Word stress

Hello and welcome to 6 Minute Vocabulary. I’m Catherine…

And I’m Finn. Catherine, look at this photo - do you like it? I took it this morning.

Wow, Finn. That’s not bad. I didn’t know you were into photography.

Well, I love taking photographs.

Really? Well funnily enough, the words photography and photograph are good examples of today’s topic, which is word stress. We ‘re going to look at the way word stress can change in words that come from the same root word.

We’ll show you how to work out the stress of these words.

There’ll be a quiz.

And we’ll leave you with a top tip for learning vocabulary.

But first, let’s listen to John. He’s a photographer , which is a person who takes photographs as a job. He’s talking about his latest project.

Here’s a question to think about while you listen: what’s John’s project?

The book is a collection of photographs of my father. He studied geography as a young man and went all over the world during his career. He visited some very interesting geographic locations - the Andes, the Sahara - beautiful places. The book’s like a photographic record of his life - a kind of a biography in pictures.

So, that’s John. We asked you: what was his project?

And the answer is: a biography.

A biography is the story of someone’s life - usually a book.

But, John’s a photographer, so he told the story of his father’s life in photographs. Let’s hear a clip.

He studied geography as a young man…

John’s dad was interested in geography: the study of the physical features of the earth. And geography is a key word in today’s show because of its stress.

Yes Now, geography has four syllables, ge- o- gra-phy, and the stress falls on the third syllable from the end. Ge o graphy, not ge ography, geo gra phy or geogra phy . It ‘s ge o graphy.

Words that end in the letters p-h-y - pronounced ‘fee’ - usually have this stress pattern. Like bi o graphy and phot o graphy. Do you like phot o graphy, Catherine?

To be honest, not really.

Not really? Sorry to hear that.

No, never mind. Anyway, these words - like geography, biography and photography - are all nouns. We can change them to adjectives, by changing the y at the end to i-c - pronounced ‘ik’. And when we do this, the word stress moves to a different place in the word. Here’s John again.

He studied ge o graphy as a young man He visited some very interesting geo graph ic locations…

Did you hear the difference? When we say adjectives that end with i-c, the stress falls on the penultimate syllable, that’s the syllable just before the last one. So it’s ge o graphy, but geo graph ic.

Ge o graphy, geo graph ic. And we have phot o graphy, pho-to- graph- ic…

And there are other words like dra ma tic, to do with theatre and drama; alpha bet ic, to do with the alphabet, and ar tis tic, to describe things to do with art. Finn, are you artistic?

Well, I like to think of myself as quite artistic, yes. And Catherine, what’s the most interesting geographic location you’ve been to?

It’s a lovely place in Turkey called Öludeniz.

You’re listening to BBC Learning English.

And we’re talking about word stress. We’ve looked at the stress patterns of words that end with p-h-y, like pho to graphy.

And words ending with i-c, like photo graph ic.

And now, it’s time for a quiz. Choose the correct pronunciation for the words in these sentences. Catherine will tell you the answers. Ready? Number 1. I like reading books about famous people. I love a good a) bi ography, b) bi o graphy or c) biogra phy ? ‘

And it’s b) bi o graphy.

Well done if you got that right. Number 2. ‘The police arrested him when they found … a) pho to graphic evidence, b) photograph ic evidence or c) photo graph ic evidence.’

And the answer is - c) photo graph ic evidence.

And that’s the end of the quiz.

And that almost brings us to the end of the programme.

But before we go, here’s today’s top tip for learning vocabulary: if you use an online dictionary, you can usually hear an audio recording of a word’s pronunciation. Listen carefully to the word stress and try to copy it.

Top tip, Finn.

Thank you.

There’s more about this at bbclearningenglish.com. Join us again for more 6 Minute Vocabulary.

Bye!