PRO vs PRUH Pronunciation | English Heteronyms Explained (Produce, Project, Progress)

Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I am Jennifer Tarl with Tarl Speech here on YouTube. You can also listen to this lesson wherever you get your podcasts. So check that out. Today, we are talking about a very common question that I get, and this is a syllable stress rule. You all love these rules, so let's get into it. We are going to be talking about how do you pronounce words that begin with P-R-O. Is it pro, pro, or prop? It can be any of them, but good news, there is a rule. So we are going to learn the rule. We're going to hear some examples, and then we're going to do a little practice. Okay, are you ready? Let's do it. We're going to be talking about the shift in the syllable stress. When we have a stress shift with the syllable shift in the stress, we change the pronunciation of the vowel. So in a stressed syllable, the syllable tends to be a truer vowel, and when we unstress a syllable, the vowel becomes reduced and relaxed and shorter, and typically, it becomes a schwa sound. So let's talk about that a little bit. What is a schwa? In my humble opinion, I think the schwa is one of the most important vowels in English if you want to sound more natural, and that is because we make many vowels in English an uh sound, uh, uh, uh. You can see my mouth is relaxed, it is just open, and I am making an uh sound. In longer words, I am more likely to have one or more uh sounds in that word, and that gives English its rhythm. So a schwa is typically the short u sound, the uh. However, that being said, there are many variations in regional pronunciation, and you may hear an f or an if. What all of these vowels have in common is that the schwa is unstressed, it's shorter, it's quicker, and it is reduced compared to the other vowels in the word. I think that my name is perfect for teaching this. My name is Jennifer, so I have that short uh in the middle of my name. My name is not Jen-ni-fer, with all of the syllables being given the same timing and the same weight. It's Jen-uh-fer. So Jen gets the most weight, uh gets the least, and then fer gets the middle length or the middle weight with those. So it's Jen-uh-fer, Jen-uh-fer, Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer. Okay, so that is the schwa and sort of that idea of some syllables get more, some syllables get less stress. Okay, so let's look at some examples that I have here. The rule is when a word is a noun typically, and it starts with pro, we are going to stress that syllable, and we are going to have a truer vowel. And so that vowel is going to be pro-ject or pro-duce. Yes, o is messy and tricky in English because we have many pronunciations for that letter o, especially that ah and oh. Those are both true vowel sounds. And then let's think about the second syllable stress here. When the verb, that's the key here, when we have a verb starting with pro, we are going to shift the stress to the second syllable. And what does that mean? If you said that the first syllable reduces to a schwa, you are correct. So then we will have pro-ject and pro-duce. So let's listen to the difference there. We have pro-ject, pro-ject, pro-duce, pro-duce. So again, you have that ah or the o for your stress syllable because those vowels are truer. And then we are going to have the schwa, the uh sound when we stress syllable number two. So this rule of stressing syllable one and nouns holds true most of the time. Again, in English, there's always an exception, which is kind of the mess of it all. And then we are going to stress syllable number two and verbs. So again, stress syllable number one and nouns, syllable number two and verbs, especially when we have this pro spelling, P-R-O, and sometimes we have the noun and sometimes we have the verb. Okay, let's do some practice. I have three examples for you. I'm going to share my screen so that you can see the video. And my podcast is a video podcast. So if you're driving right now, just remember when you go home, you can watch this and see my slides. But for right now, pay attention to the road and just repeat after me. And if you're watching, you can see this at the same time. Okay, here we go. Example number one, we have the produce. This word is always kind of a surprise for my students. Produce is usually vegetables, fruits, and we shop in the produce department at the grocery store. This is different than the verb produce and you produce work and you produce a PowerPoint. So we have the produce as the noun and to produce as the verb. The produce, to produce. Produce, produce, produce. Produce, produce, produce. Produce, produce. Example number two, we have the noun, the project, and then we have the verb to project. So I am going to complete the project of practicing daily, and I will improve how to project my voice. So let's try these. Let's do the noun first. The project, project, project, project, project. And now the verb, project, to project. Project, project, project. Project, project. And our last example, we have the progress and to progress. Progress is our noun, truer vowel on syllable number one. Progress, progress, progress, progress, progress. And now for the verb, to progress. Progress, progress, progress. Progress, progress. Okay, how's everybody doing? I hope you are doing well. All right, now before we wrap this up, let's do some sentences. All right, let's practice. Let's practice the words first and then the sentence. Okay, so sentence number one, produce. That is the verb, and produce is the noun. The farm wanted to produce more organic produce next season. The farm wanted to produce more organic produce next season. Sentence number two, we have the noun, project, and the verb, to project. We need to plan this project so that we can project future profits. We need to plan this project so that we can project future profits. And sentence number three, we have the verb, progress, and the noun, progress. As we progress, the team will record our daily progress. As we progress, the team will record our daily progress. All right, everybody, how did you do? I really enjoyed this because this question is a question that I get all of the time, and I'm embarrassed to say I haven't made a video this clear on this topic just yet. So here you all go. Thanks for being persistent and asking me to make a lesson on this. So again, before we wrap up, just remember that the general rule for heteronyms is stress syllable one in the noun version and syllable number two in the verb version. And always keep in mind that syllable number one, we pronounce a true vowel for the stressed syllable in the noun version, and we reduce and produce a schwa when we have that unstressed syllable and we stress syllable number two in the verb form. I am going to put in the descriptions a link to my heteronym playlist. So check that out and you can practice a lot of these words with me and all of my past lessons. So thank you all for being here. If you are looking for me, I am on at Tarle speech on YouTube and at Tarle speech on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. So you can catch me there and make sure that you never miss a lesson. Oh, how can I forget? I'm also posting now on Substack so you can check it out there. Sign up for my weekly newsletter and I give you a wrap up for the week just in case you missed something and you can see all of the lessons in one place. Thanks so much, everyone. Have an amazing day.