultimate cases, the stress moves to the syllable before the suffix .

There are other exceptions, and they include:

There is a large group of words which shift stress from the second syllable (as verbs) to the beginning (as nouns or adjectives).  This can be expressed the other way around according to your taste as a shift from the first syllable to the second or last syllable, moving from the noun/adjective to the verb. Common ones are, for example

and there are lots more of these (some quite obscure).  Here's a list of 100 of these (which may even be reasonably complete):

• Participle adjectives take the same stress as the verb (because that is how they are formed) so we get, e.g., for the word record , /ˈrek.ɔːd/ (noun), and /rɪk.ˈɔːd/ (verb) and /rɪk.ˈɔː.dɪd/ (adjective) .
• The verb stress falls on the second or the last syllable (some are three syllable words).  For example, in the list above there are three: underline, intercept and envelope .  The pronunciations are:     /ˈʌn.də.laɪn/ (noun) to /ˌʌn.də.ˈlaɪn/ (verb)     /ˈɪn.tə.sept/ (noun) to /ˌɪn.tə.ˈsept/ (verb)     /ˈen.və.ləʊp/ (noun) to /ɪn.ˈve.ləp/ (verb) but there is also a change to the initial vowel sound in the last.
• One verb-noun pair is missing from the list above: reˈfuse (a verb meaning decline or reject ) and ˈrefuse (a noun meaning rubbish ).  The words are not closely connected in meaning, the pronunciation of the 's' alters from /z/ in the verb to /s/ in the noun and the pronunciation of the vowel in the first syllable changes from /ɪ/ in the verb to /e/ in the noun:     /rɪ.ˈfjuːz/ (verb) and /ˈrefjuːs/ (noun) Both words derive ultimately from the Old French verb refuser but many would consider them now unconnected in meaning in Modern English, i.e. an example of homonymy not polysemy.
• When some vowels are de-stressed, they are pronounced as weak forms.  The words progress and combat are good examples:     /prə.ˈɡres/ (verb) and /ˈprəʊ.ɡres/ (noun)     /kəm.ˈbæt/ (verb) and /ˈkɒm.bæt/ (noun))
• It was said above that we do not usually stress affixes in English (apart from the six covered above which are stressed!).  Well, here are more exceptions.  With some nouns, the main stress falls on the prefix in these cases, e.g.:     his ˈrecall is poor     I demand a ˈrecount     this needs a complete ˈrewrite     perform a heart ˈtransplant     put in an ˈunderline     pay for a computer ˈupgrade As nouns, these are: /ˈrɪk.ɔːl/, /ˈrɪk.aʊnt/, ˈriː.raɪt/, /ˈtræn.splɑːnt/, /ˈʌn.də.laɪn/, /ˈʌp.ɡreɪd/ As verbs, they are: /rɪˈk.ɔːl/, /rɪˈk.aʊnt/, /ˌriː.ˈraɪt/, /træn.ˈsplɑːnt/, /ˌʌn.də.ˈlaɪn/, /ˌʌp.ˈɡreɪd/
• A number of other changes can occur in parallel to the stress shift: record : /’rekɔːd/ to /rɪˈkɔːd/ (with a change to the first vowel from /e/ to /ɪ/ ) abuse : /əˈbjuːs/ to /əˈbjuːz/ (with a final consonant change from /s/ to /z/ ). (This also occurs with the verb use . when it is a lexical or main verb as in:     I used a hammer the 's' is pronounced /z/ , ( /ˈaɪ.ˈjuːzd.ə.ˈhæ.mə/ ) but in     I used to go the 's' is pronounced /s/ ( /ˈaɪ.ˈjuːst.tə.ɡəʊ/ ).) combine : /ˈkɒmbaɪn/ to /kəmˈbaɪn/ (with a vowel change from /ɒ/ to /ə/ [the first is a piece of farm machinery]).  This is a common phenomenon which also occurs with all the examples in the table above which begin com- or con- ( combat, compact, compound, conduct, conflict, conscript, consort, construct, contest, contract, contrast, converse, convert, convict ). These pairs of words are a subset of homographs in that they are spelled the same but vary in both meaning and pronunciation.  They are often classified as heteronyms or heterophones.
• as a verb, pronounced /kən.ˈtrækt/, it has four distinct meanings: intransitive ( become smaller ), transitive ( make smaller ), intransitive ( agree formally ), transitive ( be infected by ) so we may encounter:     The steel contracted in the cold     We contract I am to I'm in normal speech     We contracted to finish the work before March     She contracted a cold at school all the uses derive from the same source word (from the 14th or 15th centuries) but the third meaning is only attested from the end of the 19th century.  This is an example of quite extreme polysemy but many would refer to it as homonymy because the meanings are so different.
• as a noun, pronounced /ˈkɒntrækt/, it has only the meaning akin to the third meaning of the verb, a formal agreement .  In all other cases, the noun is contraction .
• There is a noticeable tendency in English to discontinue the use of the verb stress and pronounce all these words as the noun / adjective is pronounced.  We are not there yet, however.  For example, the term upgrade to refer to a modernised version of something takes its stress on the first syllable yet the term is only attested in this sense from the early 1980s.
• Some verb-noun pairings are pronounced the same regardless of word class.  Examples include format ( /ˈfɔː.mæt/ ), regret ( /rɪ.ˈɡret/ ) and disdain ( /dɪs.ˈdeɪn/ ), the first always stressed on the first syllable and the second two always on the second.

