Honestly, these are some pretty confusing resources that basically tell you that stress in the Russian language is essential but there's no defined patterns to follow and the best way is to memorize the stresses and listen as much as you can to Russian so that it eventually becomes natural and starts to sound correct.

​

Stress plays an important role in Russian language. In order to speak Russian correctly it is necessary to know the place of the stress in the words. In some cases incorrect stress leads to the change of meaning or grammatical value of the word. Stress in Russian is not fixed, it may fall on any part of the word (beginning, center, end) and it is not shown in texts. Moreover, stress may change its place in different forms of the same word and it is a real difficulty for those who are learning Russian.

Russian words are normally written without stress marks. Therefore, it is important to devote special attention to the place of stress in words when learning Russian. In order to help students to memorize the place of stress in Russian words, in manuals and text books stresses are usually marked, most frequently with [ ´ ] above the stressed vowel. In our script, the stressed part of the word is in bold, in the footnotes page on the webpage the stressed part is in all caps.

​

REDUCTION OF VOWELS
In Russian, unstressed vowels are not pronounced as distinctly as stressed vowels. The alteration of a vowel in an unstressed position is called reduction. As a result of reduction, some letters denoting vowel sounds are read in a different manner than they are read in the alphabet.

In unstressed position there are no alterations in reading of letters и, ы, у, ю. Letter ё is always in stressed position, that is why it is read either as [yo] (at the beginning of the word, after vowels, ьand ъ) or as [o] (after consonants).

The letter а denotes a short neutral sound [ə] which is similar to the final sound in the English word water.

VOWEL REDUCTION RULES

Here is a quick reference to the vowel reduction rules in Russian. The phonetic transcriptions, shown in square brackets, are intended to remind you about vowel reduction and other aspects of Russian pronunciation which are not obvious from the spelling.

Vowel Reduction Rule 1 - The letter o
In the first syllable before the stress the letter о sounds like а [a]: o -> a 
we spell: окно́, Москвá 
we say: [акно], [масквa] 
translation: window, Moscow 

Vowel Reduction Rule 2 - The letters о, а
Anywhere after the stress and more than one syllable before the stress the letter о sounds like [ə]:o, a -> ə 
we spell: ко́смос, лáмпа, карандáш, профе́ссор, хорошо́ 
we say: [космəс], [лампə], [кəрандаш], [прафессəр], [хəрашо] 
translation: cosmos, lamp, pencil, professor, well/good 

Vowel Reduction Rule 3 - The letters е, я
In the first syllable before the stress the letters е, я are pronounced like и [ih]: е, я -> и
we spell: сестрá, мечтá, рекá, далеко́ 
we say: [с'истра], [м'ичта], [р'ика], [дəл'ико] 
translation: sister, dream, river, far away 

Vowel Reduction Rule 4 - The letters е, я
Anywhere after the stress and more than one syllable before the stress е, я are pronounced like 'ə [yuh]: е, я -> 'ə 
we spell: но́мер, учи́тель, де́сять, дя́дя 
we say: [ном'əр], [учит'əл'], [д'ес'əт'], [д'ад'ə] 
translation: number, teacher, ten, uncle

​

​

One of the most difficult aspects of learning Russian is figuring out the proper ударение (stress) in different words. What makes it so difficult is that in Russian there are virtually no rules that dictate which syllable has to be stressed. There are some закономерности (patterns), such as it never falls on the endings -ий/-ый. However, as Russians acknowledge нет правил без исключений(there are no rules without exceptions) and Russian grammar rules are particularly riddled with long lists of those.

​

The only way to figure out word stress is to memorize stressed vowel for each Russian word you learn and listen to lots and lots of conversations by native speakers (radio, movies and video work just as well). Do not assume, however, that by learning where stress falls in one word, you can now say однокоренные слова (cognates) or even different forms of the same word correctly. A real-life example would be of a language learner who would say:

​

Я бы хотел выпить воду (I would like to drink water), placing stress on у instead of о just because he knows that in the nominative вода the stress falls on the ending.

​

You see, in Russian, stress can fall on any слог (syllable) and on any часть слова (part of a word). In various grammatical forms of the same word (i.e. different cases, tenses, genders, etc) ударение can move from one vowel to another.

​

Example:

Тревога – тревожный – тревожить (alarm – alarming – to alarm) – the stress is consistently on the second гласная (vowel)

Земля – приземистый (ground – low to the ground) – the stress moves from the ending to the root

Чувство – чувственный – чувствительный (sense – sensual – sensitive) – the stress moves again in the last word

​

There is, however, one rule that is easy to remember. Whenever you see a word with ё in it, you can bet your dollar that ударение falls on this ё. But don’t bet more than a dollar because there are exceptions even to this rule – заимствованные (borrowed) words and сложные (compound) words are exempt.