English Pronunciation (4)

Stress in words

 

The word but has one syllable.
The word butter has two syllables.

In English, when a word has two or more syllables, we stress one syllable more than the other. To stress a syllable is to make it longer and stronger when you say it. How do we say butter? It's "BUTTer".

Let's look at the words banana and chocolate in different languages. The Portuguese say banana with three equal syllables - "ba-na-na". The French say it with two equal syllables - "ban-an". In English it's “baNAna”.

As for chocolate, the Spanish say it with four equal syllables - "cho-ko-la-te". The French say it with three equal syllables - "sho-ko-la". In English, it usually has only two syllables, and the first syllable is much stronger than the second. It sounds like “CHOKlət”.

The ə sound

When we stress one syllable in a word, we make it heavier and longer. We also (usually) make the other syllables shorter and weaker. In butter the first syllable is stressed, and the second syllable is very short and weak. It becomes the smallest possible vowel sound, and the r disappears. We could write the word "BUTT-". This short, weak vowel sound has a technical name (the schwa) and a symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The symbol looks like this: ə. The schwa sound is very important in English. In fact, it's the most common sound in the English language. Any vowel (a, e, i, o or u) can become a schwa sound. Click here for more about the schwa.

The schwa sound is not visible in ordinary written English, but here are some words with the stressed syllable in bold and the schwa sound in italics:

police	support	colour	brother	today
machine	America	often	usually	appear

 

English words with two or more syllables usually have one stressed syllable and one (or two) schwa sounds.

Also, extra schwa sounds appear when you put words into sentences. See Stress in Sentences.

 

More about stress

Exceptions to the rule

The rule: When a word has two or more syllables, we stress one syllable more than the other.

There are some exceptions. For example, in volcano and chimpanzee each syllable is equal. These aren't really English words, of course. Volcano is from Italian and chimpanzee is from Kikongo.

Compound words

A lot of English words with two or more syllables are really two separate words, stuck together.

2-syllable words:	3-syllable words:	4-syllable words:
foot + path = footpath	water + fall = waterfall	super + market = supermarket
birth + day = birthday	honey + bee = honeybee	water + skiing = waterskiing
class + room = classroom	loud + speaker = loudspeaker	water + melon = watermelon
down + pour = downpour	finger + nail = fingernail	infra + structure = infrastructure

We say them like two separate words, so we stress one syllable in each word. So, in a two-syllable word like footpath, birthday or classroom, we stress both syllables equally, and there is no schwa sound.

Other long words

If a word has three or four syllables, there may be two stressed syllables. Usually, one will be the main stress, and the secondary stress will be less obvious. For example, radiation. The main stress is on the third syllable. The secondary stress is not so strong, and it’s on the first syllable.

Stress for emphasis

There are some words that we often use to emphasize a point, or even to exaggerate. Let's look at the words really and amazing. If you want to say that something is "really good", you want lots of stress. You'll make the first part of really very long and very heavy: "REEEAAAlly good"; and the same for amazing, except that it's the second syllable we stress: "amAAAAZing".

 

Stress is important

If you say the correct vowels and consonants but the wrong stress, people will often misunderstand you. For example, the words volunteer and frontier look completely different on paper. The consonants are different, but if you say “volunTEER” with the wrong stress, the person you are talking to may hear “FRONtier” instead.

Similarly, if you say abundance with the wrong stress, in other words if you say "ABundance", people may hear the word evidence. It should be "aBUNdance" and "EVIdence".

Here’s another example: bottle and hotel. It’s “BOTTle” and “hoTEL”. If you say “HOTel", people may hear bottle instead. The difference between b and h is not enough. You need to say the right stress too.

It’s the same with some phrases. Every time I watch the movie American Werewolf in Paris I hear Claude (played by Pierre Cosso with a strong French accent) say “charity FORmal party”. He wanted to say “charity full MOON party”, but he stressed the wrong syllable.
(Note: The words moon and food - and bad - are longer than other "oo" words like good, look and stood. That isn’t because of stress. They are just longer. Try this phrase: Good FOOD is REAlly good; BAD FOOD can be REAlly BAD). We'll look at this again on the Stress in Sentences page.