Compound nouns

Compound nouns are usually stressed on the first element with a secondary stress (if any) on the second element.  This is one of the tests for a compound noun rather than a pre-modified noun.  Compare, e.g.:     ˈgreenˌhouse and     ˌgreen ˈhouse In the first, we are referring to a glass construction but in the second, we are referring to the colour of a house. The first is a true compound; the second is a pre-modified noun.

There are hundreds of examples which follow this pattern:     ˈcandleˌstick, ˈdishˌwasher, ˈblackˌboard, ˈheartˌbeat, ˈwindˌmill and, of course     ˈwordˌstress etc. A few compounds have retained their stress on the second item: archˈbishop and vice ˈchancellor are two. Where the stress falls is often a marker of whether an item is a true compound or a pre-modified noun but the test is not at all reliable.  There is, in fact, no single criterion which we can use to distinguish a pre-modified noun from a compound.

Compound verbs

Compound verbs are much more rarely two verbs combined but most follow the same pattern: ˈbabyˌsit, ˈkickˌstart, ˈforceˌfeed However, in common with the general tendency to stress verbs on the second syllable (see above), some compound verbs take the stress on the second element: backˈfire, waterˈproof but there is a good deal of variation between speakers.

Compound words formed from multi-word verbs

The stress pattern on multi-word verbs is not simple because prepositional verbs and phrasal verbs are stressed differently. One test for whether we are dealing with a prepositional or phrasal verb is, in fact, that in the former case the particle is usually unstressed but in the latter the adverb may carry stress.

Because the preposition is often unstressed in prepositional verbs and realised with a weak form as in, for example:     He laughed at the idea which is often pronounced:     /hi.ˌlɑːft.ət.ði.aɪ.ˈdɪə/ with secondary stress on the verb and with a weak-form preposition (/ət/). So, when making compounds from the prepositional verb we can get     A much laughed at idea as     /ə.mʌtʃ.ˈlɑːft.ət.aɪ.ˈdɪə/ with the stress falling on laugh , not on the preposition.

Nouns and adjectives formed from phrasal verbs (i.e., those using an adverb particle rather than a preposition) usually exhibit the stress pattern of main then secondary so we get, e.g.:     ˈoffˌputting, ˈbreakˌdown, ˈknockˌout, ˈdropout etc. The stress on the first element remains whether it is the particle or the verb that comes first. Phrasal verbs in particular are a rich source of adjectives and they follow the same pattern with the stress either falling on the adverb or being evenly distributed across the item.  For example:     a mixed up kid /ə.mɪkst.ˈʌp.ˌkɪd/     a broken down car /ə.ˌbrəʊkən.ˈdaʊn.ˈkɑː/     a washed out colour /ə.wɒʃt.ˈaʊt.ˈkʌ.lə/ etc.

Phrasal-prepositional verbs reveal the same pattern with the adverb taking stress and the preposition often weakened.  However, such verbs do not form compounds.

For more, see the guide to multi-word verbs .

