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Linguaphile Posted 19 years ago
Speech & Pronunciation
pronunciation
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
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
Top answer
Linguaphile 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.
- Linguaphile 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...
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2 Answers
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LinguaphileIs 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
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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,
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,
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