Expression "where to put the stress"

[Mdenglish]

Hello there

Where do you put the stress ? I think it must be number one but i am not sure ( also senior high school).

1. junior high school
2. junior high school

Thanks again

mdenglish

[Alan]

Hi,

If you want to state simply that the type of school is 'junior/senior high school', each word would have equal stress. It's only whether you want to emphasise 'high' 'junior' or 'senior' that you would want to stress one of those words.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Present Simple

[Yankee]

Hi mdenglish

In American English, the main stress would normally be on the word 'high'.

Otherwise, I would agree with Alan that you can place added stress on junior/senior if you want to emphasize that it is one and not the other, for example.
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Amy
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ESL teacher, and native speaker of American English

[Alan]

Hi,

I feel that I need to amend radically what I said earlier this morning about stress as this is clearly not one of those AmE/BrE situations. The type of school is a 'high school' in contrast say to a 'private school' or a 'public school' and the stress must fall on the word immediately preceding the noun and giving it its definition. This would apply for example to the word 'gauge' where we could talk of 'an oil gauge' or 'a pressure gauge' and in relation to 'engine' for the first and 'tyre' for the second, theses two words wouldn't be stressed. I only I have made myself clear!

Alan
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English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story Relative Pronoun