Linguaphile  +  416370 Sun, 09 Sep 07 05:55 PM Hi, Some English words comprise only unstressed syllables. In some words of this kind, the stress is on the first syllable while in some others it is on the second syllable. Is there a reason for this or is it arbitrary? 1. The stress is on the first syllable: examples: being, billion, bishop, bitter, brilliant, Britain, building, business, busy, ceiling, cereal, chicken, children, chimney, Christmas, cinema, citizen, civil, city, clinic, criminal, critic, critical, cinical 2. The stress is on the second syllable: örnekler: career, cathedral, certificate, committee, condition, defeat, degree, delivery, description, disease, distinct, division, edition, equipment, equivalent, existence, experience, extreme, facility, familiar Linguaphile Joined on Tue, Jul 17 2007 Turkey Full Member 140

	Kooyeen  +  416447 Sun, 09 Sep 07 09:49 PM  Linguaphile wrote: Is there a reason for this or is it arbitrary? Hi, I'm afraid you need to learn how to pronounce words by heart. There are no rules, even though once you are used to English pronunciation, you can sometimes "guess" how a word is pronounced or where the stress is. However, you can never be sure, you always need to look up new words in a dictionary... Kooyeen Joined on Thu, Dec 22 2005 Italy Senior Member 4,933 Parental Advisory / Explicit Posts Pronunciation

	CalifJim  +  417023 Tue, 11 Sep 07 07:46 AM There are groups of words that follow similar patterns, but there is no general rule for knowing the stress pattern or the qualities of the vowels of any given word of English. Final -Vr, -Vl, -le, -Vn, -Vnt, -y, -less, -ful, -ness (where V is any vowel) are usually unstressed.  sailor, favor, bottle, satin, tangent, city, careless, careful, firmness, ... Latinate verbs are usually composed of prefix and root, and stressed on the root.  deceive, promote, permit, concern, decide, ... Nouns in -ity are stressed on the syllable preceding the -ity ending:  electricity, capacity, insanity, profanity, infinity, hilarity, solidarity, ... Endings in -oon and -een are stressed:  bassoon, platoon, monsoon, saloon, ..., tureen, Eileen. In fact, almost all final syllables containing ee are stressed.  agree, degree, career, ... You might also be interested in my comments at Post:409531, which show other groups. See also these two, in the same thread:  Post:204605  Post:205383. CJ CalifJim Joined on Mon, Aug 2 2004 California Veteran Member 22,128 "There are no facts, only interpretations" - Nietzsche Vowels, Verbs, Nouns