English compound nouns: superhero names show how to pronounce them!

Which superheroes line up with Iron Man, and which go with Captain America? The tricky world of English compound stress explained.
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[@andrewsad1]

7:45 there's something so funny to me about the phrase "he isn't even _named_ after a pool that's literally dead"

[@rreagan007]

GREENhouse vs green HOUSE is one of the few examples I can think of where changing the stress in English actually changes the meaning.

[@rosiefay7283]

Light housekeeping.

[@Brindlebrother]

Lighthouse keeping.

[@musigalglo]

There are lots of examples of changed stress modifying the meaning of a sentence as a whole rather than within a single word e.g. "I didn't see HER" (I saw someone else) vs. "I didn't SEE her" (but maybe I heard her?) vs. "I DIDN'T see her" (I really really didn't) etc.

[@henryfish]

Others like this are the White House and just a white house in your neighborhood. Or a hot dog on the grill vs a hot dog who has been out in the sun too long and should hydrate. You also have one word examples like rebel. A REbel is one who reBELS.

[@thomaswilliams2273]

I was thinking about his example where a subMARiner would be either substitute or under mariner, while a submaRIner would be someone who works in a submarine.

[@Mixxie67]

This segment immediately made me think of the actor Matt Berry who intentionally reverses the rule for the noun compound for the sake of humor. Example he will actually say dog-FOOD. Or super-MAN. It's hilarious and so distinctive. In a similar vein, Southerners will place the emphasis on the second word in the compound word "PEA-nut butter" so that it is "peanut BUT-ter". My dad pronounced it this way.

[@atypicalgeek88]

I've noticed that reversal for fun catching on - the McElroys (podcast my brother my brother and me) and even a gaming YTer I watch do it sometimes! Really demonstrates how humour is about subverted expectations! Re: peanut BUTter, I guess for me (Canadian) it's a compound and for speakers like your dad, it's a noun phrase! I would only say it his way in something, like, "no, not the peanut BUT-ter, the peanut BRIT-tle!" Interesting how "brittle" is a noun here!

[@defunkdafied]

What do you mean by Southerners? Southern US speakers? I have a Southern English accent and also say peanut BUTter

[@Mixxie67]

@@defunkdafied US Southerners.

[@Mixxie67]

@@defunkdafied That's interesting. I also find it funny how at least some Brits but the emphasis on "sauce" when they say "tomato sauce". Most people in the States say "TOMATO sauce". As far as "tomayto/tomahto" that's more of a regional thing and even then it's really a generational thing. Older Yankees will say "toMAHto". That's how my late MIL pronounced it. She as born in 1926. My FIL probably said it that way also because they grew up in the same affluent area of Rhode Island. I never knew him though. I'd have to ask my husband.

[@Squatsheldon]

Peanut Whistle

[@michaelimbesi2314]

I never really realized until now just how much the stress influences how we hear things. For example, you emphasize the syllables in subcontractor very differently from how we do here in the US and as a result, it sounds very “British” when you do it. I didn’t even realize that distinction was the result of emphasis until now, I just thought of it as a British accent.

[@jgreen2015]

I came to the same realisation yesterday with the word 'garage'. In America is 'ga-rAAAje'. In British (ignoring the common 'garridge') it's 'gA-raaaje'

[@henka4166]

In Swedish, compounds are easily distinguished by lack of space between the words: eg "sjuksköterska" vs "sjuk sköterska" (sick-nurse vs sick nurse, ie nurse helping the sick vs nurse who is sick). In english this does not seem to be standardised: batman, spider-man, wonder woman are all compounds. Swedish way makes it easier to spot compounds, but also makes it harder to parse the individual words in long compounds. Hyphen is probably the best option in my view.

[@Arkylie]

Actually, if I'm recalling right, they tend to start out as two words, take on a hyphen, then eventually become just one. Not sure how the stress varies along the process. As a writer who's moved a bit past my former slavish devotion to "The Rules" of English, I've found that I much prefer to combine words into single units if the concept isn't well covered by two separate words; it feels more like asserting an identity for the concept, instead of merely stringing words together. I suspect there's a little German-style compound preference in my head 😅

[@davidadams2395]

I grew up with hyphens, so I prefer them, but we Americans have moved away from them except when needed for clarity or as compound modifiers; however, most Americans don't know how to use them, so these words have steadily become _closed_ compounds.