Compound adjectives and adverbs

Compound adjectives and the rarer compound adverbs often exhibit the opposite stress patterns: Adjectives: ˌ topˈclass, ˌsecondˈrate, ˌbackˈhanded, ˌfarˈfetched , kneeˈdeep, flatˈfooted Adverbs: ˌ thereupˈon, ˌhenceˈforth, ˌupˈstairs

However, when these are used attributively, the pattern reverses and we get: a ˈtop-ˌclass act, a ˈsecond-ˌrate act, an ˈupˌstairs room, a ˈfar-ˌfetched story

AmE usage is somewhat more reliable because it has a strong tendency to stress all compounds on the first syllable.  As is often the case, this tendency is increasingly observable in BrE.  How would you stress:     lawn tennis ?

As we saw above, word stress in English is highly mobile. Learners will, of course, especially at lower levels, be tempted to transfer the rules and patterns of their first languages into English, resulting in mistaken stress very often. The following cannot cover all languages but here is a list to give you some idea of the possibilities:

• in French (allegedly) the stress always falls on the final syllable (although some will say that there is, in fact, no word stress in French).
• in Hungarian, again allegedly, the stress is always on the first syllable.
• in Polish, the stress almost always falls on the penultimate syllable (although loan words will vary the pattern).
• in Italian and Spanish the stress also falls frequently on the penultimate syllable but there are some complex rules to determine where the stress should be placed.
• most Swedish polysyllabic words have the stress on the first syllable.
• in Portuguese, most stresses fall on the last syllable but there are rules for words where it is in a different place.
• Greek (although stress is always marked in lower-case writing)
• Arabic (but stress is variable across dialects of the language which are not always completely mutually comprehensible)
• Portuguese (in which dialect, South American vs. European varieties, also plays a role)
• German, in which stress is frequently on the first syllable but there are exceptions all over the place depending on suffixation, prefixation (whether separable or not) and so on.
• Japanese does not have a stress accent like English.  In English, as we saw above the stress affects pitch, loudness and length of the syllable. Japanese, by contrast, has what is called a pitch accent which can be high or low.  The syllable, however, is pronounced with the same loudness and takes the same amount of time to utter.
• in tonal languages, such as Chinese languages and many South-East Asian languages such as Thai, the stressed syllable is denoted by a larger than usual tone swing.

Learners whose first languages have predictable and dominant stress patterns (the first group) will be tempted to transfer the rules to English. Learners whose languages have unpredictable stress patterns (the second group) may be confused by the fact that English orthography does not mark the stress for them. Learners whose languages exhibit alternative systems may have difficulty stressing words at all and sound very flat or monotonous.

Every time a new multisyllable word is introduced in a classroom, therefore, the stress needs to be explicitly highlighted and practised. Here are three ways to highlight.  Pick one and keep to it so your learners know what it signifies.

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Intonation and Stress in English

How Intonation and Stress Will Improve Your Pronunciation

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Correct intonation and stress are the key to speaking English fluently with good pronunciation. Intonation and stress refer to the music of the English language. Words that are stressed are key to understanding and using the correct intonation brings out the meaning. 

Introduction to Intonation and Stress Exercise

Say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds it takes.

The beautiful mountain appeared transfixed in the distance. 

Time required? Probably about five seconds. Now, try speaking this sentence aloud

He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening. 

Time required? Probably about five seconds.

Wait a minute—the first sentence is much shorter than the second sentence!

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.  (14 syllables) He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening.  (22 syllables)

Even though the second sentence is approximately 30 percent longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are five stressed words in each sentence. From this example, you can see that you needn't worry about pronouncing every word clearly to be understood (we native speakers certainly don't). You should, however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly.

This simple exercise makes a very important point about how we speak and use English. Namely, English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that, in English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!). In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length).

Many speakers of syllabic languages don't understand why we quickly speak, or swallow, a number of words in a sentence. In syllabic languages, each syllable has equal importance, and therefore equal time is needed. English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.

Simple Exercise to Help With Understanding

The following exercise can be used by students and teachers to further help with pronunciation by focusing on the stressing content words rather than function words in the exercise below.

Let's look at a simple example: The modal verb "can." When we use the positive form of "can" we quickly glide over the can and it is hardly pronounced.

They can come on Friday . (stressed words in  italics )

On the other hand, when we use the negative form "can't" we tend to stress the fact that it is the negative form by also stressing "can't".

