# The importance of stress (in pronunciation)



## olives

There's something probably fundamental that I've never really understood. Are stresses important? Is it important in a language to know which syllable is stressed or not?
I'm not speaking about Russian for example where it is crucial to know where the stress is so that you can pronounce the word correctly.


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## Outsider

Not in Irish, I believe.


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## Brioche

olives said:


> There's something probably fundamental that I've never really understood. Are stresses important? Is it important in a language to know which syllable is stressed or not?


 
There a many languages where it is important to put the stress in the right place. German, English and Greek are but 3 examples.

'in-valid and in-'valid are completely different words.

Because of the tendancy in English for unstressed vowels to become schwa, if you put the stress in the wrong place in ho*tel* or *bo*ttle, you won't be understood: *ho*-tl doesn't exist, and neither does b'*tel.*

There is a joke about Madam De Gaulle who was asked at dinner what she wanted most in life, and she reply "A *pe*nis". 
The rest of the guests didn't know where to look.
General De Gaulle corrected her, and said "The English pronounce it *app*-iness." 
[the word in question: happiness]


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## vince

What does it sound like when stresses are applied to non-stressed languages?


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## Setwale_Charm

Brioche said:


> There is a joke about Madam De Gaulle who was asked at dinner what she wanted most in life, and she reply "A *pe*nis".
> The rest of the guests didn't know where to look.
> General De Gaulle corrected her, and said "The English pronounce it *app*-iness."
> [the word in question: happiness]



General De Gaulle definitely knew better what was good for her.

In some languages like Chinese or Indo-chinese languages stresses or tones are vital for distinguishing different words. I guess it is of little importance in the languages with fixed stress, like French. Farsi, Turkic languages. So I do not quite know what exactly you mean, Vince.


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## vince

Think about how someone with an (North) American accent would say "do you speak French?" in French:

PAR-lay-vous FRON-say?

Now, let's say that the nasal vowels and the glide at the end of "ay" are corrected. Would there still be a foreign accent?


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## Setwale_Charm

Wella, I think learning stresses is an integral part of learning the language, learning to read and speak. If this North American is studying French, he will to to keep his accent to a minimum, to mind the stresses and imitate the native pronunciation. If he has just picked it out of a phrase-book, well, we all know what happens, and popular jokes and even comedians feed on that with pleasure.


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## vince

hmm the thing is, first-time learners of a foreign language are often not aware that stress is different in other languages.

My question is, if stresses are added to a non-stressed language, what does that sound like to native speakers? Will they be able to perceive an accent?


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## Anatoli

Russian word stress is difficult to remember and predict and foreigners are forgiven when making mistakes but ignoring them completely is not acceptable either, you'll get each word pronounced incorrectly.



> What does it sound like when stresses are applied to non-stressed languages?



Japanese is one example. It's a tonal stress, not a word stress. Foreigners speakers Japanese often make some word stresses.


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## Ilmo

In *Finnish* the stress is very regular: it is always on the first syllable. (In long words there may be additional secondary stresses.)
When I have met foreigners who have learned a little Finnish, I have found out that the erroneous stress is the main obstacle (for them) to make themselves understood.
There is an old joke in Finnish where a normal word is pronounced stressing completely incorrectly:
*lastenkodinkadulla* means simply "in the nursery street" and should be pronounced "lástenkódinkádulla". But if pronounced "lasténkodínkadúlla", with strong tresses on the second syllables of the different parts of this compound word, and besides said at a comparatively fast speed, it becomes an inapprehensible gibberish.


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## Outsider

Anatoli said:


> Japanese is one example. It's a tonal stress, not a word stress. Foreigners speakers Japanese often make some word stresses.


According to many authors, Japanese has a pitch accent, as did ancient Greek.


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## jmx

I remember reading something written by a reputed linguist, along these lines :

"There is no such thing as an unstressed language, because if it existed, nobody would be able to understand it".

