Stress, intonation and spelling

Stress usually falls on the last full vowel. A final neutral vowel ə is normally unstressed, so it does not simply pull the stress to the end. There are exceptions, including some common and borrowed words: learn their pronunciation with the word.

Listen to moon and school. Copy the stress from the recording.

Eastern Armenian does not use a system of word tones like Thai. Pitch still changes with questions, emphasis and emotion. Do not confuse sentence intonation with a different dictionary word.

Letters give useful sound clues, but Armenian spelling is not a perfectly phonetic transcript. A letter can have a position-dependent reading, a vowel can be unwritten, and familiar letter teams must be read together. The neutral vowel ə, for example, is often heard but not written. Later units explain these patterns with words and audio.

The full stop looks different from an English period. Question and emphasis marks can sit above a vowel inside the word rather than at the end of a sentence. Ordinary stress is not routinely marked. You will practise these signs after you can read the words.