They can't come on Friday . (stressed words in  italics )

As you can see from the above example the sentence, "They can't come on Friday" is longer than "They can come on Friday" because both the modal "can't" and the verb "come" are stressed.

Understanding Which Words to Stress

To begin, you need to understand which words we generally stress and which we do not stress. Stress words are considered content words such as:

• Nouns (e.g., kitchen, Peter)
• (Most) main verbs  (e.g., visit, construct)
• Adjectives (e.g., beautiful, interesting)
• Adverbs (e.g., often, carefully)
• Negatives including negative helping verbs, and words with "no" such as "nothing," "nowhere," etc. 
• Words expressing quantities (e.g., a lot of, a few, many, etc.)

Non-stressed words are considered function words  such as:

• Determiners (e.g., the, a, some, a few)
• Auxiliary verbs (e.g., don't, am, can, were)
• Prepositions (e.g., before, next to, opposite)
• Conjunctions (e.g., but, while, as)
• Pronouns (e.g., they, she, us)
• Verbs "have" and "be" even when used as main verbs

Practice Quiz

Test your knowledge by identifying which words are content words and should be stressed in the following sentences:

• They've been learning English for two months.
• My friends have nothing to do this weekend.
• I would have visited in April if I had known Peter was in town.
• Natalie will have been studying for four hours by six o'clock.
• The boys and I will spend the weekend next to the lake fishing for trout.
• Jennifer and Alice had finished the report before it was due last week.

Words in italics are stressed content words while unstressed function words are in lower case.

• They've been learning English for two months .
• My friends have nothing to do this weekend .
• I would have visited  in April if i had known Peter was in town .
• Natalie will have been studying  for fours hours  by six o'clock .
• The boys and i will spend the weekend next to the lake fishing for trout .
• Jennifer and Alice had finished the report before it was due last week .

Continue Practicing

Speak to your native English speaking friends and listen to how we concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving importance to each syllable. As you begin to listen and use stressed words, you will discover words you thought you didn't understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself understood. Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.

After students have learned basic  consonant  and vowel sounds, they should move on to learning to differentiate between individual sounds by using  minimal pairs . Once they are comfortable with individual words, they should move on to intonation and  stress exercises  such as  sentence markup . Finally, students can take the next step by  choosing a focus word to help further improve their pronunciation .

• Stress Types in English Pronunciation
• Understanding English Pronunciation Concepts
• English Pronunciation Practice
• Understanding and Utilizing Sound Scripting
• North American Pronunciation CD Rom/Book
• Using a Focus Word to Help With Pronunciation
• Speaking Strategies for English Learners
• How to Stress Syllables in English
• Rising and Falling Intonation in Pronunciation
• Pronunciation: Changing Meaning through Word Stress
• Content or Function Word? Pronunciation Practice
• Words With Weak and Strong Forms
• How to Improve Your Pronunciation
• Ask Questions in English Class to Help You Learn
• Gonna and Wanna
• How to Express Sadness in English

WORD STRESS: 10 easy ways to identify the stressed syllable in a word

The meaning and types of stress. Episode 1

The meaning and types of stress. Episode 2

YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ:   How to answer questions on emphatic stress in Use of English Exam

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Home » Blog » How to Stress a Syllable :: The Shape of Stress

How to Stress a Syllable :: The Shape of Stress

• Improve Your Accent

The shape and melody of the voice – the intonation – is one of the most important factors in sounding natural and American.  Learn how the shape of a stressed syllable should be.

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Video Transcript:

In this American English pronunciation video, we’re going to talk about the shape of a stressed syllable.

I’ve been talking a lot recently with my private students about the shape of stress. Stress isn’t simply a higher pitch and a lower pitch. Yes-ter-day. Da-da-da. But actually, there’s a swoop from one pitch to the next, so there’s always a gliding feeling. Yesterday. When my students are able to switch into this mode, it makes a world of difference. All of a sudden, the speech is much more natural, is much more American. This applies even to one-syllable words and one-syllable sentences. For example, yes, yes. It’s not yes, yes, all on one pitch; that’s very flat. Yes. Yes. Hi. Hi. Hi — do you hear that change in pitch, that shape in that syllable? Very different from hi, hi, hi. Hi.

