Accent Reduction – Get the Syllable Accent Stress Rules for French-Latin Suffixes      

I like finding the patterns in English pronunciation.  Based on academic learning and experience, I’ve learned that about everything has a pattern.

I’ve been looking for the pattern for syllable accent stress when suffixes are added to English words for quite some time.

Voila—reading John McWhorter, I found a good part of the answer.

Recall that for Germanic suffixes, the syllable accent stress stays in the same place as it was in the root word.

However, that is not the case with French and Latin suffixes.  Instead, the key is that French and Latin endings often pull the syllable accent stress closer to the suffix. In particular, the syllable accent stress moves to the syllable right before the suffixes which are French or Latin in origin.  These suffixes include –ity , –uous, -ic, -tion/sion/cian.

MO-dern

Mo-DER-ni-ty

PER-son-al

per-son-AL-ity

TEM-pest

Tem-PEST- uous

DI-plo-mat

di-plo-MA-tic

OR-gan

or-GAN-ic

CHAR-ac-ter

Char-ac-ter-IS-tic

PER-mit

per-MIS-sion

pro-HI-bit

pro-hi-BI-tion

POL-i-tics

Pol-i-TI-cian

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

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Rerun from May 4, 2016