[@PC_Simo]

Same in Finnish. Except we use a hyphen, when the first part ends, and the second part start with the same letter; like: _”Linja-auto”_ (lit. ”Line Car”, but it means: ”Bus”); we don’t write: _”Linjaauto”,_ which would be pronounced with a long ”A” ([linjaːuto]), instead of a hiatus ([ˈlinjaʔˌauto]).

[@smkh2890]

@@davidadams2395 It's the Germans who need hyphens!

[@justinsayin3979]

Wish we could do like Swedish, but 'bookstore' and 'shoe store' have the same stress pattern.

[@22kaoz]

Im studying phonetics and this topic in particular is a nightmare :) thank you for the video, it was very helpful and fun at the same time.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks for letting me know!

[@sharonminsuk]

I've noticed that stress patterns are among the most noticeable differences between American and British English, but nobody ever seems to talk about that. Would love to see an episode on that! (If you haven't already done it.)

[@bolognamozart]

Definitely. He didn't mention but as an American I would definitely say subCONTRACTOR , not SUBcontractor

[@woodfur00]

@@bolognamozart Interesting, because as an American I would put the stress on super- or sub- in every example he listed.

[@shinobi-no-bueno]

@@woodfur00 really? I've never heard anyone say SUPERman

[@woodfur00]

@@shinobi-no-bueno You… haven't heard anyone say SUPERman? Including Dr. Lindsey throughout this video?

[@jgreen2015]

Garage is a good example that I was just talking about yesterday Ignore the 'common' English 'garridge' and focusing on the more upper/middle class form of 'garaaje' with the more french sound Americans say 'ga-rAAAje' where as English say ''gA-raaje"

[@pfefferle74]

I just realized that if you put the emphasis on "human" in Human Torch, that'd turn him into a very macabre villain.

[@beeble2003]

Not if it's the sort of torch that an American would call a flashlight.

[@sObad367]

@@beeble2003do brits call flashlight a torch??? in our country schools teach us british english. crazy thats after learning english for 9 years ive never picked up on this. for me torch was a wooden stick with a fire on the end

[@beeble2003]

@@sObad367 Yep. We brought torches into the 20th century, baby!

[@mattt.4395]

"joggraphy professor" this fits so well since your name is spelled "geoff" but pronounced "jeff"

[@ashenbreese]

that was a pretty exhaustive list! after watching this i would be shocked to find out he isn't a legitimate comic fan.

[@xorsyst1]

One of my favourite examples of stress differences is between sleeping bag and sleeping dog - but apparently some people don't hear a difference here!

[@leeprice133]

How? To me it is very clearly *sleeping* bag for the first and sleeping *dog* for the second.

[@simulacrumx258]

By the way, this pattern helps you resolve the ambiguity in the phrase, English teacher, as I have just noticed :)

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Great point. And examples like TOY shop (sells toys) and toy SHOP (it's a toy).

[@derekmills5394]

I love how we instinctively know which of the English German Teacher and the German English Teacher was born in Hamburg and who in Hammersmith.

[@square_wheel]

In the same vein you mentioned "green house" vs "greenhouse", there's also "the white house" vs "the White House". And also "blackbird" and "black bird". As a native Spanish speaker, I tend to struggle with these. Spanish certainly has stressed syllables, but it doesn't quite work like English. English seems to have a 3-way contrast in syllable types (full stressed vowel, "BLÀCKbird", full unstressed vowel, "làTEX", reduced unstressed vowel, "bèttER) and completely disallows words starting with two reduced unstressed vowels, there's always some secondary stress, as in "cèleBRAtion", while Spanish has "esternocleidomastoidèo" (or "comunicación" for that matter) with a whole bunch of completely unstressed vowels and a single stressed one. There's something different in the way syllable stress works, because native Spanish speakers tend to confuse primary and secondary stress, so "HESitáting" will be routinely pronounced as "hésiTAting". I still find it hard to pronounce correctly because the strongest syllable is too far away from the end of the word. Spanish has /'ra.pi.do/, /'sa.ko/ and /sa'ko/, but no word of the form /'CV.CV.CV.CV/ Any insight on how exactly does stress compare in English vs Spanish and how to improve its correct perception?

