Accents

Lesson Five: It's Important To Stress The Correct Syllable In A Word

Another reason that English is difficult to speak is how words are stressed. For words of more than one syllable, some syllables are always accented or stressed more than others.

Here is an example: 'carry'

In this word the first syllable 'car' is more stressed than 'ry'. If you were to pronounce it with the second syllable stressed, like:
ca RRY

This would sound very strange.

You may be wondering how to you actually make a syllable sound stressed. Here is how:

Your pitch should be higher for a stressed syllable

A stressed syllable should be longer than an unstressed one

A stressed syllable is usually louder than an unstressed one

The vowel sound in a stressed syllable is normally more pronounced, your tongue is further away from the middle of your mouth than an unstressed one. Here is an example:
'Company' com pa ny

For this word, 'com' is stressed and 'pa' is not stressed. For this reason, the vowel in 'pa' is not stressed, and when you say this syllable, your tongue is in the middle or your mouth. This neutral vowel sound is called 'schwa'

Please compare the correct pronunciation to the incorrect one:

Here are some examples of common words with the stress shown for you. Stressed syllables are shown in bold

Lesson index:

• Lesson 1 - Many sounds in english are not in your native language.
• Lesson 2 - Some combinations of sounds can be hard to pronounce.
• Lesson 3 - Syllable structure can vary a lot.
• Lesson 4 - Words are not always pronounced the way they are spelt.
• Lesson 5 - Accents, how to stress the correct syllable in a word.
• Lesson 6 - Pitch and loudness change the meaning of sentences.
• Lesson 7 - Words change their pronunciation when in a sentence.
• Lesson 8 - American and British accents are different.
• Lesson 9 - How to test, see and hear your pronunciation on your computer.