[0:00]Are there any rules for word stress in English? If there are, then what are the rules for word stress in English? By the end of this video, you're going to know eight simple rules to know how to stress words in English. Hi, my name is Emma, and welcome to my channel, Pronunciation with Emma, where I focus on British English pronunciation and listening skills. So if that's something that interests you, then why not hit that subscribe button. If you're also interested in one-to-one private classes to help improve your pronunciation, or your English in general, then why not check out preply? You can find your perfect teacher by using the filter options on the platform. You can find a teacher who suits your schedule and easily book a lesson on their website or app. You can keep track of your learning progress, as well as do extra activities outside of your lessons. Preply is truly a complete and all-in-one platform where you get access to teachers, as well as plenty of resources to practice your English skills. If your goal this year is to improve your English and you're looking for a private teacher to help you with that, then check out preply. Use the link down below in the description, and use the code Emma to get 50% off your first lesson. Thank you very much Preply for sponsoring this video. Now, let's talk about some word stress. Now, before we start talking about the eight rules for word stress, we're going to start with some absolute basics that you need to know. And that is, what is a syllable? So, a syllable is essentially the units of a word. They're the sections of the word. They're where we break the word up. For example, the word go has just one syllable. However, happy has two syllables, excited, three syllables, reality. Four syllables, understandable. Five syllables, accessibility. Six syllables. So, you see, we can add more and more syllables the longer the word gets. However, don't think that the more letters you add, the more syllables there are. For example, we have a, one syllable. At, one syllable, but two letters. Sit, one syllable, three letters. Fool, one syllable, four letters. Tooth, one syllable, five letters, you see where I'm going with this? Bought, six letters, brought, seven letters. So don't think that the more letters a word has, the more syllables it has. Okay, it's not always the case. So now we know what syllables are. Let's start looking at our first rule. Take a look at these words. Table, ticket, pencil, record. What do all these have in common? They are two-syllable nouns. And where does the stress go? On the first syllable. So notice when we stress syllables, we're adding more emphasis. We're pronouncing it more strongly. So, pencil, table, ticket, record. So let's take ticket for an example. It's a perfect one here. We have the same vowel sounds in both syllables, but I'm not saying ticket, that's not strong, strong. That first one is stronger. Ticket, ticket. Rule number two. Take a look at these words. Happy. Angry. Busy. Easy. What do all these have in common again? They're not nouns, they're adjectives. Two-syllable adjectives. And just like our first rule, the stress goes on the first syllable. So again, make sure you're pronouncing those stronger syllables with more emphasis. Rule number three. Take a look at these words and think about what they have in common this time. Record. Provide. Allow. Become. They're all verbs. They're all two-syllable verbs. And where does the stress go? On the second syllable. So when you have two-syllable nouns and adjectives, the stress tends to go on the first syllable. However, if it's a two-syllable verb, the stress tends to go on the second syllable. So this means if you get words that are spelled exactly the same, but they perhaps have a noun and a verb form, we change the stress, we change the pronunciation. For example, record, record. This is the noun. Record, record. This is the verb. Record, record. You hear how the stress changes. So in some sentences, I bought a record. I bought a record. I'll record it later. I'll record it later. Here are just a few other examples, but there are plenty of other pairs like this that go together. Produce, produce, produce, produce. Rebel, rebel, rebel, rebel. Conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict. So notice how that stress changes depending on the word form, if it's a noun or if it's a verb. Rule number four. If we have a word ending in IC, so ik, the stress goes on the penultimate syllable. So if the word ends with Ick, the syllable before that will be the stressed syllable. For example, static, static, barbaric, barbaric, enthusiastic, enthusiastic. Rule number five. Words ending in S-I-O-N or T-I-O-N follow the same rule that we've just talked about. So the stress doesn't go on that T-I-O-N or S-I-O-N ending, it goes before it. So the syllable that's before it, we put the stress there. For example, nation, nation, solution, solution. So again, it doesn't matter how long the word is, obligation. The stress still goes on that syllable before it, that penultimate syllable, obligation. Station, so of course, if it's just two syllables, it's going to go on that first one, because it's the syllable before the T-I-O-N. Station. Rule number six. If we have words that end with, and I need to look at my list, C-Y, T-Y, P-H-Y, so phi, G-Y, or S-Y, the stress goes on the anti-penultimate syllable. What does that mean? So it doesn't go on the last, it doesn't go on the one before that, it goes on the one before that, okay? So we're going to focus on the third one from the end.