If I find out who said that, I'll post it.


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## Lemminkäinen

Wrong stress in Norwegian will make your speech sound weird, but I think you'd be understood most of the time. The northern Norwegian dialect put the stress in other parts of some words and generally have a different speech melody, but it's not hard to understand.

One thing that is sort of related to this is the two tones we have (I've seen it called pitch-accent and tonal, but let's not take that discussion now  ).

Tone 1: _bønder_ (farmers)
Tone 2 (sinking): _bønner_ (beans)

There are quite a few pairs like this, separated only by different tones, and I think it's harder to understand if you mix those up than if you put the stress on the wrong place.


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## avalon2004

In Spanish, stress is very easy and because people tend to speak very fast you hardly even notice it anyway. However, it is important to stress the correct syllable in verb tenses as it could indicate a difference in meaning.

In Greek, stress is quite predictable and is easy to remember because every word with more than one syllable is written with an accent over the stressed vowel. The stress matters quite a lot in terms of verb tenses (usually alters) and in noun declensions because it often moves around, e.g. απόφαση [apófasi] --> αποφάσεις [apofáseis]

In French stress does not alter the meaning of any words and thus it is relatively unimportant.

As someone has already mentioned, stress is very important in Russian and is quite frankly a nightmare!!

Brazilian Portuguese doesn't seem to place much importance on stress but perhaps more so than French. I think it has the same rules as Spanish (second to last syllable stressed unless it ends in certain consonants, in which case the last syllable is strssed or an accent indicates otherwise).


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## Honour

In turkish it is not usually very important however there are some cases in which the meaning totally changes if the stress is applied on wrong syllable. Though, keeping in the mind that a foreigner talking all natives should be able to understand the correect meaning.

an example

*iç*me suyu : drinkable water 
içmek: drink, içme: noun form of drink which is shortened from içmek, su: water

iç*me *suyu : don't drink the water
iç: imperative form of içmek
me: negation suffix (i.e. go: git, don't go: gitme)


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## Setwale_Charm

avalon2004 said:


> As someone has already mentioned, stress is very important in Russian and is quite frankly a nightmare!!


 
 Oh come, not even half of the Serbian nightmare.


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## sound shift

Olives, who started this thread, speaks French, a language which is said by some not to possess word stress (which would make it unique among European languages) and by others to have word stress on the final syllable. If a French speaker speaks English without word stress or with stress on the final syllable I can just about understand him/her, but then I have had the luxury of studying French, and I can well imagine that a non-linguist speaker of English would lose track of what was being said.

There's also the question of the stress of phrases and sentences. I possess a book called "Colloquial Turkish"*, which states:

_Even if an acceptable articulation of each individual vowel and consonant of Turkish has been acquired, a clear *and even an intelligible *pronunciation of Turkish will not be achieved so long as the stress-timing of English is carried over into Turkish.

_One wonders how many other languages this applies to.

*Arin Bayraktaroglu and Sinan Bayraktaroglu, "Colloquial Turkish", Routledge, 1992.


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## jazyk

> Brazilian Portuguese doesn't seem to place much importance on stress but perhaps more so than French.


Of course we do, and it doesn't matter if it's Portuguese Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese. We have proparoxytones (stress on the third from the last syllable), paroxytones (stress on the second from last syllable) and oxytones (stress on the last syllable).


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## ronanpoirier

Just completing what you said jazyk, if we didn't pay attention to the stresses we'd make a big confusion between two different tenses! And one is a future tense and the other one a past tense, so it would be like "aaaahhh i can't understand". 

I think it's a sensitive thing in a language which there are compund words like Ilmo said about Finnish. You need to know where to place the stress otherwise it gets confusing. Hungarian does that, that's why I know  But in a simple word the stress always falls on the first syllabe... but I tend to do a second stressed syllabe anyways on the second from last syllabe.


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## Anatoli

Outsider said:


> According to many authors, Japanese has a pitch accent, as did ancient Greek.