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

English also has secondary stresses, which can play a role in this. There are definitely irregular situations with unstressed and unreduced vowels other than secondary stresses though. Oh on second reading, you did mention that lol. I think there are dialectal differences with secondary stresses, as an example when dr. Lindsey says in the video "subcontractor" he doesn't seem to be including a secondary stress on the 'con' of 'contractor,' whereas in my American English I would place a secondary stress on that same syllable, which prevents it from reducing like he had in the video. Another thing is timing. Different languages have different beats if you will and English is pretty strongly 'stress-timed' where stressed syllables come at roughly the same interval, with syllables in between getting squished in order to fit that. Spanish, though this probably depends on the variety, is often described as being 'syllable-timed' which means that the syllables relatively occur at the same speed or rate as when compared to languages like English. To be honest with the confusing of primary and secondary stresses, though it may depend on where you are, in my experience American English in particular seems to flip primary and secondary stresses as well sometimes depending on the context the word finds itself in. I'm not sure if there's actually that much of a difference in the first place in the level of stress between primary and secondary stresses, though that's just a hunch of mine.

[@davidadams2395]

Which vowel is unstressed in latex? It looks as if you are showing the _ā_ as fully unstressed. Also, not all blackbirds are black. Go figure.

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

@@davidadams2395 The E in Ex I presumed was the one they were talking about, since they were talking about non-reduced vowels in unstressed positions

[@davidadams2395]

@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 Ah. He said full unstressed, so I was trying to understand why he used it.

[@radadadadee]

I had trouble with the words "monastery" because it's doubly stressed as MOnas-TEry. Spanish doesn't have that.

[@AetherXIV]

not a word wasted. I love your presentation

[@simulacrumx258]

Things you're unlikely to learn from your English teacher

[@rogermwilcox]

9:52 : When he says "as you might have thought", it matches the music of the Superman theme almost to a T.

[@kgpierce]

Excellent video! This reminded me of Phoebe in Friends saying, "Why isn't it Spidermən? You know, Goldmən, Silvermən, Spidermən..." Chandler replies that it's not his last name, he's a "Spider... MAN" :)

[@Cestreparti]

Your videos are so fun to watch (and listen to). As a non-native speaker, I never realised all of this and I probably pronounce all of those words wrong 😂

[@rosiefay7283]

8:23 Daredevil has the construction V O where V is a transitive verb and O is its object. Like breakfast, killjoy, spoilsport. So, like each of those nouns, it is stressed on the first element.

[@beeble2003]

No, it's verb + _subject._ The OED gives the etymology of "daredevil" to be the _intransitive_ verb "dare" plus the noun "devil". This is dare meaning "To have boldness or courage (to do something); to be so bold as". And presumably "devil" as in "A person who is enthusiastic, fanatical, or renowned for (also at, about) a specified activity, habit, etc." A daredevil is somebody who is fanatically courageous, not somebody who dares (transitive) Satan.

[@SimplyVoiceEnglish]

This is gold, Geoff. Thanks a lot again.

[@jcj3652]

This video is informative educational and entertaining at the same time. Thank you Dr. LINSEY for such a wonderful session! It makes me re-think about my stress.

[@bryansullo9798]

I remember Andy Capp from the newspaper comic strips in the 80's. I was today years old when I finally recognized the wordplay.

[@MsDarkcountess77]

Excellent! This topic is usually so intricate in the bibliography about it. Thank you!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank YOU! I hope it helps.

[@mariobernard5583]

Interesting! And loving the snippet of John William's score. :-)

[@Iohannis42]

Thank you for explaining this feature of English. I've often wondered how the stress was determined.

[@folyglot7806]

Interesting as always! A couple notes, I'm pretty sure in standard American we don't stress the sub in subcontractor. Also, super as an adjective is (anecdotally) alive and well among some midwesterners. Lastly, and this doesn't fit thematically, the compound Taco Bell varies literally from speaker to speaker in the same age group, region and family according to an informal study conducted when I was 20. Thanks!

[@radadadadee]

I say TACO bell

[@yura2424]

Wow! I never thought of this. Eye-opening

[@CailenCambeul]

One to think about that was missed was the Highlander. Normal People: Highlander/Highl'nder with reduced emphasis on the a in lander. Others: Two separate words High + Lander. - Emphasis 1: HIGH + Lander. - Emphasis 2: High + LANDER.

