Word Stress

Understanding Syllables
syllable (noun): a unit of pronunciation that has one vowel sound, and may or may not be
surrounded by consonants. A syllable can form a whole word or part of a word. For
example, there is one syllable in cat, two syllables in monkey and three syllables
in elephant.
To understand word stress, it helps to understand syllables.
Every word is made from syllables.
Each word has one, two, three or more syllables.

word number of syllables

dog dog 1

green green 1

quite quite 1

quiet qui-et 2

orange or-ange 2

table ta-ble 2

expensive ex-pen-sive 3

interesting in-ter-est-ing 4

unrealistic un-rea-lis-tic 4

unexceptio un-ex-cep-tio- 5
nal nal

Notice that (with a few rare exceptions) every syllable contains at least one vowel (a, e, i,
o or u) or vowel sound.

What is Word Stress?

In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word, we
accentuate ONE syllable. We say one syllable very loudly (big, strong, important) and all
the other syllables very quietly.
Let's take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic. Do they sound the same
when spoken? No. Because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each word. And it is
not always the same syllable. So the "shape" of each word is different.

Listen to these words. Do you hear the stressed syllable in each word?

PHO-TO-GRAPH - 3 syllables, stress on #1

PHO-TO-GRAPH-ER - 4 syllables, stress on #2

PHO-TO-GRAPH-IC - 4 syllables, stress on #3

This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables: TEACHer, JaPAN, CHINa, aBOVE,
converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND, etCETera, etCETera, etCETera

The syllables that are not stressed are weak or small or quiet. Fluent speakers of English
listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables. If you use word stress in your
speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your
comprehension.

Try to hear the stress in individual words each time you listen to English - on the radio, or
in films for example. Your first step is to HEAR and recognise it. After that, you can USE
it!

There are two very important rules about word stress:

1. One word, one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. So if you hear two
stresses, you have heard two words, not one word.)
2. The stress is always on a vowel.

Syllables
A syllable is a word, or part of a word, which contains a single vowel sound. It is a single unit of speech.

Each word contains one syllable, or more.

1 Syllable
Here are examples of words with a single syllable:

pen

man

pig

cup

hat

In English, a vowel sound can be made of more the one vowel letter.
So the following words have a single syllable as well:

feet

moon

cake

have

break

bought

All of these words contain only one vowel sound, and therefore a single syllable.

2 Syllables
A word can have more than one syllable. The following words are examples of words with two syllables.
Here are examples of words with 2 syllables. The different syllables are shown on the right, and they are
separated with a space.

garden: gar den

hotel: ho tel
consist: con sist

object: ob ject

focus: fo cus

3 Syllables
Examples of words with three syllables:

September: sep tem ber

department: de part ment

telephone: te le phone

camera: ca mer a

Saturday: sa tur day

hamburger: hum bur ger

vitamin: vi ta min

4 Syllables
Examples of words with four syllables:

kindergarten: kin der gar ten

information: in for ma tion

January: ja nu ar y

American: A mer i can

discovery: di sco ver y

That is not all, of course. There can be words with even more syllables. But you get the point, right?

Word Stress
When a word has more than one syllable, not all syllables are pronounced with the same degree of force.
The syllable which is pronounced with greater force is called the stressed syllable. You can also call it
the accented syllable. "Accent" in this case means "emphasis".

When speaking, it is important to put the stress on the correct syllable.

Otherwise, it would sound unnatural, and might even be difficult to understand!

Here are some examples of the word stress of some common words (the stress part is bold):

water: wa ter

people: peo ple

television: tel e vi sion

together: to geth er

potato: po ta to

before: be fore

begin: be gin