Yes, that's right, I couldn't find the correct word.


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## jimreilly

There are different kinds of "stress". The stress can be volume, pitch, or length, and these three types of stress are not mutually exclusive: sometimes louder is combined with shorter, or higher, or lower, etc. 

It's easy to say (wrongly) that a language is unstressed if, for example, you are used to hearing mostly a volume stress and that language uses mostly a length stress; you don't hear the kind of stress you are used to hearing and you won't hear (or notice) the other kind.

So often it's not only a question of knowing which syllable gets the stress, but what _kind _of stress it gets. And, yes, if you do it wrong, you will not only have an "accent", but you will sometimes be misunderstood, as has been demonstrated in several languages.


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## Outsider

Are there any languages genuinely devoid of any kind of stress?


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## suzzzenn

Hi, 
I wondered about this too and looked in my phonology textbooks. There is no discussion of a stressless language. There are languages which have complex stress patterns and other which have simple ones,  predictable ones and unpredictable ones, but none that have no stress. The authors claim that stress may be part of "universal grammar", if you believe in that idea. In other words, children are "preprogrammed" to listen for stress patterns.


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## Outsider

Perhaps a robot language would have no stress. "I can feel it... I can feel it, Dave..."


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## jimreilly

If one could imagine a language that would only be written and never spoken, it could be a language with no stress!


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## Outsider

There's always _italics_.


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## suzzzenn

I wonder if sign language has sentence level stress.


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## Hakro

Any language spoken by a speech synthesizer (at least those that I have heard) has practically no stress.


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## jimreilly

I would imagine that programming a speech synthesizer to have stress would be easier in Finnish where the stress pattern is more predictable than in some languages where it is more "erratic". Do you think so, Hakro and Ilmo?

As far as italics and some invented written language without stress, my point was the invented laguage _wouldn't_ have stress (by choice of the inventors), not that it _couldn't_ (via italics or some other visual means such as accent marks, colors, size of type). The goal would be to avoid the "universal grammar" posited by some people as requiring stress; this "universal grammar" clearly comes from the study of languages that (I presume) existed as oral before they were written down. 

Even the invention of a language such as Esperanto does not avoid this "universal grammar" because Esperanto was derived from already existing languages. But an entirely new language, invented in written form...certainly beyond me to do it, but I imagine a computer could, or other people more intelligent than I am and with more free time! 

I would also imagine that if such a language began to be spoken some stress would begin to immediately develop, but what kind of stress would depend on the maternal language of the speaker.


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## Hakro

jimreilly said:


> I would imagine that programming a speech synthesizer to have stress would be easier in Finnish where the stress pattern is more predictable than in some languages where it is more "erratic". Do you think so, Hakro and Ilmo?


Yes, Jim, I'm sure you're right. I have once tried to put Finnish words to a speech synthesizer that had obviously "learned" a kind of English stress pattern. It put the stress always on the first syllable in two-syllable words, but in longer words the stress was put in an aleatory way on any syllable. This made especially the compound words more difficult to understand or at least sounding funny.


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## darnil

jimreilly said:


> There are different kinds of "stress". The stress can be volume, pitch, or length, and these three types of stress are not mutually exclusive: sometimes louder is combined with shorter, or higher, or lower, etc.
> 
> It's easy to say (wrongly) that a language is unstressed if, for example, you are used to hearing mostly a volume stress and that language uses mostly a length stress; you don't hear the kind of stress you are used to hearing and you won't hear (or notice) the other kind.
> 
> So often it's not only a question of knowing which syllable gets the stress, but what _kind _of stress it gets. And, yes, if you do it wrong, you will not only have an "accent", but you will sometimes be misunderstood, as has been demonstrated in several languages.