[@danmcdaid]

There is always something new to learn! Wonderful

[@q-tuber7034]

Hats off to the editor, making Dr. Lindsey speak in time with the music at the end

[@lisaedmondson780]

Simply delightful! Excellent job. Many thanks!

[@oem42]

That we do this so naturally without thinking is so bizzare

[@Unknown-jt1jo]

Yes, it's bizarre. Human consciousness is an iceberg; we're only aware of a small fraction of our behaviors.

[@zagobelim]

What a fun video! Thanks, Dr. Lindsey!

[@mariavirginiaperez5083]

So clear!!! Thank you professor Lindsey!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

You're very welcome!

[@jirkanovak2]

So cool to finally know, which rules the accentuation of the names of the superheroes like Batman, Spiderman, Dr. Lindsey or Superman follows!

[@JimCvit]

Never realized this. Blew my mind.

[@daverhoden445]

I'd never even noticed this. Brilliant.

[@PatMk2010]

Thank you, Dr Lindsey, for explaining this rather intricate topic in such a clear and pedagogical way. A breath of fresh air indeed!

[@chorabari]

Excellent! Having learned this in my elective linguistics course years ago, I have often tried to explain it and not been understood. Next time I will just forward this video.

[@icanfly5964]

Phenomenal content. Thank you!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

You're welcome!

[@roxanabasso7199]

Very interesting, Dr Lindsey. Thank you

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Glad you liked it, Roxana

[@MegaBunnyd]

great video! also, as you mentioned with Daredevil --Superman, Submariner, and Batman were all words with their own meanings before they became the names of specific characters

[@tulliusexmisc2191]

That also applies to Watchmen - most frequently used in the phrase 'night watchmen' . However, I always interpreted Moore's costumed adventurers as watchmen in the other sense: as members of a watch. That makes Watch a noun rather than a verb.

[@MrRizeAG]

@@tulliusexmisc2191 It's also a pun on watches (as in clocks) which are an important repeated symbol in the story.

[@Zzyzzyx]

Really? Batman?

[@MegaBunnyd]

@@Zzyzzyx in the British army a batman was an officer's personal servant or assistant

[@Ihad9eyes]

Very fun episode!

[@tiddlypom2097]

5:10 omg I used to read my grandma's Andy Capp comics when I was a kid, I never realised it was a pun 🤯 I guess Flo should have taken his name as a warning 😂

[@ericb9609]

very interesting lesson. As a non native speaker, stressing a word at the right place is exceedingly difficult and haphazard...

[@thalianero1071]

“…with the correct stress-“ Good one!

[@ajwinberg]

This video was quite eye opening.

[@isabellepelletier2540]

Thanks for this video!

[@yoghass]

What a marvelous channel!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you!

[@luckyluckydog123]

superb video, thanks!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Glad you liked it!

[@jyrki21]

A related example of the “boy scout” shift would be “all-star”. The word originates from “all star TEAM”, meaning a team of only stars. But it got backformed so that each member of the team is individually an “all-star”, and the stress shifted to the “all” as a result. Even though the same process happened with the term “all-American” (such that individual members of the all-American team receiving this distinction are now called “all-Americans”), the primary stress is still on the “mer”.

[@danjbundrick]

All of the bosses in the NES Megaman series are some adjective or noun plus the word "man", and they all put the emphasis on the first part. METALman, BRIGHTman, QUICKman, PHAROAHman, BUBBLEman, BOMBman

[@Philaster3000]

Brilliant!

[@tiddlypom2097]

6:12 I always wondered why Americans say "Happy NEWyear" rather than "Happy New YEAR". This explains so much! And at some point Australians started doing this too, influenced by all the Hollywood Christmas specials. Oh well, c'est la vie.

[@notwithouttext]

interesting how i say "happy NEW year" but "~ we WISH you a merry CHRISTmas and a HAPpy new YEAR ~", because the second is an english song

[@mdsaif-jv8ii]

Thanks much.💜

[@liliannam565]

Thanks!

[@3rdand105]

Forgive me, but I was half-expecting you to pronounce it "Syuperman," based on another of your videos. I've heard several British people say "syuper" for "super," and I must confess, I pronounce it "syuper" for effect; it makes some Americans smile, because they're not expecting that pronunciation from me (I'm a native speaker, born and raised in the USA).

