Introductory remarks

Most Russian words have fixed stress, but many do not and it is these that give difficulty to the foreign learner. Stress patterns are numerous and complicated, but the student may take some comfort from the fact that there are patterns.

In this chapter we first set out the main patterns of stress in Russian nouns, adjectives and verbs and then indicate some of the deviations from standard stress that may be encountered.

Stress in Russian is very important for two reasons. Firstly, it is strong. Therefore a word pronounced with incorrect stress may not be understood. Secondly, there are many homographs which are distinguished from one another only by means of stress and consequential pronunciation of unstressed vowels, e.g. вéсти, news, and вести́, to lead; мóю, I wash, and мою́, my; плáчу, I cry, and плачу́, I pay; слóва, of the word, and слова́, words.

It should be remembered that in some words e will change into ё when the syllable in which it occurs attracts the stress.

Conversely ё will change into e when the syllable in which it occurs loses the stress (as it does in some perfective verbs bearing the prefix вы́-, e.g. вíшел, I/he went out, in which the element шёл has lost the stress that it normally bears (as in пошёл, I/he went)).