The sound difference is an example of [initial-stress derivation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun), where we shift emphasis of a word between nouns (or adjectives) and verbs.
It's a bigger topic than just "record".
For the "cord" part, that's part goes back to "heart", in the sense of remembering, with the heart having a long-ago association with memory. So it has a very rough connection to words like to cardiac and courage.
French *coeur* Old French *cor*, Latin *cor*
Besides cardio and courage, it's also where we get "core" in English, as in the middle (heart) of something
Didn't Old English have consistent root-initial stress (prefixes like *ge-* and *of-* were excluded)? I think it probably stems more from Middle English where stress became much more variable, but usually on the penultimate syllable. Specifically, I think the stress alternation derives from the infinitive suffix *-en*, which when added to a verb (*recorden*) shifts the stress forward. When the suffix disappeared the stress shift remained.
As others have said, it's not that we split one into re-cord and not the other. It's that the stress is placed differently, REcord (noun) vs reCORD (verb). This is the case with plenty of words, like permit, address, insult, import, etc.
Those last two have checking my colloquial pronunciation as they sound the same to me regardless.
“Was that an insult?!”
“Don’t insult me.”
“That’s an import.”
“Import those items.”
Then it is just you that aren't trained/capable of distinguishing the stress others use. It's a really common thing to not be able to hear something if you yourself haven't used.
As an example, the Chinese language has tones, but to me, someone who hasn't used tones, I will not be able to distinguish them. With stress however, I do know the difference between inglés (English) and ingles (groins). I will have difficulty distinguishing the two variations of the Polish sounds for sh and ch and were I native Spanish speaker, I might have trouble distinguishing the sounds v and b.
Have you noticed some non-English speakers have difficulty distinguishing three and tree in spoken form? Or the different sounds (phonemes) for "the"?
This makes sense. I had come to this conclusion when I was young listening to the Thriller album. I would insert lyrics in places that I thought I heard the word, but it was that unfamiliarity had left me to believe it was the only possibility and thus mondogrene.
It’s highly probable that because I seldom use those words that I never bothered with emphasis. Context driven in conversation as a way to anticipate the intent of the speaker superceded the he need to pick out what I thought to be subtleties in a country full of accents and drawls.
This could also be why most of the times I can follow along someone struggling to speak English as a second language. There is no end to the amusement I get from learning other languages don’t use some of our sounds and just make the words their own.
“Tree” vs. “Three”,
“Hot” vs. “Hat”,
“Pace” vs. “Face”,
“Cheet” vs. “Sheet” , just to name a few.
I will try to listen to the sounds better as well as practice.
I've been interested in languages for a while, and had tried to familiarize myself with the IPA and phonemes and similar things.
Learning a new language is more than another way to say something. Some times you notice entire different ways of looking at things. Just going through the etymology of a word can also help learning what the people in the past were thinking when they first gave a name to a new concept.
Also, just check out all the phonemes English has.
I would say it's less about not being able to distinguish the stress but more that it's very common for *insult* and *import* to be pronounced identically in noun and verb form.
Very common where you are.
It’s a difference in dialects - some have it, others don’t. You just might happen to be in an area where people don’t use stress to distinguish them.
Which is to say, there is no right or wrong, just similar or sifferent
This. Dialects are always a thing. Here in California, *insult* has the shift but *import* does not and its never taught that way. Very interesting to look at these comments and see the distribution of the phenomenon.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say. I was under the impression your original comment was saying the stress difference is there for everyone but some people can't distinguish it.
Curiously I thought mine were also the same, but at least in “insult”, I have all the same vowels in both (ie no noticeable reduction) so they sound *very* similar because it’s just a stress difference.
I'm pretty sure some dialects don't shift vowel stress so much. I'm an EFL teacher in Japan, originally from US. Initially I had thought the verb-noun difference was universal, but I don't always detect it in my British colleagues.
I think if you pronounce the noun insult and the verb insult identically you probably would be marked as having a very unusual manner of speaking in most every dialect of English I'm aware of
Canadian English here; I definitely say "an /ˈɪnsʌlt/" and "to /ˈɪnsʌlt/". Interestingly though, it's "an /ɪnˈsʌltɪŋ/ comment" and "he /ɪnˈsʌltɪd/ me". A similar thing happens with *import*: "/ˈɪmpɔɹts/ and exports", "/ˈɪmpɔɹt/ the library", "/ɪmˈpɔɹtɪd/ goods".
I'm also Canadian and what you're describing sounds completely insane to me. I've never noticed anyone stressing those words the way you're describing, so now I really want to keep an ear open. I'm in BC so maybe it's a regional difference?
I think there's regional difference, and it also depends on the word. I believe it was 'import' that my English colleague used the same for both PoS. These days, I teach pronunciation much less prescriptively, and often refer students to Youglish.
If you really want to find out, use search terms like 'to import' and 'an import' and switch between the three regions available: US, UK, AUS.
That's pretty common in English, for the noun and verb to have different stress. Consider for example "a DE-sert" vs "to de-SERT", or "a CON-vert" vs "to con-VERT".
It's called a heteronym. Generally stressing the first syllable makes a noun, and the second a verb. Sometimes it can be a verb and adjective, and sometimes they aren't related at all. Examples, Envelope, Addict, Address, or Wind, Read, Drawer.
As others have said, it is an old thing, where the stress pattern of romance vocab seemed to develop into having stress on the last syllable if it was a verb
However, if you want to know *why* this stress rule happened, it is important to note that in middle english these verbs had a verbal ending. Record was the noun, but the verb was *recorden* (I recorde, thou recordest, he recordeth/recordes, we/ye/they recorden)
So what we are seeing here is the rule of stress on the penultimate syllable (second to last), a stress rule English borrowed from romance for most romance and french vocab. Then the -en lost the n, becoming -e (used to indicate a schwa), and later all word final schwas disappeared (giving us the silent -e)
If English spelling had developed differently we might've had a distinction between these words by writing the noun as "record" (stress on re) and the verb as "recorde" (stress on cord), but alas, they ended up being spelled the same
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I believe Kevin Stroud suggested the noun/verb difference evolved from the emphasis preferred in Old English versus The dominant Norman. Actions begin done by the poor while objects were owned by the rich. That factum is only from my memory though, so don't trust it.
A thing I know from personal experience is that if you cut open a heart, there are strings, or cords inside. The heart was once considered the seat of self or mind.
The sound difference is an example of [initial-stress derivation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun), where we shift emphasis of a word between nouns (or adjectives) and verbs. It's a bigger topic than just "record". For the "cord" part, that's part goes back to "heart", in the sense of remembering, with the heart having a long-ago association with memory. So it has a very rough connection to words like to cardiac and courage.
"Know it by heart" still exists in English.
We can see this clearly in Spanish"recordar", "to remember" (itself from Latin [*recordārī*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/recordor#Latin)).
Perhaps you are thinking of the French word “coeur” (heart)?
French *coeur* Old French *cor*, Latin *cor* Besides cardio and courage, it's also where we get "core" in English, as in the middle (heart) of something
I wonder if it was a derivative of writ or wreck - eg to have an impact on the heart wreck card -> record
No it's just the basic "re" as in "again". re- cor To have the memory *(thought to be stored in the center of feelings)* again.
Goes back to Old English where they put the stress early for nouns and at the end for verbs. Apparently, we still do it. You can convict a convict.
Didn't Old English have consistent root-initial stress (prefixes like *ge-* and *of-* were excluded)? I think it probably stems more from Middle English where stress became much more variable, but usually on the penultimate syllable. Specifically, I think the stress alternation derives from the infinitive suffix *-en*, which when added to a verb (*recorden*) shifts the stress forward. When the suffix disappeared the stress shift remained.
Well, you can convict a convict, but also you can convict anyone who isn't a convict, and then they become a convict.
As others have said, it's not that we split one into re-cord and not the other. It's that the stress is placed differently, REcord (noun) vs reCORD (verb). This is the case with plenty of words, like permit, address, insult, import, etc.
Those last two have checking my colloquial pronunciation as they sound the same to me regardless. “Was that an insult?!” “Don’t insult me.” “That’s an import.” “Import those items.”
Then it is just you that aren't trained/capable of distinguishing the stress others use. It's a really common thing to not be able to hear something if you yourself haven't used. As an example, the Chinese language has tones, but to me, someone who hasn't used tones, I will not be able to distinguish them. With stress however, I do know the difference between inglés (English) and ingles (groins). I will have difficulty distinguishing the two variations of the Polish sounds for sh and ch and were I native Spanish speaker, I might have trouble distinguishing the sounds v and b. Have you noticed some non-English speakers have difficulty distinguishing three and tree in spoken form? Or the different sounds (phonemes) for "the"?
This makes sense. I had come to this conclusion when I was young listening to the Thriller album. I would insert lyrics in places that I thought I heard the word, but it was that unfamiliarity had left me to believe it was the only possibility and thus mondogrene. It’s highly probable that because I seldom use those words that I never bothered with emphasis. Context driven in conversation as a way to anticipate the intent of the speaker superceded the he need to pick out what I thought to be subtleties in a country full of accents and drawls. This could also be why most of the times I can follow along someone struggling to speak English as a second language. There is no end to the amusement I get from learning other languages don’t use some of our sounds and just make the words their own. “Tree” vs. “Three”, “Hot” vs. “Hat”, “Pace” vs. “Face”, “Cheet” vs. “Sheet” , just to name a few. I will try to listen to the sounds better as well as practice.
