When "produce" is a verb meaning "to create or manufacture", it's pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, as "pruh-DUSS".
But when it's a noun meaning "fresh fruits or vegetables", the emphasis is on the first syllable, as "PRO-duss".
Why is that?
It's about emphasis! Nouns and verbs often shift stress to different syllables. This helps listeners quickly understand the word's role in the sentence. Does that make sense?
It’s not only that word. Nouns and verbs do a similar thing, where the e accent changes.
Try finite and infinite. English is fucked up, and as an ESL I'm never sure how to pronounce my i's.
It’s not just i! It’s frequent that vowel sounds have a stressed and unstressed/relaxed pronunciation. In the case of your example, the stress stays in the first syllable, so the stressed /ai/ changes to unstressed /ɪ/.
It’s not just nouns and verbs. Sometimes it’s nouns and adjectives, like complex. The noun stresses the first syllable, the non-noun the second.
Fun fact. If you emphasize the first part it's a noun and if you emphasize the second part it's a verb
REcord N (historical evidence) reCORD V (to set down in writing)
English spelling is all over the place and follows few (if any) consistent rules.
In this case it just happens so that two distinct words, which are pronounced differently (albeit similar) just have the same spelling.
In case you want to look further into this, look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homograph
There are other examples too. Read and lead come to mind. English is a weird language.
Depends on whether it's being used as a noun or as a verb!
When we say "The factory workers produce a lot of widgets", we're using it as a verb. When we say "I bought some produce from the store today" you're using it as a noun. The emphasis on the individual syllables is changed when speaking just to make the distinction a bit more clear.
We do the same to a lot of other words that can be both verbs and nouns as well! "I object to that proposal" and "I picked up that object on my recent hike", or "We would like to address the crowd" and "We'd be sending this package to your home address".
It's just a weird quirk of language and speech!
Some words are like this regionally in the US. For instance, where I live now (in the south) people say THANKSgiving where as before it sounded more like thanksgiving when I grew up in Ohio.
Hope this helps.
I mean I pronounce it “Pro-DUCKY” regardless of the context 🦆
This happens with many two-syllable words that can be a noun or a verb. Contract, address, escort, and object are some examples. This isn't a rule though and there are many counterexamples where this isn't the case though (answer, shelter, silence, excuse, notice...)
Edit: these examples all work in my accent (southern England), it's probably different depending on where you're from
Wait escort does this too???
I've only ever heard or pronounced it as ˈesˌkôrt, but there it is in Oxford Languages as iˈskôrt for the verb form. Is this something that Americans (or maybe just a regional thing) don't differentiate between? Or is it just a subtle difference I never noticed before?
As a 30 something native speaker I'm spiraling a little lol
I think many of these are dialect dependent. I only have one pronunciation for "address". On the other hand, I do pronounce the verb and noun forms of "excuse" differently.
Uh'dress: to bring something up.
Ad'dress: where something is.
I had to address the crowd about the new address.
I hired an escort to escort me to the gala.