Oh my god I'm so stressed, there's just so much work. My job, my assignment, everything.
Are you also stressed? Really, we all are actually struggling with stress and now we
also have stress with words. That’s such a bad news, right? But the good news is, that
I’m here your tutor, Michelle to relieve you of all the stress that you have in your
life. Actually not all but at least with words I can surely relieve you. So please join me
and let's start learning about word stress.
Let’s look at some words here. Japanese, Japanese, Japanese, what sounds more natural
to you? I think to me, Japanese sounds a bit more natural, of course I’m speaking it
with some extra stress so it might seem unnatural to you but we would generally say, Japanese.
So here, let's divide the word. How do you break the word into different parts? Let’s
have a look. This will be ja-pa-nese and how about this one? Dance, do you break it? Do
you think we can break this word? I don't think we can. I think it's just one sound,
dance, isn't it? So this word here has one syllable and this word here has three syllables.
Why don't you try doing the other three, pause the video and come back and then watch whether
your answers are correct or not? Go ahead, try it. Are you done? I hope you are, let's
go. Lonely, lone-ly, lonely, two syllables, education, three? Four? Five? E-du-ca-tion,
four syllables. Let’s look at the next one, you know you can count it on your fingers
or sometimes you can even clap, joy-ful or happy, joy-ful, how many syllables? Two claps,
two syllables. This is so awesome. Now let’s get back to the natural part. What sounds
more natural to you? Umm... joyful or joyful. We are not saying joy fool; it's not, f-oo-l.
We are not stressing like this. We are stressing on joy. So in every word there is one syllable
which is always the stronger syllable and which is the stressed syllable and to help
you with word stress, I have some rules for you. Those rules are going to help you find
out the word stress and make it very easy for you to know word stress. Let’s see this
pair here. Scary, what is this word, is it a noun or is it an adjective? You got it right;
it's an adjective and what about the lion, what is that? That’s a noun and how many
syllables, two syllables each and where's the stress? Scary, lion you must have guessed
it. For both of them, the stress is on the first syllable. Let’s look at another example,
painted, berries which one is an adjective? Is berries an adjective? No, the adjective
is painted and berries is a noun. So now that you see all these words have two syllables
and all these words are stressed on the first syllable. Yes, that it is the ultimate rule
for word stress, that when you have a two syllable noun or adjective, it is always stressed
on the first syllable. Stressed on the first syllable.
So now you don't have to think twice when you see a two syllable noun or adjective to
decide where the stress is, isn't it? Awesome. Let’s look at these words here, prepare,
observe. What are these? These are verbs, you got it right, and these are verbs and
how many syllables? Two syllables each, again but which syllable is the stressed syllable,
that's the confusion. Is it same as adjectives and nouns? Stressed on the first syllable
or they are stressed on the second syllable? Let’s try, pre- pare, prepare, that's more
natural, isn't it? So a verb, a two syllable verb is always stressed on the second syllable
and same here, observe, we do not say OB-serve because here the O sound is the softer sound
and the sound of serve is a stronger sound. So observe, stressed on the second syllable.
What? Verbs, two syllable verbs, stressed on the second syllable.
Now we come to a really fun learning and important part. This is gonna be fun, trust me. Keep
watching. Let’s look at this word, RE-cord and re-CORD; don't they have the same spelling?
Then why am I saying them in a different way? Because this one here is a noun, REcord and
this one here is a verb. But how do we find out? They have different meanings also form,
meaning and pronunciation, all the three things are different. so REcord means to keep a REcord
of something, like in a file or to store some data which is important and reCORD could be
to reCORD a song, that's how you can use it. Let's look at the next pair, REbel and reBEL,
different right? Spelling is same, pronunciation is different, and meaning is different. My
brother is an absolute REbel because he doesn't obey my parents, this is a noun. reBEL, this
is a verb, my brother reBELS my parents advice always, he doesn't listen to them.
Let’s look at the next pair, CONduct and conDUCT. This one here is a noun and this
one here as you would guessed it, is a verb. CONduct means the correct behaviour or simply
behaviour. So the students should have a good CONduct in the class and conDUCT is to conDUCT
a meeting. CONtent and conTENT, I like the CONtent of the this lesson, this will be a
noun and I'm really conTENT with my life which means I’m very satisfied with my life, this
will be a verb. Now the question is why does the pronunciation change? And the reason is,
because the word stress is different. Here the word, let's go up and look at the rule.
For every noun, the word is stressed on the first syllable. So here it's stressed on the
first syllable, REcord and for every verb, which syllable is stressed? Second syllable
for every two syllable verb, the second syllable is stressed. For every two syllable noun?
First. For every two syllable verb? Second and the same rule applies to the other pairs
as well.
With this, we come to an end of this lesson; I hope you finally understood what word stress
is and how much it affects our pronunciation. My tip for you is, whenever you learn a new
word, refer to the dictionary, check the word stress and then that will really help your
pronunciation and you’ll be able to understand native speakers much better. I’ll see you
again with another lesson on pronunciation, till then you take care and miss me, bye.