Stress in Languages – The Rhythm of the Language
Rhythm generally means a “movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak
elements, or of opposite or different conditions.” It is “a regular recurrence or pattern in time.”
Stress – Timed Languages
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Stressed syllables occur at a roughly constant rate.
The stress is like the beat in music.
Non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this.
The pattern of stressed and non-stressed syllables is like the rhythm of music.
Non-stressed syllables have a vowel, which is the Schwa.
Every vowel can become a schwa if it is in an unstressed syllable.
Syllable – Timed Language
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Japanese - is quite different from European and some Asian languages. Each syllable is
pronounced with equal length. Japanese sounds like a steadily flowing stream.
German – the accent is generally on the first syllable, except for prefixes: be/ ge / er / emp /
ent / ver / zer
Italian
French
IPA Symbols – primary stress is indicated by a high vertical line before the syllable.
English Dictionaries – show stress by placing a prime mark after the stressed syllable.
Fixed Stress – can usually be predicted by a rule. Examples: Hungarian, Icelandic.
Variable Stress – is less predictable and must be memorized as part of the pronunciation of the word.
Examples: English, Russian, Italian, Spanish
British English – lab OR a tor y
/ American English – LAB or a tor y
Word or Lexical Stress – stress accent is placed on syllables.
Sentence or Prosodic Stress – stress is placed on words in a sentence or phrase.
Contrastive Stress – is used to highlight an item that is given particular focus.