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Syllable Stress

What is a Syllable?

A syllable is unit of sound made from a single vowel, or single vowel/consonant combination – note that syllables never have more then one vowel sound in them.

Eg: bit; a; un; as; dog; re; ist; bi

Monosyllable / monosyllabic – words with one syllable
   
Disyllable / disyllabic – words with two syllables, also called bisyllablic by some
   
Trisyllable / trisyllabic – words with three syllables
   
Polysyllable / polysyllabic – words with four or more syllables, however often people will refer to word with three or more syllables as polysyllabic.


Feeling the Beat

The easiest way to determine how many syllables are in a particular word is to sound it out – or even better clap it out.  Clap along while you try the following words:

Monosyllabic: dog    there    bike    he    walk bounce

Dysyllabic:  doc/tor    Fri/day    o/ver    yel/low chick/en
  
Trisyllabic: hos/pit/al    yes/ter/day    de/tec/tive am/bi/ence

Polysyllabic: un/wa/ver/ing    no/tif/ica/tion re/an/i/ma/tion    pri/va/ti/zation


Syllable Stress:

Syllables break our words up into sections which can be stressed, or unstressed.  Which syllable is stressed, alters the pronunciation of the word. Try saying the following words aloud while stressing the first syllable:

doc/tor                       Fri/day                        o/ver               mis/take         pur/ple

Now try it again putting the stress on the second syllable.

doc/tor                       Fri/day                       o/ver               mis/take         pur/ple

Which one sounds better?  If you thought the fist set sounded better you are correct.  All of the above words should have their first syllable stressed.

Here are some more examples.  The bold O will show you which syllable should be stressed in each word:

monosyllabic O:       bike                           cat                            black

disyllabic O o:          prob/lem                    en/gine                      yel/low
   
disyllabic o O:           be/side                      di/vide                       un/do  

trisyllablic O o o:       dif/fi/cult                     hos/pit/al                   of/fi/cer

triyllablic o O o:         de/tec/tive                  pro/fess/or                 re/dun/dant

 
Want More Practice?

Check out the worksheet PDF attached to this page,  you can download and print the worksheet.  Once you've filled it in, compare your answered to the answer key at the bottom of the page.
oLahav
  • Authority 710
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oLahav said:

That’s a great lesson… but I’ve got a question. I never really understood this one:
If syllables never have more than one vowel in them, are words like “tour” or “soap” monosyllabic or disyllabic? It’s too confusing… They sound like one syllable but they have 2 vowels… so what are they?

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  • Posted 5 months ago.
hcraig
  • Authority 559
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hcraig said:

Words like that fall under the category of “diphthongs” – two vowels combined in pronunciation, together forming a single, long syllable. To put it bluntly, they don’t “count” as separate vowels because they aren’t pure (or separately pronounced) vowels.

That's the super short explanation.  You can check out the longer explanation - complete with an explanation of Monophthong (or pure vowels) and Triphthong on Wikipedia
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  • Posted 5 months ago.
Pradeep
  • Authority 34
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Pradeep said:

This was good to know What exactly are “Diphthongs”. Thanks

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  • Posted 5 months ago.
acrosstheuniverse
  • Authority 631
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acrosstheuniverse said:

Hi Pradeep,

I’ll try to explain what a diphthong is as best as I can! It has to do with phonetics and how the words sound when they are pronounced. A diphthong comes about when there are two vowels together, creating a certain sound. Words such as eye, boy, my, weigh and say, all have a diphthong where the vowels are found together. You’ll find when saying these words that the”ey” goes up in tone as you say it. The diphthong usually sounds high in pitch and scoops up in your voice going from a low ee to a high eii type sound.

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  • Posted 3 months ago.
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hcraig
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hcraig

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