American English words have syllables—beats of energy—that can be counted. Use your fingers to tap each time you hear a syllable when you say the word “January.” “jan”-1, “u”-2, “a”-3, “ry”-4. Four syllables, right? Tap your fingers in the same way and say “January” again. You’ll notice that the first tap is louder/longer than the others—that means the first syllable is stressed: “JAN-u-a-ry.” It’s important to preserve the correct number of syllables and stress the correct one to be understood when you speak

January is the first month of the year and February, the second. Here are words from a thesaurus that mean first or second. How many syllables does each word have? Which syllable is stressed?