How do native speakers guess the pronunciation of a word that they've never seen before? [closed]

Question

How do native speakers guess the pronunciation of a word that they've never seen before ? Is there a general rule for that ?

For example, someone said :

Words that end in -ic or -tion will be stressed on the second to last syllable. It doesn't matter how many syllables long a word is, we will count backward.
Here are some examples with -ic and -tion.
-ic: `classic, fan`tas-tic, e-co-`nom-ic, en-thu-si-`as-tic
-tion: `nation, con`di-tion, in-tu-`i-tion, spec-i-fi-`ca-tion 

I would like to know more other rules like the above one, not only how to stress the word properly but also the way to pronounce one word correctly (or nearly correct) without knowing the phonetic.

p/s : In short, my question is : "Is there a way to guess the pronunciation of a word correctly (or nearly correct) when we don't know it's phonetic code ?"

Answer 1

I think there are a number of Internet resources that could be consulted and I would encourage you to pursue that.

This site (for example) http://funeasyenglish.com/american-english-pronunciation-word-and-sentence-stress.htm

has some of the "rules" I think you are after.

Stress on the first syllable

• most 2-syllable nouns – china, table, export, pencil

• most 2-syllable adjectives – slender, clever, happy

Stress on the last syllable

• most 2-syllable verbs – to export, to decide, to begin

Stress on the third syllable from the end (ante-penultimate syllable)

• words ending in “cy”, “ty”, “phy” and “gy” – democracy, dependability, photography, geology, society

• words ending in “al” – critical, geological