Lesson 2:
Word Stress and Syllables
English Pronunciation
_________________________
Word
stress and syllables are
the next important things to learn about English pronunciation and accent.
Syllables
A syllable is a word, or
part of a word, which contains a single vowel sound. It is a single unit of
speech.
Each word contains one syllable, or
more.
· One Syllable
Here are examples of words with a
single syllable:
pen
man
pig
cup
hat
In English, a vowel sound can be made
of more the one vowel letter.
So the following words have a single syllable as well:
feet
moon
cake
have
break
bought
All of these words contain only one
vowel sound, and therefore a single syllable.
· Two Syllables
A
word can have more than one syllable. The following words are examples of words
with two syllables. Here are examples of words with 2 syllables. The different
syllables are shown on the right, and they are separated with a space.
garden: gar den
hotel: ho tel
consist: con sist
object: ob ject
focus: fo cus
·Three Syllables
Examples of words with three syllables:
September: sep tem
ber
department: de part ment
telephone: te le phone
camera: ca mer
a
Saturday: sa tur
day
hamburger: hum bur ger
vitamin: vi ta min
· Four
Syllables
Examples of words with four syllables:
kindergarten: kin der gar ten
information: in for ma tion
January: ja nu ar y
American: A mer i can
discovery: di sco ver
y
That is not all, of course. There can
be words with even more syllables. But you get the point, right? When a
word has more than one syllable, not all syllables are pronounced with the same
degree of force. The syllable which is pronounced with greater force is called
the stressed syllable. You can also call it the accented
syllable. "Accent" in this case means "emphasis".
When speaking, it is important to put the stress on the correct syllable.
Otherwise, it would sound unnatural, and might even be difficult to understand!
Here
are some examples of the word stress of some common words (the stress part
is bold):
water: wa ter
people: peo ple
television: tel e vi sion
together: to geth er
potato: po ta to
before: be fore
begin: be gin
Have you finished them all? Cool!
Well done! You have
completed the lesson.
Let's move on...