English pronunciation is super weird, but you probably already know that. The spelling is a mess, the rules are inconsistent and there are so many exceptions!
A few weeks ago a client added the word deliberate to her vocabulary journal. In her practice sentences, she wrote about “a deliberate attempt” but also about how the “lawmakers deliberated for hours.”
I thought, “how strange that we pronounce these words so very differently.”
de-LIB-rit vs to de-LIB-er-ate
And, of course, I wanted to find more examples where the pronunciation changes between nouns or adjectives and the verb form.
Surprisingly, it was really difficult to find pronunciation books or sites that talk about this weird rule!
The syllable stress shift rule is always explained for nouns and verbs like:
A RE-cord / to re-CORD
An OB-ject / to ob-JECT
A PER-mit / to per-MIT
A CON-tract / to con-TRACT
But in the words I found, the syllable stress doesn’t change. Instead, the pronunciation of the last syllable changes.
I’ve created the lists below from my own brainstorming as well as some help from Teaching Pronunciation by Marianne Celce-Murcia, Donna M. Brinton, Janet M. Goodwin.
If you’re interested in seeing very clear definitions and example sentences for these words, I recommend using https://learnersdictionary.com
If you’d like to hear my pronunciation of these words, check out my video on Facebook.
| Verbs ending with /eyt/ [sounds like eight (8)] appreciate, celebrate, collate, demonstrate, depreciate, dominate, educate, elevate, fascinate, inundate, relegate, rotate, simulate, vaccinate |
| Adjectives and Nouns ending with /ət/ [sounds like “it”] (in)accurate, consulate, (in)adequate, desperate*, (un)fortunate, (in)delicate, (dis)passionate * [most speakers reduce to 2 syllables: des-prit] |
| Pronunciation changes from noun/adjective [it] to verb form [ate] advocate, alternate, animate, appropriate, approximate, articulate, associate, delegate, deliberate*, duplicate, elaborate*, estimate, graduate, intimate, legitimate, moderate, precipitate, separate* * [many speakers reduce the syllables when using these words as adjectives: de-lib-rit, e-lab-rit, sep-rit] |