SUMMARY: ACCENT

Name: Amarilis Gonzalez

ID 820-2252
Name: Isabel Serracin
ID 4-763-2448
An accent is a stress or emphasis on a particular part of something, usually a word. Pronounce
the word "doofus" with the accent on the first syllable: DOO-fuss.

The beauty of the English language lies in pronunciation. Accent/stress lends naturalness and
beauty to your English. If you can't pronounce words clearly and stress properly, your English
might sound like ‘Tinglish’, ‘Tamlish’ or ‘Hinglish’! In phonetics, accent/stress means expending
extra breath on a particular syllable in a word. It is a matter of greater prominence and greater
audibility.

Accent is very important to make your speech intelligible. For instance, look at the words
career /kəriə/ and carrier /kæriə/. Looking at the transcription you can say there is a slight
difference between the two in pronunciation. But you can bring out the difference between
the two very clearly by accenting them on the right syllables. So in the word career /kə̍riə/ the
accent is on the second syllable and in the word carrier /̍kæriə/ the accent is on the first
syllable.

The mark (') on the top of a syllable in a word indicates that the particular syllable is stressed.
This is known as primary stress. Primary stress indicates that the syllable is more prominent
than the other syllables. There might also be a mark below on a syllable in a word. This is
known as secondary stress. This indicates that this particular syllable is the next most
prominent syllable. But for our speech purposes primary accent is the most important one.

Placement refers to the sensation of where the sound "lives" in the mouth, which can
commonly lead to a mouth posture that helps with an accent.

Let’s look at the rules for English language accent placements:

1. In a 3 or more syllable words:

• the accent is most often on the first or second syllable and there is often a second
accent in the word as well (cel’ e bra’ tion and con’ ver sa’ tion)
• if the word ends with a silent -e, the third syllable from the end is accented (re frig’
er ate)
2. The first syllable in a 2-syllable word is accented if:
• the first syllable ends in a “-ck” followed by the “-et” ending (lock’ et, pack’ et)
• the first vowel is followed by 2 of the same consonants (clap’ ping, clip’ per)
 • the word ends with a consonant -le pattern because we do not place the accent on
the consonant -le syllable
• the word is a noun (reb’ el)
3. The final syllable in a 2-syllable word is accented if:
• the final syllable is a root word (mis spell’, dis like’)
• the final syllable contains a short vowel (for got’)
• the word is a verb (re bel’)
4. The accent is on the syllable preceding the suffixes:
• -ical (im pract’ ical)
• -ity (pur’ ity)
• -ic (log’ ic)
5. The accent is on the suffixes:
• -eer (rack et eer’)
• -ment IF it has another suffix following it (mo ment’ um)
• -oon (mar oon’)
6. The accent is on the vowel preceding the following connectives:
• -ol (vi’ ol ent)
• -i (ac cord’ i on)
• -ul (stim’ ul ant)
• -u (doc’ u ment)
7. The accent is on the vowel before the /sh/ sound in words with “-xi,” “-ti,” and “-si.”
• an’ xious
• cre a’ tion
• man’ sion