[@juana343]

You are the Compound Superhero Geoff!! Thank you for this video !! I am the villian teacher who is stealing your work and posting it on her Facebook wall. (metaphorically speaking LOL) Thank you!!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you Stella! Steal away!

[@traal]

GRAMMAR Jeff 😊

[@peterdowden7694]

When I was a kid an Irish kid came to our class and started talking about the post OFFICE and the dry CLEANERS. I imagine he liked eating ice CREAM too.

[@baerlauchstal]

Dry CLEANERS throughout these islands. Post OFFICE isn’t often used in England, but you hear it in some Scottish varieties well as Irish ones. Maybe in South Wales too, though stress works very differently in Welsh English.

[@peterdowden7694]

@@baerlauchstal btw I am in New Zealand

[@stephendaly3517]

Depends what part of Ireland he was from. I’m from Dublin (east) and we would laugh at the western pronunciation like your old classmate. Ireland has a surprising number of accents and dialects… I always ate ICE cream.

[@Isitshiyagalombili]

How long would you put up with being a cleaner in damp conditions? Lol Is it also a dry GOODS store?

[@peterdowden7694]

@Isitshiyagalombili Kevin McCloud on Grand Designs always says "retaining WALL" which sounds odd.

[@snowfloofcathug]

Iron Fist being said without stressing either word is honestly the cooler way to say it, to me anyway

[@a88senna]

what I find most fascinating is that without having to be told we know where to put the stress instictively.

[@vatechie21]

Loved this. The ENTIRE video, after every rule, i was like but... how does Superman fit into all this? 😅

[@thethinkinlad]

this video has actually taught me how to pronounce some of the names correctly 💀 never thought "winter soldier" was supposed to be read that way

[@sebastienh1100]

We French don’t use accentuation much - hence the comic mistakes we often make when speaking English

[@coryjorgensen622]

I had a French colleague in graduate school and to me it sounded funny/cute/strange? (I liked it, but I'm not expressing it very well!) to hear her speak English. Her English was perfect with a bit of a French accent, but she seemed to say words without stressing them at all, which sounds really bizarre in English.

[@bobbuethe1477]

Japanese also tends to put equal stress on all syllables.

[@evermorevictorious2742]

Dr Lindsay, please do a video on the dark L and the vocalised L. How do you say the name of the letter w, besides "double u"? Do people say "dubby-u"?

[@carultch]

President Bush was known for calling it "dubbya".

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

Dubby-u? I doubt, but 'dubb-you' maybe, unless that was what you were meaning originally. I can't imagine anybody turning the double of double U into 'dubby' L vocalization would make it sound more like 'dubbo/dubbu' than dubby, unless there's some variety out there I'm unaware of. Hm, actually on second thought, with L vocalization and vowel reduction, it could sound potentially like 'dubby' I guess if one could imagine a posh RP speaker saying 'dubby' Namely, that vowel reduction of the 'le' of double in a compound could potentially sound like the 'I' of the word "bit" (albeit centralized and shorter in length) in, say, American English (one that has L vocalization at least) This'd be different from 'dubby' alone, as -y is normally pronounced [i:] like in 'beat' word finally (and this is why I mentioned a posh RP speaker saying it, as word final -y's can be pronounced more like the vowel of 'bit' than 'beat' in that context, though this is rather uncommon nowadays in most English varieties I'm aware of) I think I'd say it as [ˈdʌ̈bɫ̩ˌjɪ̯ʏ] or [ˈdʌ̈bɪ̈̆ˌjɪ̯ʏ] if I'm speaking more quickly.

[@Blake_Stone]

Iron Fist's name is derived from the general lexicon of 1970s kung fu films, in particular I think it probably came from 1971's "The Duel" which was released in the US under the title "Duel of the Iron Fist". I've always thought of it as "iron FIST". In-story it's a title that goes along with the supernatural power of the "Iron Fist" which is a literal fist of metaphorical iron (ie, very hard and strong). The Iron Fist is the man who has the power to wield the Iron Fist - which can get a little confusing.

[@Tofkaai]

Most EXCELLENT content! Or is it MOST excellent?