So the shape of a stressed syllable has the pitch gliding up and the pitch gliding down. Let’s take for example the word ‘hello’. Hello, -llo. Do you hear how the change in pitch isn’t abrupt. It slides from lower to higher and lower again. This is very different from hello, hello, an abrupt pitch change of two flat ideas. Hell-o, hell-o. Hello.

It’s not a bad idea to practice words and sentences very under pace, sliding from pitch to pitch. For example: hey, how are you? Then, when you speed it up, don’t think of switching back into speaking mode. Think of taking this stretched out, gliding from pitch to pitch speech, and speeding it up. We don’t want the character of that uhh– to change. You want to keep that in your speech. So please keep this in mind, and do practice speaking under pace sometimes. Stress is much more than a change in pitch, it’s how you change the pitch.

That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

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ENGLISH WORD STRESS EXERCISES

Improve Word Stress – Exercises with Videos & Voice Recorders

Word Stress in English is one of the most challenging areas for many non-native speakers.

But there’s good news. This is mostly because people simply haven’t learnt what they need to know to master good word stress in English.

This page explains everything you need to know about English word stress. It will give you clear steps to follow to improve your word stress in the RIGHT WAY, starting from right now! 

If you approach improving English word stress in the right way you will see your English clarity, stress and rhythm improve over a matter of weeks. 

What is Word Stress in English? Every multi-syllable word in English has one stressed syllable. This syllable is slightly higher and stronger than other syllables. Word stress makes the rhythm of English. To speak clearly in English you need to use correct word stress. 

Here are some word stress examples: 

re PORT  – the ‘PORT’ is the stressed syllable.  ME dical – the ME is the stressed syllable. e XAM ple – the XAM is the stressed syllable. 

Let’s look at that more closely. 

What Is English Word Stress (definition)?

In English, not every syllable of a word has the same amount of emphasis or stress. In every English multi-syllable word there are stressed syllables and unstressed syllables. 

So, what do you need to know about stressed syllables?

There is one stressed syllable in every multi-syllable word in English.

The stressed syllable:

• is slightly higher in pitch (or tone) 
• has a full vowel (in unstressed syllables the vowel is often weaker)
• does not change – it is always the same for that particular word (there are a few exceptions to this. Read more further down the page).
• gives a beat when it’s in a sentence.  

Listen To Word Stress Examples

It’s likely you are already quite good at hearing word stress in English. You’ll be better at it than you think! You just probably haven’t paid much attention to it before. It’s time to start developing your ability to hear word stress. 

The tricky part is hearing it in real speaking AND of course, making it in your own speaking. But it starts with listening!

Practise listening to word stress examples below. 

It’s very important that you can hear the word stress, the up and down of the voice to mark the stressed syllable in English. 

Listen below and then record your own stress with the voice recorder. 

Watch the video on the left to practise:  occur, maintain, maintenance, strategy, strategic.

Record the words while focusing on your pitch. It should rise slightly to mark the stressed syllable. 

Word Stress Exercise & Video 2

capable, capacity, initiate, initiative and entrepreneur

Watch the video and practise out loud while focusin g on the pitch / tone of your voice.

Watch the video to practise the words:  capable, capacity, initiate, initiative and entrepreneur

Record the words while focusing on making good word stress. Your pitch should rise slightly to mark the stressed syllable. 

Word Stress Exercise & Video 3:

purchase, promise, technical, technique, technology

These words are OFTEN mispronounced by non-native speakers. Watch the video and say the words out loud focusing on p itch / tone.

Watch the video to practise:  purchase, promise, technical, technique, technology  

Record the words while focusing on making good word stress.  

Word Stress Exercise & Video 4:

establish, specific, stable, politics, political, politician

Many non-native speakers mispronounce these words. Check your stress and vowel sounds with this word stress video. 

Watch the video on the left to practise the target words:  establish, specific, stable, politics, political, politician

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5 emails – start today, key areas of difficulty for speakers of your first language, record a clear and professional voicemail greeting, how problems with your pronunciation affect clarity, improve your word stress, emphasis & rhythm in english, improve some key vowel sounds that are important for clear english, correct many commonly mispronounced words, tips on how to improve your pronunciation and fluency in your day to day life, and lots more..., why is word stress so challenging  .