[8:15]For example, democracy. So notice that there's the stressed syllable, and then there's the two after. Democracy. Hypocrisy. Now a nice long one here, cinematography. So again, it doesn't matter how many syllables are before it, it has one of those endings, so it follows this rule. Rule number seven. If the word ends with all, so A-L, it follows the same rule that we just talked about. It goes on the anti-penultimate syllable. So not on the all, not on the syllable before it, but on the syllable before that, for example. Critical, critical, magical, magical, historical, historical. A longer one, economical, economical. So again, doesn't matter what's before it, the stress still goes on the anti-penultimate syllable. Economical. Finally, rule number eight. This is probably the trickiest rule to get your head around. It's why I've saved it for last for the most dedicated students who stuck around to the end. We're going to talk about sentence stress and how that affects a word's stress. So English is a stress-timed language. What does that mean? What is a stress-timed language? It essentially means that we have two types of words, our important words that we emphasize more, and then little words in between that are there for grammatical purposes, they're not that important, and they are weakened. So if you listen to English, it sounds something like, and these words that are standing out tend to be clearer and you understand them more easily. Let's compare it to a syllable-timed language to make it a little bit clearer what I'm talking about here. So a syllable-timed language essentially puts stress and even timing on every single syllable. So if you listen to a language, for example, like Spanish, you will hear it being pronounced as something like, and I remember many years ago a tutor of mine at university telling me that syllable-timed languages sound kind of like machine guns, like, they're very even are all of the syllables. Well, if you listen to a language like English, it's not like that. If I were to pronounce it like that, it would sound like this and everything would be stressed, and it would sound very, very robotic. So how do you know which words are stressed? We can categorize words in English into two different groups. Content words, which are stressed, they always carry the meaning, the important parts of the sentence, the content, and then we have the structure words. The little grammatical words that are not so important, and they don't hold that much meaning. All of the content words would be stressed in a sentence. The function or structure words, whatever you want to call them, these in sentences tend to be weaker. So your content words are nouns, adverbs, adjectives, verbs, question words, negative auxiliary and modal verbs, as well as negative words, like no and not, etcetera. Your function and structure words, whatever you want to call them, tend to be your articles, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, 'to be', pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions, otherwise known as connectives. These words tend to have, if you look in the dictionary, a strong and a weak form. In sentences, when we're speaking naturally, we tend to use the weak form.
[12:39]I'll give you an example. I wanted to see the film. Notice that rhythm. I wanted to see the film. You see what I was talking about earlier. You see, those words that are stressed, the intonation goes up, and they're a lot clearer, while if we look at the words in between, those little function words, you can see that they're very, very weak. I don't say to see the film. No, no. The, they become much weaker. So these sorts of words, they tend to be pronounced with shwa sounds, like a. Not always, depends on the word, but what you'll see is it goes from to to the to the. They're a lot softer and a lot weaker. Here's another example. Can you help me with my homework? Can you help me with my homework? So notice that help and homework are both stressed. Everything else is a lot weaker and a lot softer. So we pronounce those those content words a lot stronger, while the other words, those structure words, they tend to get pronounced a little bit weaker. If you want some more practice on this and some more information, some more examples, I do have a video fully dedicated to this. I will leave it down in the description. Go and check it out. It's one of my most popular videos. So I'm sure you will enjoy it and benefit from it. And that is the end of this lesson. Please let me know in the comments which rule was new for you. Was it all of them? Was it just one or two of them? Let me know in the comments which rule is new for you. Remember to check out Preply if you're interested in improving your English and taking lessons with a private teacher. Use the code Emma for 50% off your first lesson. I'll link the description in the a link the description. That's the wrong way around.
