What Is a Stress Pattern? English Word Stress Patterns With Examples

What is a stress pattern? It is the order of strong and weak syllables in a word. Say photograph, photography and photographic: the same root, with the strong beat in three different places. English listeners recognise a word by its stressed syllable first, so a word with the wrong stress pattern can be hard to understand even when every sound in it is right. This guide explains stress patterns, the Oo notation teachers use, the rules that predict most of them, and a short exercise with answers.

How stress patterns are written: Oo, oO, oOo

Teachers and textbooks often write a stress pattern with circles or letters: a big O for the stressed syllable and a small o for each unstressed one. Table is Oo, hotel is oO, computer is oOo. Dictionaries mark the same thing in the IPA with a small raised line before the stressed syllable: /kəmˈpjuːtə/.

Word stress patterns with examples

• Oo2 syllables, stress on the first

  TA-ble, WA-ter, HAP-py, MOR-ning

• oO2 syllables, stress on the second

  ho-TEL, be-GIN, to-DAY, a-GO

• Ooo3 syllables, stress on the first

  FAM-i-ly, BEAU-ti-ful, EL-e-phant, CIN-e-ma

• oOo3 syllables, stress on the second

  com-PU-ter, ba-NA-na, im-POR-tant, to-MOR-row

• ooO3 syllables, stress on the third

  un-der-STAND, af-ter-NOON, Jap-a-NESE, en-gi-NEER

• oOoo4 syllables, stress on the second

  pho-TOG-ra-phy, a-MER-i-ca, a-BIL-i-ty, e-CON-o-my

• ooOo4 syllables, stress on the third

  ed-u-CA-tion, in-for-MA-tion, ec-o-NOM-ic, con-ver-SA-tion

• ooOoo5 syllables, stress on the third

  u-ni-VER-si-ty, op-por-TU-ni-ty, per-son-AL-i-ty

Long words often have a weaker second stress too, as on u- in university. It helps, but the main stress is the one listeners rely on.

Rules that predict the stress pattern

English stress is not fixed on one syllable, as it is in French or Polish, but it is far from random. These rules cover most words you will meet; the exceptions you learn one by one.

1. Most two-syllable nouns and adjectives stress the first syllable (Oo).TA-ble, PA-per, HAP-py, CLEV-er
2. Most two-syllable verbs stress the second syllable (oO).be-GIN, de-CIDE, re-LAX, for-GET
3. A word that is both a noun and a verb moves its stress: noun first, verb second.a RE-cord / to re-CORD, a PRE-sent / to pre-SENT, an OB-ject / to ob-JECT
4. Words ending in -tion, -sion, -ic, -ical, -ity and -graphy stress the syllable just before the ending.in-for-MA-tion, de-CI-sion, fan-TAS-tic, po-LIT-i-cal, a-BIL-i-ty, pho-TOG-ra-phy
5. Endings -ee, -eer and -ese take the stress themselves.em-ploy-EE, en-gi-NEER, Jap-a-NESE
6. Endings -ment, -ness, -ful, -less and -er do not move the stress.em-PLOY → em-PLOY-ment, HAP-py → HAP-pi-ness, TEACH → TEACH-er
7. Compound nouns stress the first part.BLACK-board, AIR-port, BOOK-shop, SOFT-ware

Sentence stress patterns

Sentences have stress patterns too. The words that carry meaning (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and not) are stressed; the small grammar words (articles, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs) are not, and they shrink. “I want to go to the shop” becomes i WANT tə GO tə thə SHOP: three beats, with the small words squeezed in between.

That is why English is often called a stress-timed language: the stressed syllables come at fairly regular beats, and the unstressed ones speed up to fit. Spanish, French and Italian are usually described as syllable-timed, giving each syllable similar time. Linguists debate how strict this is, but it explains why learners who give every syllable equal weight sound careful and choppy to English ears. More on the small words in schwa and weak forms in English, and on the beat in the rhythm of English.

The last stressed word of a sentence is also where its intonation moves; see intonation patterns in English.

Exercise: find the stress pattern (with answers)

Say each word out loud, write its pattern with O and o, then open the answer.

1. banana

   oOo: ba-NA-na

2. hotel

   oO: ho-TEL

3. elephant

   Ooo: EL-e-phant

4. Japanese

   ooO: Jap-a-NESE

5. photographer

   oOoo: pho-TOG-ra-pher

6. happy

   Oo: HAP-py

7. understand

   ooO: un-der-STAND

8. information

   ooOo: in-for-MA-tion

For daily exercises on word and sentence stress, go on to word stress and sentence stress practice.