If you speak English as a 2nd language, English word stress can be challenging because:   

1] it’s different to the stress and rhythm of your first language and 2] you can’t tell where the word stress is by looking at an English word (by the spelling)

Here are some ways that English word stress is different to the word stress and rhythm of other languages.

In some languages, each syllable gets the same amount of stress. So they don’t have stressed and unstressed syllables like English does. 

In some languages, there are stressed syllables but they aren’t important and don’t change the meaning of a word.

Some languages have stressed syllables but the stressed syllables are simply made longer, instead of higher in pitch like they are in English. 

Many languages don’t have weak vowels like in English.  English has stressed and unstressed syllables and the vowels in the unstressed syllables often become weak. 

All these variations make word stress challenging for non-native speakers to master. 

The word stress exercises and word stress videos above will help you improve and develop your English word stress. 

English Word Stress Rules

Some teachers will try and teach you word stress rules. This is dangerous! While it will make you feel like things are easier it will simply result in mispronunciations. 

I spend a lot of time correcting students that have learnt rules with a previous teacher – and those rules are resulting in mispronunciations. 

Do not follow rules for word stress. Why?

Because the word stress is so variable in English. English has borrowed words from many other languages – that’s why our spelling and word stress is so variable. Trying to follow word stress rules is a bad idea.

There are literally thousands of exceptions and I have worked with countless professionals who are making mistakes because they are following a rule that they learnt at school.   

The most common rule that people have learnt that leads to so many mispronunciations is that “the word stress is on the long vowel”.

No! English word stress is not always on the long vowel in English words. Here are just a few of the many exceptions – suburb, colleague, purchase. There are LOTS or exceptions and these are important, common words that you need to be pronouncing correctly. 

If you try and follow rules – you’ll make mistakes.

I can see why people teaching beginner level English want to teach rules, but teachers who are teaching advanced level pronunciation to professionals should not be teaching word stress rules. 

There is one way forward and that is to start to LISTEN! You are hearing the correct word stress around you all day, every day. You just need to start to pay attention to it and start to tune into it. 

Trying to follow rules is a short cut to a dead end! Spending a week or so actively listening and really tuning in to word stress will give you the skills you need to improve and keep improving in the future.

Mastering word stress in English is an ongoing project. It takes time. The quicker you start to build your listening skills and paying attention to the stress around you and your own stress the better. That is what will help you improve word stress.  

How do you find the Stress of a Word?

There are some important Dos and Don’t’s for checking which syllable should be stressed in a word. 

Here are the best, easy ways to find out which syllable in a word is stressed.

1. Do Use Google Chrome Search.

Google Chrome Pronunciation Tool is another fantastic way to see and hear which syllable is stressed in English.

To see this feature in Google simply type “How to pronounce (word)” and enter the word you want to hear pronounced.

For example, if you type in ‘How to pronounce carrot’, you’ll see a screen like this.

This course has made me realise the importance of awareness of how English should be spoken and which can be improved.

Awareness of the mouth and tongue movement, stresses on words and sentences are important elements in order to have clear English communication.

I have developed more confidence and improved fluency which further enhance my professionalism in my job and communication with all stakeholders.

I am very glad with my achievement with this course.

Cantonese Speaker , Admission Coordinator Australia

The best part about this course for me is that I think the information that is covered in this course is very detailed and, in particular, the contents are valuable and rarely available from other materials.

It gave valuable information that I did not know and that no one else could teach as clearly.

One example of this is word stress and the weak vowel schwa.

Korean Speaker , Perth Australia

I highly recommend this course because it explains in a very easy way the common mistakes of Spanish speakers – how to correct them and stress the words correctly.

This gives me more confidence and fluency.

I am now enjoying any conversation.

Spanish Speaker , New York US

I really love all of this course. It covers all areas which are important but difficult for Japanese speakers. 

In the past I acknowledged that I had problems but had no idea how to improve. This course showed me exactly how I need to pronounce these and gave me the right practice.  

My English word stress was very flat. The course shows me how to change this and I still improve this everyday.  I speak clearly now and people understand me more easy.

I highly recommend this course.

Masumi K Nurse  Japanese Speaker, Perth Australia

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Syllables and Word Stress in English

Wrod stress is the emphasis we put on a specific syllable in a word. Using word stress the right way makes your speech sound natural and easy to understand. Unfortunately, most non-native speakers find it difficult to master all the aspects of it because of all the rules and their exceptions. Therefore, we always advise learners to look the pronunciation of new words up in a dictionary. As you practice and watch English-speaking movies and news, these rules will start coming naturally to you.

