# Does stress always stay on the same syllable?



## slowik

As we all know stress in Russian is put on different syllables in different words, so it differs from, for example, French (in which stress is always put on the last syllable, right?). 

I assume then that when i learn a new russian word I have to remember not only it's ortography and meaning but also it's pronounciation including stress which always stays on the same syllable and it never changes no matter what sentence (a question, a statement etc.) a word is put in. Am I right?

I ask this question because i know that the same sentence might be read as a question or a statement depending on it's pronounciation. Doesn't the pronounciation of a sentence collide with the stress of a word?


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## Jana337

A non-native attempt: Yes and no. 
Yes: Type of sentences (questions, affirmative sentences etc.) - irrelevant for the position of stress.
No: Declensions and conjugations - stress often travels.


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## Q-cumber

* slowik*

What about stresses in Polish? I used to think you have similar stressing rules.  As far as I know, there are very few tongues in the world that use uniform stressing - French (on last sillable), Latvian (on first sillable), ...know any more?


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## Jana337

Q-cumber said:


> * slowik*
> 
> What about stresses in Polish? I used to think you have similar stressing rules.  As far as I know, there are very few tongues in the world that use uniform stressing - French (on last sillable), Latvian (on first sillable), ...know any more?


Polish - penultimate syllable 
Czech - first syllable


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## Q-cumber

*Jana337*
Hmm...very interesting. I had never notice that before.


Indeed, stress in Russain language can be placed on any syllable. This should be a problem for a learner. Even native speakers often put stress on a wrong syllable in difficult words.  For some words two different variants of stressing might be equally correct. Russian language allows only one main stress per word. Some nouns have fixed stress, which is not affected by declensions; others have mobile stresses. 
Fixed: *Картин-а* (a  painting) - *видел картин-у*- *нет картин-ы *- *на картин-е* - *нет картин* (plural), etc.
Mobile: *голова *(a head) - *без голов-ы* - *видел голов-у* - *на голов-е* - *нет голов* (plural)
However, althought foreigners often stress words incorrectly, that doesn't prevent then from being well understood. A wrong stress doesn't make a word unclear.


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## dnldnl

In Russian language, the stress is most often found inside the root or suffix of the word. So learning to recognize the suffixes and roots of Russian words would help you tremendously in recognizing the pattern of where to place the stress. Also, as a rule of thumb, I'd look for the stress somewhere in the middle of the word.


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## Q-cumber

dnldnl said:


> In Russian language, the stress is most often found inside the root or suffix of the word. So learning to recognize the suffixes and roots of Russian words would help you tremendously in recognizing the pattern of where to place the stress. Also, as a rule of thumb, I'd look for the stress somewhere in the middle of the word.



Unfortunately, your advices don't work. Just few examples:*город* (city, town), but *город*-ами ... *гор*-а(mountain) - *г*о*р*-к-а (small mountain) - *гор*-ный (adj. mountain) .... колбаса (sausage) ... балoвcтвo ...


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## Q-cumber

slowik said:


> .....I ask this question because i know that the same sentence might be read as a question or a statement depending on it's pronounciation. Doesn't the pronounciation of a sentence collide with the stress of a word?



Indeed, you can make the same sentence a question by means of intonations. 

Ты знаешь правду. (You know the truth) - all neutral

Ты *знаешь* правду? (Do you know the truth?)

Stress of a word is never affected.


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## dnldnl

Q-cumber said:


> Unfortunately, your advices don't work. Just few examples:*город* (city, town), but *город*-ами ... *гор*-а(mountain) - *г*о*р*-к-а (small mountain) - *гор*-ный (adj. mountain) .... колбаса (sausage) ... балoвcтвo ...


  Well it does work in many cases. Even in your examples, a lot of stresses fall into the root (гор) of the word. 

  Many suffixes draw the stress when added to a word. Take the adjective suffixes -ив, -лив, -оват, for example.   These suffixes, and many more, always draw the stress away from the root in adjectives:
*мил*ость - милост*ив*ый
*   счаст*ье - счаст*лив*ый
*   бел*ый - бел*оват*ый

  Other suffixes do not draw the stress. For example, -ий, -ый, -еньк.  In these cases, the stress does not shift to the suffix, but stays with the root:

*помещ*ик - помещич*ий*
*дешёв*ый - дешёв*еньк*ий


  Some suffixes have several vowels (e.g. -оват, -еват),
  but in such cases, the stress would always fall on *a*:

*бел*ый - бел*оват*ый
*син*ий - cин*еват*ый

  That's why I am saying it could be helpful to recognize the suffixes and roots to determine where to put the stress.