 

How do you know which syllable to stress?

Listen - or use a dictionary

You probably have an English vocabulary of 5,000 or even 10,000 words. For 90% of them, you will hear other people say them, and you will remember to say them the same way. It's the way we learn any language; by imitation.

However, there are always words that we don't know how to pronounce. We know what they mean when we read them, but we have never heard anybody say them. We can look these up in an online dictionary (which probably has audio so you can listen to each word) or we can read it in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The IPA tells you which syllable to stress. For more about the IPA, see below under Stress Shift.

Is there a rule for stress in words?

No, not really, but here are some guidelines:

1. When we say a noun, we usually stress the first syllable:
SYLLable DICtionary BUtter
ANimal VEGetable MINeral
PAPer ENGland EURope
BIScuit COffee IMage
SANDwich DINner CHARacter

However there are lots of exceptions, including baNAna, volunTEER, aPARTment, maCHINE and aMErica. Also, this rule does not work for nouns which come from verbs, such as comPUTer, annOUNCement, proCEdure, compoSItion.

2. Don't stress the last syllable in words ending with -er. This is usually a schwa sound. NEVer, OTHer, TEACHer, MOTHer, FATHer, SISter, BROther, DAUGHTer, RUNner, SURFer, SUMMer, WEATHer.

3. Almost always, if you see a word ending with -ation the stressed syllable is the a in -ation. For example:
regulAtion associAtion investigAtion
informAtion generAtion terminAtion
accelerAtion frustrAtion moderAtion
It’s similar for most words that end in -otion (emOtion, commOtion) and -ution (revolUtion, solUtion)

4. Syllable stress is usually the same in British English and American English, but there are some small differences. For example cigarETTe (UK) and CIGarette (US); and FRONtier (UK) and fronTIER (US). Find some more examples here. Try listening to these words in the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, which is online here. It’s free, and it has both British and American pronunciation.

 

Stress shift

1) In English we sometimes use the same word in two ways by changing the pronunciation:

A DESert is a hot place with a lot of sand, like the Sahara.
If you desERT somebody you abandon them (you go away and leave them, and you don't come back).
Try saying this: “My girlfriend deserted me in the middle of the Sahara desert”.

CONduct is a noun meaning “behaviour”
conDUCT is a verb meaning “to carry out (an action)” or “to direct an orchestra”.
Try saying this: “The police conducted an enquiry into her conduct”.

2) Also, we often use a word in two, three or four different ways by making small changes. For example difference, different, differing. Sometimes we change the stress when we do this. This is called "stress shift":

As I was leaving the party, the host preSENTed me with a really nice PRESent.

EXports are down; last year we exPORTed only 90% as much as in 2017.

We live in a deMOcracy because we think it is important to be demoCRATic.

Western eCONomies are in trouble because our eCONomists don’t understand ecoNOMics. We must all be very ecoNOMical for a few years.

The factory is now in full proDUCtion of the new PRODucts.

He bought another boat; she obJECTed to having such a large OBject in their garden.

“Stress shift” happens sometimes, but only with some words, not with all words. Here's the classic example:

In each case, we stress a different syllable. How is this shown in a dictionary? Well, in some dictionaries it isn’t shown at all, but some use these systems:
System 1.

System 1 simply shows the stress by underlining that part of the word (that “syllable”).

The ·dots· in Method 1 separate the syllables.

System 2.

System 2 is the International Phonetic Alphabet.
How does System 2 show which syllable is stressed?

NOTE: The examples of System 2 are from the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (which is online here) and it puts the apostrophe BEFORE the stressed syllable. Some dictionaries put it AFTER the stressed syllable.

 

 

Now click here to go to Stress in Sentences.