CONCEPTMind Your FutureInteractive pronunciation book
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CONCEPTMind Your FutureThese are the symbols you will see in a dictionary. Click any one to hear it. You do not need to memorize them.
Long words are exactly where professional English lives: information, responsibility, administration, communication, recommendation, opportunity. These are the words you use in meetings, and they are the words most likely to come out wrong.
The good news is that they are largely predictable. English stress in long words follows rules driven by the ending, and once you know four or five of those rules, you can place the stress on words you have never seen before.
This unit is mostly new information rather than error correction, because the rules are specific to English.
You place the stress by looking at the root. Photograph has the stress at the front, so photography feels like it should too. It does not. The ending moved it.
And you give long words one beat instead of two. English words of four or more syllables usually have a main beat and a weaker second beat. International has a main beat on na and a secondary one on In. Without the second beat, a long word flattens and becomes hard to follow.
Photograph is stressed at the front, so photography feels like it should be too. It is not. The ending moves the beat.
The main rule: certain endings pull the stress onto the syllable immediately before them.
The ending -ion gives inforMAtion, eduCAtion, communiCAtion. The ending -ic gives ecoNOMic, photoGRAPHic, straTEGic. The ending -ity gives aBILity, possiBILity, responsiBILity. Also -ical gives ecoNOMical and poLITical, -graphy gives phoTOgraphy and geOGraphy, and -ial gives fiNANcial and comMERcial.
Say the pairs and hear the stress move: inform and information. Economy and economic. Able and ability. Photograph and photography.
The second beat. In a long word, find the main beat first. Then look for a syllable two positions earlier and give it a smaller beat. INternATional. REpreSENtation. Two hits, one big and one small. The picture: a heartbeat, one strong and one lighter, in a regular pattern. Not one thump and silence.
The real test is prediction. Cover the list. Given possible, where does the stress go in possibility? Then check. Recognizing the pattern is not the goal. Using it on a word you have never seen is.
Cover the list. Given possible, where does the stress go in possibility? Predicting it is the goal, not reciting it.
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.
You have never seen the word reciprocity. Where does the stress go, and how do you know?