Fun Easy English - American English Pronunciation

Word stress

Word stress - the accent on one syllable in a word.

Word stress - general rules

• There is only one stress in one word.
• Only vowels are stressed, not consonants.

Word stress - specific rules (there are many exceptions to these rules)

The parts of the words in bold print are stressed.

Stress on the first syllable
• most 2-syllable nouns – china, table, export, pencil
• most 2-syllable adjectives – slender, clever, happy

Stress on the last syllable
• most 2-syllable verbs – to export, to decide, to begin

Stress on the second syllable from the end (penultimate syllable)
• words ending in “ic” – graphic, geographic, geologic, photographic
• words ending in “sion” and “tion” – television, revelation, information

Stress on the third syllable from the end (ante-penultimate syllable)
• words ending in “cy”, “ty”, “phy” and “gy” – democracy, dependability, photography, geology, society
• words ending in “al” – critical, geological

Compound words (words with two parts)
• compound nouns, the stress is on the first part – blackbird, greenhouse, bluebird, blackboard, notebook, bookstore, toothbrush, keyboard
• compound adjectives, the stress is on the second part – bad-tempered, old-fashioned
• compound verbs, the stress is on the second part – to understand, to overflow
• nouns + compound nouns (two word compound nouns), the stress is on the first word - air conditioner, computer programmer, nail polish, french fry

Sentence stress

Sentence stress - where word stress is the accent on one syllable in a word, sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence. Often considered to be the "rhythm" of English.

Sentences - two types of words

• Content words – the main words of a sentence that have sense or meaning
• Structure words – these are small, simple, not very important words that make the sentence grammatically correct

Sentence stress - specific rules (there are many exceptions to these rules), these rules are for normal or neutral stress

• content words – stressed
• structure words – unstressed
• time between stressed words – always the same

Content words

main verbs – sell, give, employ
nouns – car, music, mary
adjectives – red, big, interesting
adverbs – quickly, loudly, never
negative auxiliaries – don’t, aren’t, can’t

Structure words

pronouns – I, he, she, we, they
prepositions – on, at, into
articles – a, an, the
conjunctions – and, but, because
auxiliary verbs – do, be, have, can, must
“to be” as a main verb – is, are, was

Exception - occasionally a structure word is stressed to correct information.

“Have you seen my shoes?”
“No, I haven’t, but she has.”

Example: Can you do the dishes after you have finished your lunch?

The content words are stressed.
The structure words are not stressed.
The time between each stressed word is the same.

There is one syllable between do and dishes and there are four syllables between dishes and finished.
The time between do and dishes and between dishes and finished is the same.
This is because you say "the" more slowly and "after you have" more quickly.
Saying the structure words more slowly or more quickly keeps the rhythm of the content words the same.