One issue which foreign language learners often have to get to grips with when they are learning how to pronounce a new word is this: if the word has two or more syllables, which syllable should be stressed?
This can even be something of a problem for English speakers with their own language. Should you, for example, say conTROversy or CONtroversy? In this particular case it really does not matter very much, as both pronunciations are equally valid and frequent.
Sometimes, though, it does matter rather more, in instances where the word’s meaning and function change with different stress placements. Many such cases involve a change from a noun to a verb, perhaps with a related meaning – CONduct and conDUCT, DESert and deSERT, OBject and obJECT – while others involve a change from a noun to an adjective with a different sense – CONtent and conTENT, INvalid and inVALid, MINute and minUTE.
The orthographies – the writing systems – of some languages make it easier for learners struggling with stress placement by indicating in some way where it should be placed.
In Spanish, stress rules are rather clear, if a little complicated. Words ending in a vowel, n or s are stressed on the penultimate syllable – as in limoNAda “lemonade”, orIgen “origin”, zapATos “shoes” – while words ending in any consonant other than n and s are stressed on the final syllable – as in ciudAD “city” and doctOR “doctor”. For any word which is an exception to these rules, an accent is placed over the vowel of the stressed syllable, as in árbol “tree”.
Other languages use accents to disambiguate words (là “there” vs la “the” in Italian), or to indicate an exception to the expected stress pattern.
But for some languages, there is scarcely any need for orthographic help as stress is fixed, with hardly any exceptions. Finnish, Czech and Latvian all use initial syllable stress. In Polish, words are stressed on the penultimate syllable, as in uniwersytet “university” where –syt– receives stress, and swoboda “freedom” where –bod– is emphasised.
In Modern Greek, stress is always placed on one of the last three syllables – but which one? Greek spelling resolves this question by always placing an accent over the stressed vowel. It so happens that, as I am writing this column, the Greek athlete Manolis Karalis is competing in the televised World Indoor Athletics Championships in the pole-vault event, where he seems to be the only competitor capable of challenging the remarkable Swedish multiple world record holder Armand “Mondo” Duplantis.
The British and Irish athletics commentators all pronounce Karalis’s family name incorrectly, stressing the second syllable, which is what comes naturally to native anglophones. However, his name is written Καραλής in Greek, showing that the stress should be on the final syllable: Ka-ra-LEEss.
This pronunciation is not something which comes particularly easily to English speakers, although there are plenty of common enough English words which do consist of three syllables with the stress on the last: disagree, recommend, afternoon. Americans also tend to say matinee following this pattern because they have the feeling – which British English speakers do not share – that words of French origin, like debris and ballet, ought to be stressed on the last syllable.
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Khamenei
Since the American and Israeli attack on Iran, we have increasingly been hearing three-syllable surnames with final-syllable stress. This is a common pattern in Farsi (Persian), as well as in Turkish and its sister language Azerbaijani. The surname of the new Iranian leader, Mojtaba Khamenei is, perhaps surprisingly, not Persian but of Azerbaijani origin, and is pronounced with the stress on the final -i.