  And the reason I said to look for the middle of the words to find a stress is because that's where most often the suffixes and roots are located. The stress does not usually fall on the prefixes. The endings could draw the stress (like in your гор*ами* example), but I still think knowing suffixes and roots of the words is the key to identifying where the stress should be placed.


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## Maroseika

dnldnl said:


> Well it does work in many cases. Even in your examples, a lot of stresses fall into the root (гор) of the word.
> 
> Many suffixes draw the stress when added to a word. Take the adjective suffixes -ив, -лив, -оват, for example. These suffixes, and many more, always draw the stress away from the root in adjectives:
> *мил*ость - м*и*лост*и*вый
> *счаст*ье - сч*а*ст*лив*ый
> *бел*ый - бел*оват*ый
> .


This rule is quite not universal (even one of your examples - милостивый - doesn't work, and another one - счастливый - allows 2 stresses).
Besides:
корыстливый 
коробчатый
бахромчатый
заботливый
надоедливый
вдумчивый
etc, etc...


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## Q-cumber

dnldnl said:


> Well it does work in many cases. Even in your examples, a lot of stresses fall into the root (гор) of the word.



Sure, the root might be stressed... or might be not. Stresses either might be fixed or might migrate. We can't say "a stress always fall into the root, but there are some exceptions", right? In fact, a stress in Russian is somewhat unpredictable. By the way, as I mentioned above, Russian words always have one main stress. At the same time, complex words have several roots, agree? So which one a learner should look for? 
Examples: сок (juice) + выжимать (press) = соковыжималка 
(juicer)


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## Athaulf

Q-cumber said:


> Indeed, stress in Russain language can be placed on any syllable. This should be a problem for a learner. Even native speakers often put stress on a wrong syllable in difficult words.  For some words two different variants of stressing might be equally correct. Russian language allows only one main stress per word. Some nouns have fixed stress, which is not affected by declensions; others have mobile stresses.
> Fixed: *Картин-а* (a  painting) - *видел картин-у*- *нет картин-ы *- *на картин-е* - *нет картин* (plural), etc.
> Mobile: *голова *(a head) - *без голов-ы* - *видел голов-у* - *на голов-е* - *нет голов* (plural)



On another forum that I occasionally read, someone once wrote that Repin's famous painting could be titled "Cossacks devising the stress rules of Russian and Ukrainian."  



> However, althought foreigners often stress words incorrectly, that doesn't prevent then from being well understood. A wrong stress doesn't make a word unclear.


In Croatian, whose stress rules are also described by learners as nightmarish, wrong stress usually won't make your words unclear, but it would still make you sound very bad. As a native speaker, I would say that wrong stress can actually sound worse than grammatical mistakes such as getting the cases or conjugations wrong. I wonder if that's also the case in Russian?

Also, is there any great difference between stress in different dialects of Russian? In Croatia, there are large differences between dialects in this regard, although most native speakers have an ear for the difference between a dialectal stress different from the standard and a just plain wrong stress.


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## Maroseika

Athaulf said:


> I would say that wrong stress can actually sound worse than grammatical mistakes such as getting the cases or conjugations wrong. I wonder if that's also the case in Russian?


I guess each native would answer differently. As for me, wrong case is worse than wrong strees.



> Also, is there any great difference between stress in different dialects of Russian?


Actually modern Russian is not divided in dialects, however there are 2 patoises (говоры): North and South (this is besides the literary language, based on the Moscow patois). They differ in phonetics and even a bit in grammar, but the stress place is one the same in both of them. However, its power is different. 
For example, in the North patois there is such a phenomenon as *оканье,* i.e. pronouncing unstressed sounds "o" (in the standard Russian pronounced as "a").
This leads to weaking of the main stress, and pronouncing other syllables with higher tension. This results in apparently different stress.


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## slowik

Thank you all guys, as always you're all very helpful.

And Russian is so, so difficult! It's a great thing that I can ask questions about this language here.


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## Jana337

The discussion about Georgian is now here.


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## Q-cumber

Upon my browsing through the above mentioned textbook, I shoud correct myself. Sometimes, a stressing does change the sense of a word (fortunately, not that often).   

Here are some samples:
атлас - a collection of geographical maps /атлас  - a satin fabric 
замок - a castle / замок - a lock 
мука - a flour/ мука - a torment
орган - an organ  /  орган - key wind musical instrument (usually located in a church)


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## Etcetera

Athaulf said:


> As a native speaker, I would say that wrong stress can actually sound worse than grammatical mistakes such as getting the cases or conjugations wrong. I wonder if that's also the case in Russian?


For me, wrong stresses are as bad as grammatical mistakes. 



> Also, is there any great difference between stress in different dialects of Russian? In Croatia, there are large differences between dialects in this regard, although most native speakers have an ear for the difference between a dialectal stress different from the standard and a just plain wrong stress.


