How can a two-syllable word not have stress?
How can a two-syllable word not have stress? Lazarus stated
Apart from the usage of both "when", there is a difference in pronunciation. Think of the differences between "He is the suspect" and "I suspect something" in terms of stress. "Cuándo" is pronounced with stress, while "cuando" is not.
7 Answers
I can't seem to stop myself. It has no stress because it leads a very peaceful life.
I think he's talking about the slight difference in pronunciation that the accent mark makes. Cuándo has slightly more stress on the á than cuando does on the a. It's not as pronounced as his example of suspect (noun) and suspect (verb), but it's there. It's like the difference in pronunciation between sí and si. It's subtle. Don't worry about it if you can't hear it. You can only tell when it's used in a sentence.
Come to think about it, we do the same thing in English. We stress when slightly differently in questions compared to statements. When are you coming home? I'm coming home when I feel like it. To me it sounds more like which word gets stressed in the sentence.
He's talking about stress in the SENTENCE, and not in the word it's self. For example, when you're saying "Cuándo" as in "¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños?", you can hear the inflection on the word "Cuándo". When you're saying "Cuando" as in "Cuando tengo dinero, nunca lo gasto sabiamente.", the stress on "cuando" is much less apparent.
The same applies to all question words (Qué, Dónde, Cuál, Cúando, Cómo, Quién, etc.) that become relative pronouns when you remove the accent.
This has nothing to do with cuando / cuándo, but in Japanese, all syllables in a word are stressed equally and, except for long vowels (or doubled vowels), are held for the same time (long vowels being held for twice as long).
That's not to say a Japanese person couldn't stress a syllable differently in certain situations like in anger for example.
Amazingly, the letter "n" is a separate syllable all by itself. I didn't realize just how separate until I heard a song in which the word jibun (I don't know what it means) was pronounced jibu...uhnnnnn.
Or at least this is my understanding of Japanese (I am no expert on it by a long shot).
Hi Kevin,
If it's a difference made by prosody, a stress pattern that affects words within phrases and sentences, that's a whole different thing. Physically, stress is the result of increased pitch (frequency), duration, and/or intensity (loudness) during speech. So in a two-syllable word, the stressed syllable would be louder, last longer, and have a higher pitch than the unstressed syllable.
A two syllable word does have stress on one of them. It will not be marked by a tilde when it is pronounced according to the following: If it ends with a noun or n or s the stress will be on the next to last syllable (in the case of a two syllable word it would be the first) or, if the word ends in a consonant other than n or s, the stress will be on the last syllable. If the word is to be pronounced with the stress according to these rules, no written tilde is required. However, if a written stress mark does appear, it means that pronunciation is to be on that syllable rather than it would by following the two general rules.
For example; "noche and rana" are two syllable words which end in vowels. Each is pronounced with the stress on the next to last syllable, (first syllable, yes, but by happenstance because there are only two syllables.) Neither syllable requires the tilde. "Pared" is a two syllable word pronounced with the stress on the last because it ends in a consonant other than n or s. A two syllable word which is stressed not according to these rules is "bebé" Because it ends in a vowel, and if it were not shown as stressed, it would be pronounced with stress on the first (next to last) syllable and would be pronounced similar to our "Baby".
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Are we discussing a hiatus? as in the word coed. (co-ed)
Hiatus (linguistics), a phonological term referring to the lack of a consonant separating two vowels in separate syllables, as in co-operation
Must the two syllables be in the same word (elision?)
Could you provide some examples of what you are referring to? Are contractions elegible?
