[General] How to recognize the stress syllables?

[arjitsharma]

Hi, I find it hard to recognize the stress syllabus when the mark appears in the middele of two words like "forget'table." Oxford Dictionary says the mark appears over the word that is the stress syllable like "data" the mark is over the a in the dictionary, but I don't know how to show that. What I would like to know here is in "forgettable" which is the stress syllable. Either "get" or "ta."

 

[jutfrank]

forgettable

In dictionaries, the mark comes at the beginning of the stressed syllable, not after.

 

[J&K Tutoring]

In modern dictionaries, the mark comes at the beginning of the stressed syllable, not after. I have a dictionary, published in 1970, that has the stress mark after the syllable. Sometimes students are working from older reference books.

Arjitsharma: I recommend you look in your dictionary at a word you already know to learn the protocol of your reference.
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Of course, on-line dictionaries will follow the guideline mentioned by jutfrank, but I try to encourage my students to own and refer to a paper dictionary. It's much easier to find a word in a paper book if you're not quite sure of the spelling, and I think it's useful to see, on paper, the many, many ways we use certain words.

 

[arjitsharma]

I would like to know how you pronounce it.

"Forgedable"

 

[jutfrank]

arjitsharma—why do you seem so keen to pronounce words like an American native speaker? Are you planning to go and live there?

 

[Tdol]

I would like to know how you pronounce it.

Not everyone pronounces words the same way- there are regional variations. Furthermore, there are changes in pronunciation in connected speech. Dictionaries give an approximation of the word in isolation. That is all they do- they don't count for every possible change everywhere and in every conversation.