What's the difference between hurricane and hurricane? And what's the difference between the Super Bowl and a Super Bowl? Well, the answer is word stress and it's a really important aspect of pronunciation and today I'm going to teach you eight simple word stress rules so that you can speak English more clearly and accurately.
Let's go! So, before we start, there is a simple way for you to know where the stressed syllable is in every word in English and that is by just learning some basic phonetics. If you look in the dictionary and see the phonetic transcription for a word there is a little apostrophe type thing just before the stressed syllable. in every word and every word in English has just one stressed syllable.
So look at these words and also listen to hear how I stress the stressed syllable in these words. Photograph, photograph. Here the stressed syllable is the first syllable.
Pho, photograph. Photography, photography. See the little apostrophe before the second syllable?
Photography and photographic, photographic. Here we stress the third syllable, photographic, and you have the little apostrophe before that in the phonetic transcription. So learn some phonetics. It will make your life easier, I promise. OK, so let's have a look now at these eight simple rules.
Every rule has exceptions in English, so maybe we should call them guidelines. Whatever you want to call them, we have eight simple ways for you to speak more clearly using correct word stress in English. So let's go!
OK, the first rule is related to words that have two syllables. So look at these nouns that have two syllables and tell me where the stress is. Campus. County, maker, picture, water, entry.
That's right. With two syllable nouns, the stress goes on the first syllable. Now listen to these adjectives.
Happy, pretty, royal, mobile, local. Again, with nouns and adjectives that have two syllables, we stress the first syllable. And don't worry, I've put all these examples and a summary of all today's rules.
a free worksheet for you. You can download that PDF and get all of these examples and rules for your reference, just for you. There's a link up there and there's a link in the description too. OK, let's have a look at some more words with two syllables.
OK, rule two also relates to words that have two syllables but in this case we're looking at verbs. So listen to these verbs and tell me where the stress is. Repeat, collect, forgive, allow, prefer, impose.
That's right, with verbs that have two syllables the stress is on the second syllable. And yes, there are exceptions, feel free to write any exceptions in the comments, but generally this rule is true. Now, there are some situations where we have one word that can be a verb and a noun. So what do we do in those situations?
Well, that's rule number three. OK, rule three is really, really simple. As I said, we have some words that can be both a verb and a noun. We stress the first syllable if it's a noun, like record, and the second syllable.
like record if it's a verb. In other words it follows rules one and two perfectly. So look at some more examples of this.
Import is the noun, import is the verb. Produce is the noun, produce is the verb. More nouns are rebel, conflict, research. And the verbs are rebel, conflict, research.
And there are a couple of common exceptions to this rule. Respect always has the stress on the second syllable and question always has the stress. on the first syllable, but generally this rule is almost always true and a really common mistake that students make. OK, let's change the topic a little bit in rule number four.
OK, I want to talk about the suffixes but suffixes are those little letters that you always put at the end of words. You see them in many many many different words like ik or je. or shun.
So I want to talk specifically about those suffixes in this particular rule because when we have a word that includes those suffixes the stressed syllable is the syllable just before the suffix. In other words it's the penultimate syllable in the word and it doesn't matter how long the word is This rule is true. So look at some examples here. Static, traffic, athletic, enthusiastic, electric.
Did you hear? The stressed syllable is the syllable just before ik and this rule is true for words that end SH and J. So listen again with words that end SH. Induction, creation.
Expectation, objection, distinction, presentation, coordination. And again it doesn't matter how long the word is, when you have a word that ends-ation the stressed syllable will always be A. Nation, coordination, mobilization, expectation.
OK let's have a look now at words that end-ion, like television. Again listen for the stressed syllable in these words... It's the penultimate syllable.
Conclusion, revision, conversion, provision, vision, television. OK, so the next time you see a word that ends ik, shun or jun, stress the penultimate syllable. OK, this rule is going to help you pronounce another hundreds of words correctly because words that end with all these suffixes are Follow the same stress pattern.
So we're talking about the suffixes C, PHE, T and G. I'm gonna say a few words and again listen to see if you can hear the pattern and you can hear where the stressed syllable is. So for the C suffix, democracy. Pregnancy for the PHI suffix cinematography, photography for the T suffix productivity, diversity and for the G suffix biology, analogy.
Did you hear where it was? Well in all of these words we do not stress the last syllable, we do not stress the penultimate syllable, but we stress the syllable before that. So you have the stressed syllable and then two more before the end of the word.
Listen again. Democracy, cinematography, productivity, analogy. So it's not that the last, not the penultimate, but the one before that.
And the same rule applies to words that end ATE. Now there are two different ways to pronounce ATE which I talk about in that video up there, that's a great video with loads of pronunciation rules which I highly recommend you watch after this one. So again listen carefully to some examples of these words and listen how we don't stress the suffix or We don't stress the penultimate syllable, but it's the syllable before that that we stress. Eliminate, integrate, regulate, negotiate, accurate or adequate.
