Stress
Hebrew has two main kinds of stress: on the last syllable (milra‘) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mil‘el). The former is more frequent. The stress has phonemic value, e.g. "ילד", when pronounced /ˈjeled/, means "boy", whereas when pronounced /jeˈled/ it means "will give birth to".
In older varieties of Hebrew, stress placement was determined by the length of the vowels in the last syllable. However, Modern Hebrew has lost distinctive vowel length, so these rules are now opaque. They are also not evident from written text, unless niqqud is used (which preserves the length distinctions which have been lost in speech). The rules that specified the vowel length were different for verbs and nouns, which influenced the stress; thus the mil‘el-stressed /ˈʔoχel/ 'food' and milra‘-stressed /ʔoˈχel/ 'eats (masculine)' differ only in original vowel length. Little ambiguity exists in writing, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in most sentences. This is also true in English - compare "record", in its nominal and verbal forms.
Tiberian Hebrew had only these two stress patterns. Modern Hebrew, however, has a moderate number of words which are neither milra nor mil‘el, but are stressed on the antepenult or even further back. These are mostly borrowings, e.g. /ˈotobus/ 'bus', /uniˈversita/ 'university'. Some, however, result from epenthetic shvas (see above), e.g. /laˈmadeti/ 'I learned' from /laˈmad.ti/, and a handful are native Hebrew words with an added clitic, e.g. /ˈmiʃehu/ 'someone' (/mi/ 'who' plus /ʃehu/ '-ever, any').
Read more about this topic: Modern Hebrew Phonology
Famous quotes containing the word stress:
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—Agnes Repplier (1858–1950)