2519: Germanic Stress Rule: Morae & Dreimorengesetz Nov 5, 2021
While the penultimate stress rule describes the stress accent for Latin, a similar rule for Germanic languages was proposed, called Dreimorengesetz (three-mora rule), wherein the stress is placed 3 morae before the end of each word; a mora is a unit for which a light syllable (generally a short one) is one mora and a heavy syllable (generally a long one) is two morae. This has its own problems, especially in the way it necessitates categorizing the final syllable as always light, but it does provide somewhat of a sense of Germanic languages' stress.
2518: Penultimate Stress Rule Nov 4, 2021
Languages often have inbuilt rules for how each word will take stress, such as Finnish or Proto-Italic were stress is indefinitely on the first syllable, but other times it is dependant on other factors in the environment. Even in Classical Latin, which is slightly more standard, the penultimate stress rule states that if the penultimate syllable is naturally long or if it ends with a consonant it will have the stress accent, and otherwise the stress accent falls on the third-to-last syllable. There are some exceptions, especially around sounds that have been elided or historically syncopated (or of course, doesn't have enough syllables), but this will cover the vast majority of Latin words, and words of other languages.
1140: Stress-Timing Jan 22, 2018
Certain languages like English, Thai, and Persian have what is called 'stress-timing'. This is the notion that while syllables may differ in length, the perceived amount of time stressing is the same, which is in contrast to syllable-timed languages like French, Welsh, Icelandic, and Mandarin as a form of isochrony wherein syllables are perceived as the same length as each other. These categories are rough and somewhat subjective, lacking definitive empirical evidence, but are widely accepted by many linguists. What this means is that, for example, an utterance like 'bid for peace' in which there are two stressed syllables on either side of an unstressed syllable, the unstressed syllable, in this case 'for' is pronounced for longer than it would were it not between two stressed syllables. Most of the world's languages are classified as stress-timed. You can now support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.