Compounds are formed of two words. They can be written as one word (airport), two words with a hyphen (left-handed), or two words (post office).
How do we know which part is stressed more? Either look in the dictionary:
post office → /’pəʊst ɒfɪs/ The ‘ symbol shows you that the following syllable is stressed
Or ask a native speaker to pronounce it.
A General Rule Usually we stress the first part of a compound:
The following compounds are all stressed on the first part. Go through the list and circle any words you usually pronounce with a different stress pattern: ‘art gallery ‘bank account ‘bar code ‘bedroom ‘body language ‘boyfriend ‘breakfast ‘check-in
‘credit card ‘deadline ‘football player ‘girlfriend ‘grandma ‘guidebook ‘hairdresser ‘hangover
‘headphones ‘keyboard ‘life insurance ‘lifestyle ‘motorbike ‘newspaper ‘orange juice ‘shopping centre
‘six-pack ‘status update ‘stock exchange ‘supermarket ‘swimming pool ‘tap water ‘toilet paper ‘train station
Compounds with some and any are stressed on the first part:
