Add stress marks to Russian text
Paste any Russian — a textbook paragraph, a message, a poem. Every word gets its stress mark, the dots come back on ё, and words whose stress depends on meaning are shown both ways instead of guessed. Then listen to it and say it: the recorder scores every word and every sound.
- Stress and ё from a dictionary of over 550,000 word forms
- Homographs (за́мок / замо́к) flagged with both options
- Listen, then record yourself — free, no account
OpenRussian.org · CC BY-SA 4.0
Where the stress marks come from
Russian stress is free: it can fall on any syllable and it moves as a word changes form — рука́ but ру́ку, говори́ть but он говори́т. No rule predicts it reliably, so the marker does not guess. It looks every word up in a dictionary of more than 550,000 stressed word forms, every case of every noun and adjective and every tense of every verb, built from the open OpenRussian.org dictionary.
Words with one vowel get no mark, since there is nothing to choose. ё gets its dots back (еще becomes ещё, елка becomes ёлка) and needs no accent, because ё is always stressed. A word the dictionary does not have, usually a name or a rare word, is left unmarked and listed separately, so you know which marks to trust.
Homographs: when the spelling is not enough
Some words are spelled identically and stressed differently, and only the meaning or the grammar decides. The marker shows both and lets you pick. Most of them are not rare words but ordinary forms of common ones: руки is ру́ки (hands) in the plural and руки́ (of the hand) in the genitive singular.
| Spelling | One stress | The other | What decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| замок | за́мок — castle | замо́к — lock | Meaning |
| мука | му́ка — torment | мука́ — flour | Meaning |
| руки | ру́ки — hands | руки́ — of the hand | Number and case |
| города | го́рода — of the city | города́ — cities | Number and case |
| все / всё | все — everyone | всё — everything | ё, usually not printed |
Why stress changes how the word sounds
In Russian, stress does not only make a syllable louder; it changes the vowels around it. An unstressed о is said close to а, and an unstressed е or я close to и. That is why молоко́ sounds like "ma-la-KO" and not "mo-lo-ko", and язы́к like "yi-ZYK". Put the stress in the wrong place and you say the wrong vowels too.
So marking the stress is the first step and saying the reduced vowels is the second. The Russian pronunciation practice page takes any text and scores how you said it, and the guide to hard and soft consonants covers the other half of Russian sounds.
| Word | Marked | Roughly said | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| молоко | молоко́ | ma-la-KO | Unstressed о → a |
| хорошо | хорошо́ | ha-ra-SHO | Unstressed о → a |
| язык | язы́к | yi-ZYK | Unstressed я → i |
| телефон | телефо́н | ti-li-FON | Unstressed е → i |
| говорить | говори́ть | ga-va-REET' | Unstressed о → a |
Say it: what the score checks, and what it does not
Under the marked text, Record myself opens a recorder on the same words. You get a 0–100 score for every word and every sound, including the reduced vowels above, and the weakest sound is named.
To be clear about the limit: the engine scores sounds, not stress. It does not tell you that you stressed the wrong syllable. When the stress is wrong, the vowels around it usually come out wrong as well, and those vowels are what the score picks up. For a quick overall read, try the five-word Russian accent test.
Russian stress marker: questions
Is the stress marker free?+
Yes. Marking stress is free and unlimited and needs no account or microphone. Recording yourself is free too, up to a daily number of scored takes.
How accurate are the stress marks?+
Every mark comes from a dictionary entry for that exact word form, not from a guess. Where a spelling has two possible stresses, both are shown. Words that are not in the dictionary are left unmarked and listed.
Does it put the dots back on ё?+
Yes. When the dictionary spells a word with ё, the marker restores it (еще → ещё). Where both spellings are real words, like все and всё, both are offered.
Why are one-syllable words not marked?+
A word with one vowel can only be stressed on that vowel, so dictionaries and textbooks leave it unmarked. The marker does the same.
Does the recorder check my stress?+
No. It scores every word and every sound you say — including the reduced vowels that wrong stress usually produces — but not the stress itself.
Practise Russian out loud every day
The TonePerfect app gives you short daily speaking sessions in Russian, with a score on every word and every sound.
Stress and ё: OpenRussian.org dictionary data (CC BY-SA 4.0), as stressed word forms. Audio: your device's Russian voice.