[@lilmoyse]

Great video. One question, why do we say Mr Men (with the stress on ‘Mister’) but Mr Tickle (with the stress on ‘Tickle’)?

[@nathangamble125]

In my mind "IRON fist" would be a superhero whose fists are devices for flattening clothing (or maybe a pornstar in a very small and strange niche related to such devices). "iron FIST" is a superhero defined by his fists, which are metaphorically iron-like.

[@rosiefay7283]

'"iron FIST" is a superhero defined by his fists, which are metaphorically iron-like.' But if you think of the name in that way, it's a bahuvrihi compound. Such compounds are typically stressed on the first element. For example sabretooth, bigfoot, tenderfoot, greenhorn, butterfingers, Bluebeard. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahuvrihi

[@ziyad7600]

I never thought I'd learn about superheroes from an English professor.

[@hermi1-kenobi455]

you sound like terry deary and i love that

[@mr.pavone9719]

I want to see a British version of the Human Torch where instead of being on fire he runs around with a flashlight.

[@benmaloney5434]

I always wondered about the British TV show 'Top Gear'. I grew up treating it like a noun-phrase 'top GEAR', but it seems as if most people are actually inclined toward 'TOP gear'.

[@evermorevictorious2742]

Dr Lindsay, please do a video on the dark L and the vocalised L. How do you say the name of the letter w, besides "double u"?

[@columbus8myhw]

I suppose I've heard "dubya", in particular as a nickname for former US president George W. Bush (not to be confused with his father, George H. W. Bush, who was also a president) There's also a dorm building here at Yale called Lanman-Wright Hall or LW for short, but most people call it "L-Dub" I know some languages call the letter "wee" or "weh" to fit the pattern of other letters being named after their sounds, but I've never heard this in English.

[@JS-ih7lu]

I found this video fascinating, so much so that I looked up several videos of people saying full names. When David Attenborough says “this is David Attenborough”, the stress is on his first name, “DAvid”. Videos from many Americans, Australians and New Zealanders also stress the first syllable of their first names. Stephen Fry does a mix, he stresses “HUgh” in “Hugh Laurie”, but “BArt” in “Ross Bart”. Is there some hidden pattern to this?

[@averageday]

I was reaaaaally waiting for Superman

[@rosiefay7283]

8:13 I see "She" in "She-Hulk" as designating or specifying which Hulk she is, so She gets stressed. 8:16 Watchmen could be said to have the suffix -men, as in the common noun "watchmen".

[@JB-gw8ee]

It's amazing how we've learned things we never knew we learned from people who never knew they were teaching us.

[@joeytabora1052]

Interestingly, it's actually fairly common for the stress on the Invisible Woman to be flipped the other way around (regardless of whether you include "the" at the beginning), as in INVISIBLE Woman rather than Invisible WOMAN. I can't exactly pinpoint why, but that's how I say it, and I've heard a handful of comictubers say it like that as well (though not all of them!).

[@beeble2003]

That sounds more like it's trying to contrast this woman, who is invisible, with that woman, who is not.

[@tonyclifton265]

it's coming up to that time of year when beloved americans will say "happy *NEW* year" with giant emphasis on 'new' as if "new year" is a compound noun

[@juanpablotique]

Super teacher....

[@spacecorgi3074]

I remember seeing an interview with Dave Grohl talking about his time on SNL(?) with Christopher Walken. He came up to the band and said something like “I’m about to introduce you guys, is it Foo FIGHTERS or FOO Fighters? I can’t remember if it was the first time the band had really contemplated it or not, but they all unanimously agreed it was Foo FIGHTERS lol. Wonderful to see another discussion about something like this because I’d love to see if there’s more that can be said with band names. The rolling STONES, the BEATles, Herman’s HERmits, Pink FLOYD, etc

[@NathanOkun]

Neat, neat, neat!!!!

[@meganfoster8838]

I'm a native English speaker with a BA in linguistics, and my kids were always telling me I didn't put the stress in the right place for the band One Direction (and I still trip up long after that band split and became Five Directions).

[@JamiePryke]

Language is mad. How we as humans develop this level of complexity regarding something so simple as character names is insane.

