Nicholas Bodley wrote:

> A while back, I was bothered because the last name of the composer Leoš
> Janáček is always pronounced in the USA with its first syllable
> stressed.
> I thought the a-acute was a stress accent, but apparently that's not the
> case; is it a "duration" accent?

Czech stress is always on the initial syllable of a non-clitic.
The acute accent (above a, e, i, and y) and the ring (above u only)
are length markers - that is, they mark "extended duration" of the
vowel, which is not an indicator of stress (even though in English,
stress is an amalgamation of amplitude, duration, etc.).

cheers,
-Patrick
UC Berkeley: Dept. of Linguistics, PhD student