Add stress marks to Russian text

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Stress in the Russian Language

Learning Russian pronunciation may be challenging for people who are just starting to learn Russian. As you may know, Russian vowels are pronounced differently depending on whether they are stressed or unstressed.

Unlike some other languages, Russian does not have strict rules for the stress position. Stress may fall on any syllable of a word (in contrast to French for example, where the stress almost always falls on the last syllable). Stress patterns are almost impossible to predict, especially for someone who has just started learning Russian.

This online tool automatically inserts stress marks into Russian words and restores the letter "ё" in Russian text. It will save you a lot of time – you will no longer need to look up the stress position in a dictionary.

Some Russian words with the same spelling can have different meanings depending on the placement of the stress. Compare:

• замо́к (lock) ↔ за́мок (castle)
• больша́я (big) ↔ бо́льшая (bigger)

These words are called homographs. The tool will show you all possible stress positions in such words. The dictionary contains 23,376 homographs (16,609 unique spellings).

Russian also has a group of words that can be thought of as "fake" homographs – words with the letter "ё" that become homographs when spelled with the letter "е". For example, if "берёг" is spelled with the letter "е", it can be pronounced either as "бе́рег" (shore) or as "берёг" (was taking care). This online tool will show both stress positions in these words. More examples are given below:

• колеса́ (wheel, genitive case) ↔ колёса (wheels)
• о́зера (lake, genitive case) ↔ озёра (lakes)

Russian also has another group of words that can be spelled either with the letter "ё" or with the letter "е". The stress position is the same in both words, but the meaning is different. For example:

• все́ (everybody) ↔ всё (everything)
• не́бо (sky) ↔ нёбо (palate)

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To develop this translator, we used information from different sources mentioned on this page. The phonetic transcription was taken from these sources in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada (Paragraph 29, Fair Dealing for the purpose of education).