6 Minute Vocabulary: Word stress

Catherine
Hello and welcome to 6 Minute Vocabulary. I’m Catherine…

Finn
And I’m Finn. Catherine, look at this photo – do you like it? I took it this morning.

Catherine
Wow, Finn. That’s not bad. I didn’t know you were into photography.

Finn
Well, I love taking photographs.

Catherine
Really? Well funnily enough, the words photography and photograph are good examples of today’s topic, which is word stress. We’re going to look at the way word stress can change in words that come from the same root word.

Finn
We’ll show you how to work out the stress of these words…

Catherine
There’ll be a quiz…

Finn
And we’ll leave you with a top tip for learning vocabulary.

Catherine
But first, let’s listen to John. He’s a photographer, which is a person who takes photos as a job. He’s talking about his latest project.

Finn
Here’s a question to think about while you listen: what’s John’s project?

INSERT
John
The book is a collection of photographs of my father. He studied geography as a young man and went all over the world during his career. He visited some very interesting geographic locations – the Andes, the Sahara – beautiful places. The book’s like a photographic  record of his life – a kind of a biography in pictures.

Finn
So, that’s John. We asked you: what was his project?

Catherine
And the answer is: a biography.

Finn
A biography is the story of someone’s life – usually a book.

Catherine
But, John’s a photographer, so he told the story of his father’s life in photographs. Let’s hear a clip.

INSERT 1 CLIP 1
He studied geography as a young man…

Finn
John’s dad was interested in geography: the study of the physical features of the earth. And geography is a key word in today’s show because of its stress.

Catherine
Yes. Now, geography has four syllables, ge-o-gra-phy, and the stress falls on the third syllable from the end. Geography, not geography, geography or geography. It’s geography.

Finn
Words that end in the letters p-h-y – pronounced ‘fee’ – usually have this stress pattern. Like biography and photography. Do you like photography, Catherine?

Catherine
To be honest, not really.

Finn
Not really? Sorry to hear that.

Catherine
No, never mind. Anyway, these words – like geography, biography and photography – are all nouns. We can change them to adjectives, by changing the y at the end to i-c – pronounced ‘ik’. And when we do this, the word stress moves to a different place in the word. Here’s John again.

INSERT 1 CLIP 2
He studied geography as a young man […] He visited some very interesting geographic locations…

Catherine
Did you hear the difference? When we say adjectives that end with i-c, the stress falls on the penultimate syllable, that’s the syllable just before the last one. So it’s geography, but geographic.

Finn
Geography, geographic. And we have photography, pho-to-graph-ic…

Catherine
And there are other words like dramatic, to do with theatre and drama; alphabetic, to do with the alphabet, and artistic, to describe things to do with art. Finn, are you artistic?

Finn
Well, I like to think of myself as quite artistic, yes. And Catherine, what’s the most interesting geographic location you’ve been to?

Catherine
It’s a lovely place in Turkey called Ölüdeniz.

IDENT
You’re listening to BBC Learning English.

Finn
And we’re talking about word stress. We’ve looked at the stress patterns of words that end with p-h-y, like photography.

Catherine
And words ending with i-c, like photographic.

Finn
And now, it’s time for a quiz. Choose the correct pronunciation for the words in these sentences. Catherine will tell you the answers. Ready? Number 1. I like reading books about famous people. I love a good a) biography, b) biography or c) biography?’

Catherine
And it’s b) biography.

Finn
Number 2. ‘The police arrested him when they found … a) photographic evidence, b) photographic evidence or c) photographic evidence.’

Catherine
And the answer is – c) photographic evidence.

Finn
And that’s the end of the quiz – well done if you got them all right.

Catherine
And that almost brings us to the end of the programme.

Finn
But before we go, here’s today’s top tip for learning vocabulary: if you use an online dictionary, you can usually hear an audio recording of a word’s pronunciation. Listen carefully to the word stress and try to copy it.

Catherine
Top tip, Finn.

Finn
Thank you.

Catherine
There’s more about this at bbclearningenglish.com. Join us again for more 6 Minute Vocabulary.

Both
Bye!