Stress Shifts in Word Families: Photograph to Photography

Hear how the stressed syllable moves as suffixes are added, and how vowels change with it.

In English, adding a suffix can move a word's stress, and the vowels change as a result. Stressed vowels keep their full sound, while unstressed vowels often weaken to the schwa sound, 'uh. ' Compare three members of one family. PHOtograph: stress on the first syllable. phoTOGraphy: stress moves to the second syllable, and the first o weakens to 'fuh. ' photoGRAPHic: stress moves again to the third. The spelling stays nearly the same, but the pronunciation shifts. Worked example: a student reading aloud says 'PHOtography,' keeping the stress of the base word.

The fix is to recognize the -y ending and the pattern of the family, then shift the stress. Other families follow the same pattern: DIplomat, diPLOmacy, diploMATic; ANalyze, aNALysis, anaLYTic. Because spelling preserves the root while sound changes, you can recognize a word by its spelling even when it sounds different.

• 1Adding a suffix can move a word's stress.
• 2Unstressed vowels often weaken to schwa.
• 3Spelling keeps the root even when pronunciation shifts.