It follows the same rule and so do words that end Oh, oh, we write it with AL but we use the schwa sound. to pronounce words that end like this. Uh, uh, uh. Economical, mathematical, ethical, critical. This rule is amazing and will help you pronounce thousands of words correctly.
And again, all these examples and rules are on the free PDF, which you can download by clicking the link in the description. Now, all this talk of suffix makes me want to just stress one important rule to you and that is that we never stress a suffix in English. There are lots of different suffixes but we never stress them. There are three examples to this rule. So a Japanese employee who's an engineer, those suffixes we stress but all the rest we don't and I just want to point out one that I always correct.
to the students inside my pronunciation course and my daily quick fix WhatsApp group. These are words that end "-ise". We never stress the suffix "-ise".
And if you stress the suffix "-ise", you're going to be making a pronunciation mistake and maybe not be clearly understood in English. For example, it's realize not realize. I hear many students saying realize, stressing eyes, but if you stress eyes and say realize you're actually talking about eyes.
Like these are real eyes, they're not fake, realize. But realize is the verb. Analyze, not analyze.
Organize, not organize. Never stress. The suffix "-ise".
Never stress any suffixes unless you're talking about the Japanese employee who is an engineer. OK, the next rule is another rule that can really cause confusion if you stress the wrong part of the word. Compound nouns.
These are basically one thing that is composed of two words like bedroom or swimming pool. Doesn't matter if they're two separate words or one word, if it's a compound noun we stress the first word, normally the first noun, in that word. Another couple of examples are greenhouse or bluebird. Can you hear? We stress the first part of the word because it's a compound noun, it's one thing...
that is composed of two words. Some more examples are motorcycle, haircut and handshake. Here, in all the situations, we stress the first word. Now, be careful because if you stress the wrong part of this word you can change the meaning of the word. Like a bluebird, it's a type of bird, it's blue.
It's called a bluebird. It's a compound noun, we stress the first word blue. But if we stress the second word, a blue bird, we could be talking about any bird at all.
We're just talking about a bird. which is blue. The same thing applies for a greenhouse.
A greenhouse is made of glass, you put plants and fruit in there to grow. But a greenhouse is actually a house which is green. One noun, house, and we're describing it with an adjective.
And all this takes me very nicely to rule number seven. OK, so rule number seven is that when you have an adjective plus a noun. We stress the noun like nice person, little shop, big shoes. We stress the noun in these situations.
A kind boy, a great game, a fast car, a new sofa. Do you hear? In all those situations we're stressing the noun and this is why when we're talking about the Super Bowl we want to stress the first syllable super, Super Bowl, but if we're just talking about a really cool bowl We stress the word bowl. Wow, that is a super bowl!
OK, another stress rule for you is related to phrasal verbs. Now a phrasal verb is a verb plus a preposition or a verb plus a preposition plus a preposition. Yes, some phrasal verbs have two prepositions in them. The rule is that with phrasal verbs we want to stress the second word.
So for phrasal verbs with one preposition put up, get on, come back, look out, do you hear? We always stress that preposition in those phrasal verbs. And for phrasal verbs that have two prepositions put up with, cut down on, look forward to, keep up with, again we stress the second word. As I mentioned before, I want to tell you the 10 most common mistakes that I hear my students inside my courses make and teach you them so that you don't make the same mistakes too. So let's go!
Number one is hotel which is actually an exception to rule number one. It has two syllables but we stress the second syllable, hotel. Number two is guitar.
Again, a noun with two syllables, we normally stress the first syllable in these cases, but with guitar we stress the second syllable. And another exception to rule number one, which is a super common mistake, is exam. Stress the last syllable in that word.
Another word we stress the last syllable in is afternoon. Afternoon, I'll see you on Tuesday afternoon. Stress noon. that word. OK, how about this word?
Catholic. This follows rule number four. It's a word that ends "-ic", so we stress the syllable before that. However, the O in this word is silent so we're not stressing off.
We're stressing cath-, Catholic. The next one is understand, not understand. We never stress the prefix under in words.
It's understand, undergo, underachieve. This next one is probably the one that I correct the most and it is... Interesting!
We stress the first syllable in this word, we do, seriously, believe me! I correct it every single week, it's interesting! Learn it, please!
The next one is development, where we stress the second syllable, development, not development. Don't stress the first syllable like many students do, stress the second, stress vel, development. And that's true for all related words like develop, developing, development.
And finally, I mentioned it earlier, realise, not realize. Don't stress eyes, We're not using the adjective noun combination real eyes. No, we're using the verb realize. Stress the first syllable in that word.
OK, somebody described that video as the best video on YouTube the other day. I like it and I think you will like it too. So watch that next to improve your pronunciation of hundreds of other words in English. maybe even thousands. And there's the link to the summary of today's lesson with all the words, all the rules, everything you need.
So thanks for watching and bye for now!