Stress

Unlike some languages (but like English) the stress in Russian is unpredictable. There are a few patterns, but basically you just have to learn the word's stress along with its spelling and gender (or type). Stress is crucial, as there are many words that are differentiated only by stress, for instance:

• мука (torture) – мука (flour)
• памок (castle) – замок (lock)
• засыпать (to fall asleep) – засыпать (to fill, to pour)
• полки (shelves) – полки (regiments)
• парить (to soar) – парить (to steam)
• уже (already) – уже (narrower)
• стоящий (standing) – стоящий (worthwhile)
• писать (to write) – писать (to pee)
• дорогой (instrumental case of дорога - road) - дорогой (expensive, dear)
• потом (instrumental case of пот - sweat) - потом (then, afterwards)

Most nouns have regular, non-moving stress. On the other hand, many important nouns have shifting stress, which means that different forms of the same word may have the stress on different syllables (for example слова/слова (genitive singular/nominative plural of слoво, "word"). Verbs can have shifting stress too. There are two common irregularities:

1. In the present tense forms: 1st person singular is stressed on the final syllable, the rest of the forms are stressed on a previous syllable.
2. In the past tense forms: the feminine form is stressed on the final а, while the other forms are stressed on a previous syllable.

Some of those patterns I mentioned are:

• Long-form adjectives have perfectly regular stress: either it is fixed on a root syllable, or it is fixed at the end.
• the letter ё is always stressed (with rare exceptions of borrowed and complex words like трёхъярусный three-tiered)
• the -ый and -ий adjectival endings are never stressed
• the -ство and -ость endings are rarely stressed (количество, детство, радость, личность quantity, childhood, joy, personality)
• words containing -тель- tend to have the preceding syllable stressed (зритель, читатель, питательный witness, reader, nourishing)
• words ending in -ие and -ия also tend to be stressed on the preceding syllable (чтение, зрение, посвящение, история, компания, революция a reading, sight, dedication, history, company, revolution ) with certain exceptions
• words ending in -ак tend to be stressed on the last syllable (табак, дурак, зодиак, tobacco, fool, zodiac) with exceptions (завтрак, breakfast)