Page 427 - Tagalog for Beginners: An Introduction to Filipino, the National Language of the Philippines

ay bahay house
aw galaw move
iw giliw loved one

oy tuloy continue
uy kasuy cashew

Stresses and Accents 2
There are five principal stresses and three principal accents in Tagalog/Filipino.
There are:
1. Penultimate stress or diing malumay. The stress is on the syllable before the last.
2. Penultimate stress and glottal or diing malumi. The stress is either on the
penultimate syllable, or the first syllable in words with only two syllables. The
vowel at the end is given a glottal sound, produced by the abrupt close of the
throat. This is shown through a grave accent mark on the second vowel, for
example, awà (pity), leading students (when reading old texts) to sometimes be
confused, and think that the accent is on the last syllable.
3. Acute stress or diing mabilis. The stress is on the last syllable. In old texts, the
acute or pahilis accent is used, for example, labás (outside).
4. Acute glottal or diing maragsa. The emphasis is on the last syllable with the
glottal sound. In old texts, the circumflex or pakupya accent is used, for
example, tuyô (dry).

5. Antepenultimate acute stress or diing mariin. This is a heavy stress given to a
syllable before the penultimate syllable. The acute accent is used. Note that there
may exist another stress in the word. An example is lílima (only five).

Aspillera 1980 also offers the following pronunciation reminders:
1. A difference in stress may cause a change in the meaning of the word;
2. With the addition of a ligature or suffix, the final glottal stop is lost;
3. Monosyllabic words take the stress of the preceding word;
4. To avoid mispronunciation, a glottal stop between a vowel and a consonant is
represented by a hyphen.

Practical Notes
The following notes are from my experience in the language-learning classroom.
1. For native speakers in English, the first step is to forget about long vowel sounds.
There are no long vowel sounds in Filipino.