 
In fact,  the place of the stress is so important in Spanish that not only _many_ but _most_ words can be misunderstood if the stress is badly placed: _cántara _is a kind of big vase; _cantara_ (stress in the 2nd syllable) is the subjunctive form of _to sing_; _cantará _means 'he will sing'. In _all of the verbs_ of the 1st group, the difference is huge: for example, _canto _(stress on the 1st syllable) is 'I sing', while _cantó_ is 'he sung'; _amo _'I love' / _amó_ 'he loved', and so on.

Even more: in many languages, including Spanish, the main role of the stress is to make it clear if we are saying one word (=one stress) or more than one (=more than one stress). I once heard a joke:

- ¿Por qué en tu pueblo usáis todos boina?
- Porque es funda mental.

(-Why do you all use a beret in your town?
 - Because it is a mental envelope / it is fundamental)

[fúndamentál] (two stresses: 'mental envelope'; [fundamentál] (one stress): 'fundamental', 'basic'.


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## Christo Tamarin

Outsider said:


> Are there any languages genuinely devoid of any kind of stress?


What about *Georgian*?


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## MarX

olives said:


> There's something probably fundamental that I've never really understood. Are stresses important? Is it important in a language to know which syllable is stressed or not?
> I'm not speaking about Russian for example where it is crucial to know where the stress is so that you can pronounce the word correctly.


In Indonesian the stress is not that important.


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## Rani_Author

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello! Few days ago I involved in a hard discussion with a British. He asked about Indonesian stress. This was my explanation to him:

The stress in Indonesian wouldn’t change the meaning. Indonesian stress is in the word, not in the syllable. The stress in Indonesian usually tends to emphasize the message that the speaker really wants to convey, like in these examples:
• SHAKIL membeli novel di toko buku. (the person who bought a novel is Shakil, not another persons)
• Shakil MEMBELI novel di toko buku. (Shakil bought a novel, not reading or doing something else)
• Shakil membeli NOVEL di toko buku. (the thing that Shakil bought is a novel, not another things)
• Shakil membeli novel DI TOKO BUKU. (Shakil bought a novel in the book store, not in the other places)

If you still wanna make a stress in every word like: BA-ha-sa or ba-HA-sa or ba-ha-SA, it doesn't change anything.

He didn't believe me. He said that it was nonsense that any language had no stress in the syllable.

I know, it's hard to believe that there is a language doesn't have any specific stress in the syllable. But, each language has each character and uniqueness. Nothing the same.

And even, it would be wrong if you try to give any stress in any indonesian names. Example: Roselia. Just say it: Ro-se-li-a. Margareta. Just say it: Mar-ga-re-ta. 

Don't try to give any stress like: RO-se-li-a/ Ro-SE-li-a/ Ro-se-LI-a/ Ro-se-li-A. MAR-ga-re-ta/ Mar-GA-re-ta/ Mar-ga-RE-ta/ Mar-ga-re-TA.

I know, it's hard to do for any learners who have mother tongues with hard stresses. But, at least, it's better if any learners want to try to not make any stress in Indonesian like they do in every language has a hard stress.

My question is do your mother tongue or languages you know the most have any stresses?

Thanks a lot before for any answers.


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## ger4

In German, some prefixed verbs are stressed on the prefix, others are stressed on the stem. The transitive  verb _(etwas) umfahren_ has two very different meanings, depending on which syllable you stress: 

Stressed stem: 'to drive around something'

Stressed prefix: 'to knock down something', 'to run down something'


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## Dymn

I disagree with the posts above concerning Spanish. Stress *is *important in Spanish because it's a fundamental part of its phonology but you would be mostly understood if you ignored it completely. Of course, it would make you feel foreign and some people may poke fun at you. For example, take these three paragraphs from The Three Little Pigs:

_En el corazón del bosque vivían tres cerditos que eran hermanos. El lobo siempre andaba persiguiéndoles para comérselos. Para escapar del lobo, los cerditos decidieron hacerse una casa. El pequeño la hizo de paja, para acabar antes y poder irse a jugar.
El mediano *construyó* una casita de madera. Al ver que su hermano pequeño había terminado ya, se dio prisa para irse a jugar con él.
El mayor trabajaba en su casa de ladrillo.
_
Only one word could cause ambiguity (_constr*u*yo _"I build", _construy_*ó *"he built"), and it could be made out from context.