Before we discuss these rules, you need to know what syllables are, and how we indicate them. In this article, we will use (.) to separate syllables in a word. For example, the word beautiful has three syllables and would appear as beau . ti . ful .

English alphabet consists of 26 letters. These letters are divided into two groups: vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and consonants, which are the rest. When these vowels and consonants come in a sequence, they form a syllable. Therefore, we can define a syllable as a sequence of speech sounds (formed from vowels and consonants) organized into a single unit. Syllables determine the pace and rhythm of how the word is pronounced.

Question: How do we divide syllables?

When it comes to syllables, the vowel sounds that we hear are important, not the written vowels. For example, in the word beautiful, we see five vowels but hear only three; therefore, it has three syllables. 

Now let’s look at some examples to make this clear:

Art: one vowel sound = one syllable

o.pen = two vowel sounds = two syllables

ex.pen.sive = three vowel sounds = three syllables

Bo.dy = two vowel sounds = two syllables

Note: As you can see, the word body has only one written vowel, but the final consonant y is pronounced as a vowel, so we hear two vowel sounds.

Now that you understand the basics of syllables, let’s move on to word stress.

Word stress

• One word has only one stress.
• Only the vowels are stressed, not consonants.
• Almost all the rules regarding word stress have exceptions.

Now, let’s begin!

Rule 1: Most nouns and adjectives with two or more syllables have stress placed on the first syllable:

• Nouns: ap. ple, cli. mate, bot. tle, bu .si.ness, in .ter.net
• Adjectives: hap .py, cle. ver, hon. est, fa. vo.rite, dif. fi.cult
•   Verbs: be. come , in. crease , qua. dru .ple
• Prepositions: a. mong , be. hind , bet. ween

Note: Here are some of the exceptions to this rule:

ar .gue, can .cel, en.ter. tain , af .ter, du .ring, and un .der

• des .ert = a hot place where only a few things can grow (noun)
• de. sert = to abandon (verb)
• con .test = a game or a competition (noun)
• con. test = to fight against (verb)

Note: As you might have guessed, there some exceptions to this rule as well. Here are some:

• a. mount (noun)
• a. mount (verb)
• at. tack (noun)
• at. tack (verb)
• con. trol (noun)
• con. trol (verb)

Word stress in compound words

Compound words are made up of two or more words joined to make a new word or a word group with a new meaning (e.g., airplane, brother-in-law). If you are not familiar with these words, please read this article  before you continue.

Word stress in compound nouns

Word stress in compound verbs, word stress in compound adjectives, word stress in reflexive pronouns, word stress in numbers.

• In numbers 13-19, we put the stress on “-teen”

Examples: Fif. teen , nine. teen , thir. teen

• In the numbers that are multiples of ten, we put stress on the first syllable.

Examples: thir .ty, six .ty, eigh .ty, one -hun.dred, five -hun.dred

Word stress based on suffixes

• Words that end in the following suffixes have stress placed on the syllable with the suffix :

“-ee” : in.ter.view. ee, at.ten. dee, ref.u.g ee

“-eer” : en.gi. neer, vol.un. teer, pup.pe. teer

• In the words that end in “-ology,” stress is placed on the syllable with “-ol-.” 

Examples: bi. ol .o.gy, as. trol .o.gy, car.di. ol .o.gy

……………………………………………………………………….

• In the words that end in “-osis,” stress is placed on the syllable with “-o-.” 

Examples: hyp. no .sis, mi. to .sis, hal.i. to .sis

• Words that end in the following suffixes have stress placed on the syllable immediately before the suffix:

“-eous” : ad.van. ta .geous, cou. ra .geous, righ .teous

“-ious” : re. bel .lious, mys. te .ri.ous, ob .vi.ous

“-ia” : bac. te .ri.a, nos. tal .gia, in. som .ni.a

“-ial” : in.flu. en .tial, con.tro. ver .sial, con.fi. den .tial

“-ic” : a. tom .ic, en.er. get .ic, ec.o. nom .ic

“-ical” : ec.o. nom .i.cal, bi.o. log .i.cal, his. tor .i.cal

“-ify” : fal .si.fy, hor .ri.fy, so. lid .i.fy

“-ity” : a. bil .i.ty, hu. mid .i.ty, le. gal .i.ty

“-tion” : au. di .tion, flo. ta .tion, lo.co. mo .tion

“-sion” : e. ro .sion, il. lu .sion, in. va .sion

• Words that end in the following suffixes have stress placed on the third syllable from the last syllable:

“-ate” : col. lab .o.rate, fa. cil .i.tate, in. ad .e.quate

“-cy” : a .gen.cy, va .can.cy, de. moc .ra.cy

Some exceptions: ac .cu.ra.cy, de .li.ca.cy, oc .cu.pan.cy

“-phy” : phi. los .o.phy, cal. lig .ra.phy, ge. og .ra.phy

Final note: These rules will help you improve your pronunciation. The next time you learn a new word, make sure you check its pronunciation as well because learning how to pronounce a word properly is as important as learning its meaning.

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Modal title

How many syllables in homework .

Homework has 2 syllables and the stress is on the first syllable.

Syllables in homework

• How many syllables in homework? 2 syllables
• Divide homework into syllables: home-work
• Stressed syllable in homework: home -work
• Secondary stressed syllable: home- work
• How to pronounce homework: howmwerk
• IPA-notation: howˈmwɚˌk
• Numbers of characters: 8 (e, h, k, m, o, o, r, w)
• Unique letters: 7 (e, h, k, m, o, r, w)
• Homework backwards: krowemoh
• Homework sorted alphabetically: ehkmoorw

Words like homework

Homework in a sentence.

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Word Stress in 2-syllable Nouns, Adjectives and Verbs

Most 2-syllablle nouns (remember nouns are people, places and things) and adjectives (the words that describe the nouns, so for example, pretty dress, beautiful home, red car). These kinds of words should be stressed on the first syllable.

In many varieties of English however, this stress is moved to the second syllable, or both syllables are given equal stress which leads to a very staccato rhythm when people speak. Some words I often hear in Singapore (and throughout most of English-speaking Asia actually) are collEAGUE (instead of COLLeague) and as I’ve mentioned several times already in this course, my pet peeve, purCHASE (instead of PURchase).

But there are many more examples of 2-syllable nouns and adjectives that stress the first syllable. You can think of this as the default primary stress, although you will find some random exceptions (usually foreign words that are used in English).

Now things change when we start looking at 2-syllable verbs. Verbs, remember, are our action words — run, jump, speak, sing, etc.

The majority of nouns that also have a verb form, for example, PROgress, PREsent, OBject, PROduce, REcord, will be stressed on the first syllable when used as a noun, but the second syllable when used as a verb (to proGRESS, to preSENT, to obJECT, to proDUCE, to reCORD) .

Let’s take a closer look. Take for example the word progress. Listen to how the stress changes depending on how the word is used.

As a noun: We are making great PROgress in this field. and then as a verb: New technologies are helping us to proGRESS in this field.

Although this is a pretty great pattern to remember and applies to many, many 2-syllable nouns and verbs, there are unfortunately many exceptions to this rule. Think of words like ANswer, PICture, TRAvel, VISit, my favorite word, PURchase and several others. They retain the stress on the first syllable even when they’re used as verbs.

If you’d like to learn more about clear speech and pronunciation, please visit me at http://bit.ly/free8-partproncourse and sign up for my free, 8-part pronunciation short course.

I’ll see you there!

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Reader Interactions

September 20, 2012 at 3:28 pm

Would like to know how to know how to focus on some hard to say words because I am not good at speaches. English is my secondary language.

April 8, 2013 at 4:32 pm

Thank you for this clear lesson. you are really a good teacher

June 15, 2013 at 10:31 am

I always have homeworks w

June 15, 2013 at 10:32 am

I always have homework with a Underline Stressed Word section, now m clear ab that, thank u very mux

July 17, 2013 at 7:49 am

@Heather: Your examples for this rule were basically Latin words, whereas the exceptions were not (or at least the Latin origin wasn’t that obvious). Is this a coincidence?

September 19, 2013 at 1:14 pm

If you ever need to know anything about English, ask an American.

April 15, 2014 at 11:11 pm

I’d put it in her bum she’s sexy

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