English is a stress-timed language; that is, stressed syllables appear at a roughly constant rate, and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this. Other languages have syllable timing (e.g. Spanish) or mora timing (e.g. Japanese), where syllables or morae are spoken at a roughly constant rate regardless of stress.
Some languages have fixed stress. That is, stress is placed always on a given syllable, as in Finnish and Hungarian (stress always on the first syllable) or Quechua and Polish (stress always on the penult: one syllable before the last) or on third syllable counting backwards, as in Macedonian (see: Stress in Macedonian language). Other languages have stress placed on different syllables but in a predictable way, as in Latin (where stress is conditioned by the structure of the penultimate syllable). They are said to have a regular stress rule.
I have a contention to the practice of capitalizing the stressed syllable in
regular text- one, I fInd It mUch hArder tO rEad wIth thE letter capitalized,
and secondly, in certain fonts, the capital I and lowercase l look /exactly/
the same. cIlno clIno try it out.
-Jon Jones
"I have a brain, I've just lost my mind." -Ian McLeod
"As a percentage of total universal knowledge, what I know is statistically insignificant." - me
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version 3.12
GCS>$ d+(++) s++:-- a- C++ UL P L++>+++++ !E W+(++) N+ o? K- !w---- O- M-(+)@ V? PS+++ PE- Y+ PGP- t+ !5-- X(+) R+ !tv-- b+++ DI+ D+ G e* h+* r+(++) y+(++)
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
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