As for Catalan, the same fragment only has three words (_c*a*sa _"house", _cas_*à *"he got married", _cas*a*r _"to get married), (_v*e*ure _"to see", _veur*é* _"I'll see") and (_treb*a*llen _"they work", _treball*a*nt _"working"). Easily decipherable if you ignore stress. Besides, _a, e _and _o _have different pronunciations depending whether they're stressed or not so this helps make out where the stress is found. For example, _veure _[ˈbɛu̪ɾə] and _veuré _[bəu̪ˈɾe].

_En el cor del bosc, vivien tres porquets que eren germans. El llop sempre els perseguia per menjar-se'ls. Per poder escapar del llop, els tres porquets decidiren fer-se una *casa*. El més petit va fer-se una casa de palla, per acabar abans i anar-se'n a jugar.
El mitjà es va començar a construir una casa de fusta. Quan va *veure* que el seu germà petit havia acabat ja la seva, es va afanyar per anar-se'n a jugar amb ell.
I el més gran, però, va continuar *treballant* en la seva casa de totxos.
_
As for word stress, I'd say it also exists in Catalan and Spanish. If you put the stress on Shakil and make a longer pause you would imply that it was Shakil who bought the novel and not anybody else, like in Indonesian.

- _El Shakil va comprar una novel·la a la llibreria.
- Shakil compró una novela en la librería.
_
As for how different languages handle this, this thread might be of interest to you.

Catalan and Spanish words can be oxytone (stress on the last syllable, _agut/agudo_), paroxytone (penultimate, _pla/llano_) or proparoxytone (antepenultimate, _esdrúixol/esdrújulo_). Paroxytone are the most common. Spanish also has _sobresdrújulas_, in the preantepenultimate or fourth to last (as in _escr*í*bemelo _"write it to me").

Orthographic accent (´ in Spanish, ` or ´ in Catalan) depends on the ending and the type of word. If you know the accentuation rules, you will always be able to know where the stress is placed.


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## Karton Realista

Stress in Polish falls on the penultimate syllable.
There are some exceptions:
-mate*ma*tyka;
-*fi*zyka.
Most people wouldn't (read: literally no one would) notice a difference if you put stress at the second from the end syllable.
If you put stress on a different syllable than second from the end (outside of exceptions), you'll sound foreign/fecitious. I don't recommend doing it, because it sounds weird.


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## Stoggler

Karton Realista said:


> If you put stress on a different syllable than second from the end (outside of exceptions), you'll sound foreign/fecitious. I don't recommend doing it, because it sounds weird.



Does Czech sound weird to Poles then, as they stress the first syllable as a rule?


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## Karton Realista

Stoggler said:


> Does Czech sound weird to Poles then, as they stress the first syllable as a rule?


Czech and Slovak sound weird mostly because they use same stems as Polish but in different words (which makes them sound like they were made up on the spot) and due to a big amount of false friends. First syllable stress might just add to the effect. 
Fecitious stress is usually on the last syllable, because it sounds "frenchy" .


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## Rani_Author

Diamant7 said:


> As for word stress, I'd say it also exists in Catalan and Spanish. If you put the stress on Shakil and make a longer pause you would imply that it was Shakil who bought the novel and not anybody else, like in Indonesian.
> 
> - _El Shakil va comprar una novel·la a la llibreria.
> - Shakil compró una novela en la librería._



És molt interessant.  Gràcies de cor, el benvolgut Diamant.


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## Dymn

De res


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## Gavril

Stress in Armenian falls on the final syllable, except when the final vowel is ը (pronounced [ə]).

