Thread: How to pronounce double "и" & what is this symbol?

Originally Posted by genuinefarmgirl

Marcus, I'd like to clarify that when you say 'stressed' that is referring to where the accent goes?

Exactly. Actually, "accented vowel", "accented syllable", "stressed vowel" and "stressed syllable" all mean the same in regard to Russian.

As you probably know, every Russian word has a stress. If it is a monosyllabic word (like дом, сад, друг etc.) then its sole syllable is stressed, it is just obvious and there is no need to indicate the stress position (actually, they are pronounced as до́м, са́д, дру́г etc.), I hope you can see the diactritic.

If it is a polysyllabic word (with more than one syllable), than the following is true:
1) one of the syllables is stressed;
2) all other syllables are unstressed.
But there is generally no way to predict the stress position, so they usually put a stress mark in dictionaries, in books for children and in textbooks for foreign students:
ла́мпа (1^st of 2), вода́ (2^nd of 2);
о́блако (1^st of 3), доро́га (2^nd of 3), голова́ (3^rd of 3);
пе́редано (1^st of 4), изо́гнутый (2^nd of 4), переса́дка (3^rd of 4), сковорода́ (4^th of 4) etc.

However, the stress mark is not a part of the Russian writing, we do not use it in texts, since native speakers put the correct stress automatically when reading: лампа, вода, облако, дорога, голова, передано, изогнутый, пересадка, сковорода.

There are some exceptions to that principle:
1) some auxiliary words do not have their own stress at all, being pronounced with the main word to which they are attached as a single whole. They are mainly prepositions (по, для, из etc.), conjunctions (и, а etc.) and some particles (не, ни, бы, же etc.).
2) some compound words can have two stresses or more, but they are quite rare: доро̀жнострои́тельный "road-buliding" (the first stress on "О" is an "additional stress" and the second stress on "И" is the main stress). I do not think you need to bother with those cases at this moment.

So, in this regard "stress" and "accent" mean the same. But Russians prefer calling it "stress" just because "accent" is ambiguous (it has many other meanings: foreign accent, local accent etc.). So, we usually call it "stress" in English (in Russian it is "ударе́ние").

We also sometimes say "stressed syllable", and sometimes say "stressed vowel". Basically, it means the same. The nubmer of syllables in a Russian word is equal to the number of vowels in it, because one vowel always forms one syllable.