I remember reading a story (it was called an "anecdote", but I failed to find anything amusing in it) about a girl from Northern Russia who came to Moscow on holiday and decided to buy an ice-cream. What betrayed her as a person from the North was that she said, for example, пл*о*мбир and *о*дну. But I'm not sure the story wasn't invented by the author.


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## Athaulf

Q-cumber said:


> Upon my browsing through the above mentioned textbook, I shoud correct myself. Sometimes, a stressing does change the sense of a word (fortunately, not that often).
> 
> Here are some samples:
> атлас - a collection of geographical maps /атлас  - a satin fabric
> замок - a castle / замок - a lock
> мука - a flour/ мука - a torment
> орган - an organ  /  орган - key wind musical instrument (usually located in a church)



And to make things even more difficult, for some nouns, the only difference between certain cases is in the stress, e.g. _м*е*ста_ vs. _мест*а*_. (Croatian is even worse in this regard -- for some nouns, there exist _three _different stress patterns that correspond to three different cases!)

Personally, I find it extremely difficult to memorize such declensions by shifting stress, let alone develop any intuition for using them. They're certainly far harder than the "ordinary" declensions based on suffixes.


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## vince

Are the stresses the same in Ukrainian and Belarusian?

Are there many exceptions to the rule in Polish about stressing penultimate syllables?

Because I know that Spanish also stresses the penultimate syllable but there are many exceptions, luckily a stress mark is added for those that break the rule


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## Q-cumber

Athaulf said:


> And to make things even more difficult, for some nouns, the only difference between certain cases is in the stress, e.g. _м*е*ста_ vs. _мест*а*_. (Croatian is even worse in this regard -- for some nouns, there exist _three _different stress patterns that correspond to three different cases!)



Uh-oh, I've forgotten about these. Really and truly, It's better not to dig into details. Otherwise, at one day I  might find it too difficult to speak Russian for myself. 

Some verbs are also stress-managable. For example: Я познаю - I'll learn....  Я познаю  - I am learning...


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## Q-cumber

dnldnl said:


> Many suffixes draw the stress when added to a word. Take the adjective suffixes -ив, -лив, -оват, for example.   These suffixes, and many more, always draw the stress away from the root in adjectives:
> *мил*ость - милост*ив*ый



*Just noticed:* *милостивый* isn't correct. It should be stressed as *МИЛОСТИВЫЙ*!


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## vput

vince said:


> Are the stresses the same in Ukrainian and Belarusian?
> 
> Are there many exceptions to the rule in Polish about stressing penultimate syllables?
> 
> Because I know that Spanish also stresses the penultimate syllable but there are many exceptions, luckily a stress mark is added for those that break the rule


 
There are exceptions to the Polish rule of stress on the second-last syllable. Even so, many exceptions are "regular" if you understand my drift.

The "regular" exceptions occurs when dealing with certain verbal conjugations in the past tense and conditional.

*czy*tam = "I read" (stress on penultimate)
czy*ta*my = "we read" (stress on penultimate)
czy*ta*łem "I read", "I was reading" (stress on penultimate)

BUT:

czy*ta*liśmy = "we read", "we were reading" (stress on prepentultimate)
*czy*tałbym = "I would read" (stress on prepenultimate)
czy*ta*libyśmy = "we would read" (stress on fourth-last syllable)

These exceptions in the verbs happen because some of the personal endings used in the Polish past tense and all of them used in the conditional were originally particles that were never stressed. In contrast, the endings used in the present tense and and remaining conjugations of the past tense were endings that have been counted as syllables when placing stress. (See the first three examples.).

In colloquial speech, it is now common for the stress to always fall on the penultimate. Thus you will often hear czyta*li*śmy, czy*tał*bym or czytali*byś*my. Prescriptivists frown on this tendency, but it is understandable in a way since it seems to be happening by analogy to "regular" Polish words and caused by unconsciously overlooking the unstressed characteristic of the old particles. Thus penultimate stress is being reinforced nowadays, while the exceptions are happening less frequently than before. Perhaps the language will reach a point where stress will always be on the penultimate syllable.

The "irregular" exceptions happen in a few loanwords which you need to memorize.

e.g. mate*ma*tyka, *mu*zyka.


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## Maroseika

vince said:


> Are the stresses the same in Ukrainian and Belarusian?
> 
> Are there many exceptions to the rule in Polish about stressing penultimate syllables?
> 
> Because I know that Spanish also stresses the penultimate syllable but there are many exceptions, luckily a stress mark is added for those that break the rule


Ukrainian and Belorussian stresses are the same like in Russian with only one exception: Belorussian prepostions are never stressed.


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