Usually, word-final -ը represents the enclitic definite article -- տուն (_tun_) "(a) house" versus տուն*ը* (_tunə_) "the house", etc. -- so by some definitions, it is not part of the word it attaches to in the first place.


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## ilocas2

Karton Realista said:


> Czech and Slovak sound weird mostly because they use same stems as Polish but in different words (which makes them sound like they were made up on the spot)



Could I ask what means that they sound like they were made up on the spot? I searched on Google for meaning of _made up on the spot_ but still I don't quite understand it.


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## Karton Realista

ilocas2 said:


> Could I ask what means that they sound like they were made up on the spot? I searched on Google for meaning of _made up on the spot_ but still I don't quite understand it.


Imagine you're a highschool student and you didn't prepare for the lesson. So, to avoid getting an F, 1, 6, or whatever is the worst grade in Czech Republic, when the teacher asks you something you make up answer on the spot.
Look at the word vysávač (sk) /vysavač (cz). To Polish people it sounds like "sucker-off", and since the Polish word sounds different, it will look weird and made up. Like if somebody was standing over the vacuum cleaner and trying to name it:
-Hey, man, you know what it is? 
-It's... Hold on... Sucker-off!
-Great idear, m8!


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## Penyafort

In my opinion, stress does matter in Spanish and Catalan. For similar and different reasons.

In Spanish, 'triplets' formed of proparoxytone=noun / paroxytone = present / oxytone = past are not uncommon:

_*pú*blico _(Noun: public, audience) / _pu*bli*co _(Present: I publish, I'm publishing) / _publi*có* _(Past: He/She published)

_*á*nimo _(Noun: encouragement)_ / a*ni*mo _(Present: I encourage)_ / ani*mó* _(Past: He/She encouraged)

*cír*_culo _(Noun: circle) / _cir*cu*lo _(Present: I circulate) / _circu*ló *_(Past: He/She circulated)

_*tér*mino _(Noun: end)_ / ter*mi*no _(Present: I finish)_ / termi*nó* _(Past: He/She finished)

_*cál*culo _(Noun: calculation) / _cal*cu*lo _(Present: I calculate) / _calcu*ló*_ (Past: He/She calculated)

*gé*_nero _(Noun: gender) / _ge*ne*ro _(Present: I generate) / _gene*ró *_(Past: He/She generated)

etc

With variations:

*cé*_lebre _(Adjective: famous) / _ce*le*bre _(Present Subjunctive: that I/he/she celebrate) / _cele*bré* _(Past: I celebrated)

_*sé*quito _(Noun: retinue) / _se*qui*to _(Adjective in diminutive: dry_) / se qui*tó* _(Past: He/She took off)

_etc_​Doublets with a difference in stress are obviously far more common.

*An*_den por el an*dén  *_- Please walk along the platform​In my opinion, they are quite important to know what tense and person someone is talking about, specially when out of context.

_Dicen que *can*to muy bien - _They say *I sing* very well
_Dicen que can*tó* muy bien _- They say *he/she sang *very well

*Vo*_te a Fulano de Tal _- Vote for Mr X
_Vo*té* a Mengano de Cual - _I voted for Mr Y​
In Catalan, the triplets are different and more uncommon (Diamant mentions them in a post above), but there are also many doublets in which a difference in stress is also important.

But in Catalan, unlike in Spanish but like in English, stress in a syllable means a difference in the way the unstressed syllable is pronounced (that is, vowel reduction: Catalan (_Central Standard_) has seven stressed vowels but only three unstressed ones), so the importance is both semantical and phonological.

['komprən] *com*_pren _- They buy
[kum'prɛn] _com*prèn*_ - He/She understands

['kantu] *can*_to _- I sing
[kən'to] _can*tó *_- Corner

['kaβəs] _*ca*ves  _- _n_ Wine cellars | _v_ You dig
[kə'βas] _ca*bàs *_- Large basket​


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