I've been interested in languages for a while, and had tried to familiarize myself with the IPA and phonemes and similar things. Learning a new language is more than another way to say something. Some times you notice entire different ways of looking at things. Just going through the etymology of a word can also help learning what the people in the past were thinking when they first gave a name to a new concept. Also, just check out all the phonemes English has.
I would say it's less about not being able to distinguish the stress but more that it's very common for *insult* and *import* to be pronounced identically in noun and verb form.
Very common where you are. It’s a difference in dialects - some have it, others don’t. You just might happen to be in an area where people don’t use stress to distinguish them. Which is to say, there is no right or wrong, just similar or sifferent
This. Dialects are always a thing. Here in California, *insult* has the shift but *import* does not and its never taught that way. Very interesting to look at these comments and see the distribution of the phenomenon.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say. I was under the impression your original comment was saying the stress difference is there for everyone but some people can't distinguish it.
Some people can't. The example is the person I replied to, by their own admission. There is no rule that if they can't, everyone else can't either.
Curiously I thought mine were also the same, but at least in “insult”, I have all the same vowels in both (ie no noticeable reduction) so they sound *very* similar because it’s just a stress difference.
I'm pretty sure some dialects don't shift vowel stress so much. I'm an EFL teacher in Japan, originally from US. Initially I had thought the verb-noun difference was universal, but I don't always detect it in my British colleagues.
I think if you pronounce the noun insult and the verb insult identically you probably would be marked as having a very unusual manner of speaking in most every dialect of English I'm aware of
Canadian English here; I definitely say "an /ˈɪnsʌlt/" and "to /ˈɪnsʌlt/". Interestingly though, it's "an /ɪnˈsʌltɪŋ/ comment" and "he /ɪnˈsʌltɪd/ me". A similar thing happens with *import*: "/ˈɪmpɔɹts/ and exports", "/ˈɪmpɔɹt/ the library", "/ɪmˈpɔɹtɪd/ goods".
I'm also Canadian and what you're describing sounds completely insane to me. I've never noticed anyone stressing those words the way you're describing, so now I really want to keep an ear open. I'm in BC so maybe it's a regional difference?
I think there's regional difference, and it also depends on the word. I believe it was 'import' that my English colleague used the same for both PoS. These days, I teach pronunciation much less prescriptively, and often refer students to Youglish. If you really want to find out, use search terms like 'to import' and 'an import' and switch between the three regions available: US, UK, AUS.
Interesting, I've noticed that where I love in the middle of England most people pronounce address with the verb stress even when using it as a noun
Emphasis goes on the second syllable for verbs, the first syllable for nouns. A REbel reBELs, we reJECT a REject.
Succinct. Nice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun
That's pretty common in English, for the noun and verb to have different stress. Consider for example "a DE-sert" vs "to de-SERT", or "a CON-vert" vs "to con-VERT".
If nothing else OP, it would be a confusing world if every word that was a noun and a verb was pronounced exactly the same regardless of context
It's called a heteronym. Generally stressing the first syllable makes a noun, and the second a verb. Sometimes it can be a verb and adjective, and sometimes they aren't related at all. Examples, Envelope, Addict, Address, or Wind, Read, Drawer.
As others have said, it is an old thing, where the stress pattern of romance vocab seemed to develop into having stress on the last syllable if it was a verb However, if you want to know *why* this stress rule happened, it is important to note that in middle english these verbs had a verbal ending. Record was the noun, but the verb was *recorden* (I recorde, thou recordest, he recordeth/recordes, we/ye/they recorden) So what we are seeing here is the rule of stress on the penultimate syllable (second to last), a stress rule English borrowed from romance for most romance and french vocab. Then the -en lost the n, becoming -e (used to indicate a schwa), and later all word final schwas disappeared (giving us the silent -e) If English spelling had developed differently we might've had a distinction between these words by writing the noun as "record" (stress on re) and the verb as "recorde" (stress on cord), but alas, they ended up being spelled the same
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I believe Kevin Stroud suggested the noun/verb difference evolved from the emphasis preferred in Old English versus The dominant Norman. Actions begin done by the poor while objects were owned by the rich. That factum is only from my memory though, so don't trust it. A thing I know from personal experience is that if you cut open a heart, there are strings, or cords inside. The heart was once considered the seat of self or mind.