[@macsnafu]

Interestingly, I never thought much about the stress syllable in these names. Who knew that superheroes could teach us something like this? ;-) I have to wonder about Detective Chimp, though. Is that *really* the character's name, or is it just the title of the character's series? I suppose it could be his nickname.

[@brucebirch2790]

Isn’t the difference not “first word stressed” or “second word stressed”, but rather that both elements in the non-compounds can align 9:56 with pitch-accents, the second optionally aligning with an utterance-final contour, lending it more prominence? The compounds and non-compounds are not simple mirror images of each other, are they? Very much enjoying your videos, which I discovered only recently. Great examples.

[@brucebirch2790]

Sorry that time code got inserted unintentionally.

[@pentalarclikesit822]

I'd seen Andy Capp comic strips since I was a little kid . . . never realized the pun until today.

[@derekmills5394]

Try the German version - ask Bradley Walsh kzbin.info/www/bejne/m6iTfqZ-np6sY80

[@bluetannery1527]

:33 the way you said the word 'stress' sent me, you're so clearly screwing w us

[@annakapp7087]

The Andy Capp example is funny, especially as some one who's name is Anna Kapp

[@Blake_Stone]

I somehow lived an entire life without it registering in my brain that "Andy Capp" is a pun.

[@harvestrina]

Amazing video. What about Big Foot?!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you. BIG Foot is like GREENhouse and IRON Man. They get compound stress because they have a new unitary meaning that isn't literal/transparent. We can still say literal non-compounds "I have a big FOOT", "they live in that green HOUSE", "he sculpted an iron MAN". I think Americans can start to use compound stress more readily than Brits. I hear Americans saying "STRANGER things" for the show, but I (and I think many/most Brits) still call it Stranger THINGS.

[@miamc4602]

It seems that when there's no space, the stress is always on the first part. This also makes me have difficulty and misread things such as "bestfriend" because the lack of space makes me read it with the stress on the wrong part.

[@thebigmacd]

"bestfriend" isn't a word. It's "best friend". The stress goes on the second word because the first is an adjective. Unless you specifically want to emphasize "best" as a comparison. "I have many friends, but you are my BEST friend".

[@miamc4602]

@@thebigmacd i was talking about when people write "best friend" as "bestfriend" I've been seeing it pretty frequently recently and it makes it harder to understand

[@MrAwawe]

7:04 "orange JUICE" sounds a little suspicious; as if it gets its colour from food dye, rather than fruit.

[@christophertaylor9100]

I have never noticed anyone doing that stress with names. But its an interesting theory.

[@ohth8047]

An interesting side point to this, if you watch a lot of twitch, streamers have a tendency to say ability names with a different stress. So instead of flurry of BLOWs they say FLURRy of blows, TALK to the hand etc. This feels like a similar process to the compound noun but treating an entire phrase as a compound noun. Especially jarring when the phrases are commonly said stock phrases but accented differently

[@gFamWeb]

My mom's (grand?)mother would do a bit where she would say "I put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble". It still makes me chuckle 😂

[@MisterChrisInTheUK]

I've wondered why Top GEAR' has become TOP Gear to a lot of younger people.

[@NickUva]

I haven't thought about Andy Capp in forever. My grandfather exposed me to Andy Capp although he wasn't so big, here in the US. My favorite: "If you don't put down that beer, you'll get hurt." "Don't be daft, man, a beer can't hurt me." [Andy knocks the man out.] "It can if it 'appens to be mine."

[@leighmackay7486]

Enlightening. Thank you. Apologies if this question is a disconnect from the subject but have you addressed the word "extraordinary"? I've always pronounced it as a single word but hear some pronounce it as two as in "extra ordinary".

[@bbnn5621]

I think it’s similar to what he is discussing with “extra ordinary” being similar to the noun phrase and more literal while extraordinary is more suggestive Compound. So something out of the ordinary is 0extra ordinary”, something that is spectacular is “extraordinary”

[@nicolab2075]

@@bbnn5621 In fact, if I heard someone really separate the two and emphasise the 'ordinary', I might think they meant it was the opposite of amazing, and actually incredibly ordinary 😄

[@stiofanmacamhalghaidhau765]

@@nicolab2075 I wrote an article a few years back using that very word-play to good effect :-)

[@SarahlovesSerge]

@@nicolab2075 I agree, I feel like people separate the two words to make sure we don't think it's a compliment