These are the symbols you will see in a dictionary. Click any one to hear it. You do not need to memorize them.

Why this mattersOne strong beat, not two, not none

Every English word of more than one syllable has one strong syllable. Not two, not none. One.

That syllable is longer, louder and higher than the others, and English listeners use it to recognize the word. Put it in the wrong place and a listener may not recognize a word they know perfectly well. This is the single most common reason a professional is asked to repeat themselves despite having good grammar and good vocabulary.

Sometimes it changes the word entirely. A RECord is a thing. To reCORD is an action.

What your language doesWhat your language does with stress

If your language has fixed stress, always on the same syllable, English will feel unpredictable. Polish stresses the second-to-last syllable, French the last, and Turkish and Czech have their own rules. You will apply your rule to English and it will be wrong most of the time.

If your language has movable stress, as Italian, Spanish and Portuguese do, the concept is familiar. Your risk is different: you will place English stress by analogy with a similar-looking word in your language, and the two often disagree.

If your language has no stress in this sense, including tonal languages and syllable-timed ones, you may give every syllable equal weight, which leaves the listener with nothing to grab.

How to make itLonger, louder, higher, and length does most of it

The strong syllable is not just louder. It is longer, louder and higher in pitch, and length does most of the work. The picture: a hammer hitting one nail. One strike, clearly harder than the taps around it.

The way in. Take banana. Say it three ways: BAnana, baNAna, bananA. Only one sounds like English. Feeling the wrong versions in your own mouth makes the right one obvious.

Then use your hand. Tap the table on the strong syllable and only that one. Physical marking makes stress much easier to hold than thinking about it does.

A test worth running. Hum banana with no consonants at all, just the pitch and the length. If the shape is right, someone can identify the word from the hum alone. If they cannot, you are making it louder but not longer or higher.

Say itWord banks

Nouns, usually the first syllable

Verbs, often the second

One family, three stresses

In a sentencePut it under pressure

Record and compareSee the shape of your voice

Pick anything above, then record yourself saying it. Your recording appears in red over the model in gray. You are comparing shapes, not chasing a score.