What is stress?

When you make a spoken word or syllable more obvious, you are putting stress on it:

    Amy:     I’m the best!
    Kim:     No I'M the best!

You can make the word or syllable more obvious by:

• saying it louder
• saying it for longer

• saying it higher (pitch)  

How syllables and stress work in English

In some languages, syllables have roughly the same stress as each other:

ba na na

In English however, it’s important to stress one syllable more than the others in every word:

ba NA na
A ni mal
e du CA tion

The standard way to represent this is with a little mark before the stressed syllable:

       baˈnana
        ˈanimal
       eduˈcation

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