Every word has one and only one strong syllable!  It isn’t always easy to determine where to place that stress if you are a non-native English speaker.  There are some patterns to the craziness but of course, remember that there are always exceptions, too.  The English language is complicated!  Let’s talk about the three types of syllable stress.  Think of stressing words as a tempo.  The strong syllable is held the longest and the weak syllables are always shorter.  Some syllables may be pronounced with a medium length syllable, too, somewhere in between the longest and the shortest syllable of a word. 

Let me give you an example with the word “graduate.”  This three syllable word has strong syllable stress on the first syllable or GRA- part. The other two syllables have weak stress or medium stress depending on how you use the word.  I can say the verb form: GRA u Ate, or the noun and say GRA du ate  Listen to them in a sentence. They are pronounced slightly different than each other only in the length of syllables.

The graduate of Lincoln High smiled proudly.

He will graduate from Lincoln High tomorrow.

Graduit-graduate, graduit-graduate  Do you hear the difference?

The weak syllable contains a schwa sound or a shortened “uh” sound while the strong syllable receives the full pronunciation of that vowel and the medium syllable receives a length somewhere between the strong and weak.  In the verb form, graduate, the medium length stress is on the suffix, -ate.

Learning to stress the correct syllable in words and give them each the right length is no small feat!  But there are some patterns common in American English that if known could reduce the number of mistakes made by the non-native English speaker. 

Would you like to learn more about stress in syllables and words?  Join our online Stressing Out membership class and learn about this in more detail so that you become an expert at correctly stressing words!