Which syllable carries the beat, and what makes it move
We need a PERmit to park here - They will not perMIT us to park here
How to use this sheet
Every English word of more than one syllable has exactly one main beat. The syllable carrying it is longer, louder and slightly higher in pitch, while the others shrink and their vowels tend to collapse into the neutral central sound English uses wherever there is no stress. Putting the beat in the wrong place therefore damages you more than mispronouncing a consonant: listeners recognise a word by its rhythm before they have finished hearing its vowels. Two forces decide where it sits. One is the word's grammatical class, which separates the two members of each pair in the upper half of the table. The other is the ending, because certain suffixes fix the beat at a set distance from the end.
| Word | Stress | Note |
|---|---|---|
| record | REcord (noun) / reCORD (verb) | Noun takes the first beat, verb the second |
| present | PREsent (noun) / preSENT (verb) | The verb weakens its first vowel as well |
| object | OBject (noun) / obJECT (verb) | The verb means to protest |
| contract | CONtract (noun) / conTRACT (verb) | The verb also means to shrink |
| permit | PERmit (noun) / perMIT (verb) | Noun is the document, verb is the act |
| increase | INcrease (noun) / inCREASE (verb) | Decrease and export behave the same way |
| economic | ecoNOMic | Ends in -ic: beat on the syllable before the ending |
| decision | deCIsion | Ends in -sion or -tion: beat just before the ending |
| nationality | nationALity | Ends in -ity: beat just before the ending |
| photography | phoTOGraphy | Ends in -graphy: beat three syllables from the end |
| engineer | engiNEER | Ends in -eer, -ee or -ese: the ending takes the beat |
| comfortable | COMfortable | Ends in -able: the beat stays where the base had it |
In use
We could not get a permit, and the council will not permit the work. Sales showed a small increase, and prices will increase again in June. The economic situation made their decision harder than anyone expected.
Watch out
The council would not PERmit us to start, so we lost the conTRACT.
Both capitalised syllables in the incorrect sentence sit in the wrong place, and the two mistakes run in opposite directions. The first has a subject in front of it and an object after it, so it is working as a verb and the beat belongs on its second syllable; it has been given the noun pattern instead. The second follows the definite article, which makes it a noun, so the beat belongs on the first syllable; it has been given the verb pattern. Listeners process rhythm faster than grammar, so each word is briefly heard as the other part of speech and the sentence has to be rebuilt in the ear. For pairs like these, the stress mark in a dictionary entry matters more than the phonetic symbols beside it.