English word stress

A stressed syllable is longer, louder and higher in pitch than the ones around it. English is a stress-timed language: stressed syllables arrive at roughly even intervals and everything between them is compressed. That compression is why unstressed vowels collapse into the schwa /ə/, and why fluent English sounds uneven compared to syllable-timed languages such as Spanish or Japanese.

Getting stress wrong disrupts understanding more than getting an individual sound wrong. A listener can usually repair a mispronounced vowel; a word stressed on the wrong syllable is often simply not recognised.

The most useful pattern in English. For many two-syllable words that are both a noun and a verb, the noun takes stress on the first syllable and the verb on the second. Play each and listen for where the weight lands.

A REcord is a thing; to reCORD is an action. Each pair is played as a short phrase, because a word read on its own is always given its noun stress — the contrast only exists in context. The stress shifts word list plays the set in order.

Adding a suffix often drags the stress to a new syllable, and the vowels change with it. This is why a word you know can become unrecognisable in another form.

Two nouns forming one idea are stressed on the first: a GREENhouse is a building for plants, while a green HOUSE is a house that is green.

Every word above is a button. Set the accent and voice you want on the main screen, then come back — the guides use whatever you chose. To hear two accents against each other, use Compare; to test whether you can actually hear a contrast, use the listening quiz.