This is a download from BBC Learning English.
To find out more, visit our website.
Hello and welcome to 6 Minute Vocabulary.
I'm Catherine and I'm Finn.
Catherine, look at this photo.
Do you like it? I took it this morning.
Wow, Finn, that's not bad.
OK. I didn't know you were into photography.
Well, I love taking photographs.
Really? Well, funnily enough, the words photography and photograph are good examples of today's topic, which is word stress.
We're going to look at the way word stress can change in words that come from the same root word.
We'll show you how to work out the stress of these words.
There'll be a quiz.
And we'll leave you with a top tip for learning vocabulary.
But first, let's listen to John.
He's a photographer which is a person who takes photographs as a job.
He's talking about his latest project.
Here's a question to think about while you listen.
What's John's project?
The book is a collection of photographs of my father.
He studied geography as a young man and went all over the world during his career.
He visited some very interesting geographic locations – the Andes, the Sahara, beautiful places.
The book's like a photographic record of his life.
A kind of biography in pictures.
So, that's John. We asked you, what was his project?
And the answer is, a biography.
Now, a biography is the story of someone's life, usually a book.
But John's a photographer, so he told the story of his father's life in photographs.
Let's hear a clip. He studied geography as a young man.
John's dad was interested in geography, the study of the physical features of the Earth.
And geography is a keyword in today's show because of its stress.
Yes. Now, geography has four syllables.
Ge -o -gra -fee. And the stress falls on the third syllable from the end.
Geography. Not geography.
Geography or geography.
It's geography. Words that end in the letters P -H -Y, pronounced FEE, usually have this stress pattern like biography and photography.
Do you like photography, Catherine?
To be honest, not really.
Not really? Well, sorry to hear that.
No, never mind. Anyway, these words like geography, biography and photography are all nouns.
We can change them to adjectives by changing the y at the end to ic, pronounced ick.
And when we do this, the word stress moves to a different place in the word.
Here's John again. He studied geography as a young man.
He visited some very interesting geographic locations.
Did you hear the difference?
When we say adjectives that end with IC, the stress falls on the penultimate syllable.
That's the syllable just before the last one.
So, it's geography but geographic.
Geography, geographic.
And we have photography, photographic.
Yes. And there's other words like dramatic – to do with theatre and drama, alphabetic – to do with the alphabet and artistic – to describe things to do with art.
Finn, are you artistic?
Well, I like to think of myself as quite artistic, yes.
And Catherine, what's the most interesting geographic location you've been to?
It's a lovely place in Turkey called Öludeneş.
You're listening to BBC Learning English.
And we're talking about word stress.
We've looked at the stress patterns of words that end in P -H -Y like photography.
And words ending with I -C like photographic.
And now it's time for a quiz.
Choose the correct pronunciation for the words in these sentences.
Catherine will tell you the answers.
Ready? Number 1. I like reading books about famous people.
I love a good… a. Biography b.
Biography or c. Biography And it's b.
Biography. Well done if you got that right.
Number 2. The police arrested him when they found… a.
Photographic evidence b.
Photographic evidence Or C, photographic evidence?
And the answer is C, photographic evidence.
And that's the end of the quiz.
And that almost brings us to the end of the programme.
But before we go, here's today's top tip for learning vocabulary.
If you use an online dictionary, you can usually hear an audio recording of a word's pronunciation.
Listen carefully to the word stress and try to copy it.
Top tip, Finn. Thank you.
There's more about this at bbclearningenglish .com.
Join us again for more Six Minute Vocabulary.
Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Learning English Vocabulary.
Have you heard our new music series, My Song, My Home?
In each episode, we visit a different place in the UK and meet a musician that lives there.
Learn English from songs and hear natural British speakers.
Find the series on our website, bbclearningenglish .com or follow the Learning English Conversations podcast in your podcast app.
