A wooden SPOON on OXFORD street - Compound Nouns part 2.

One sunny day in 1980 an old tramp was walking down Oxford Street when he happened upon a plastic bag of discarded kitchen tools. He looked inside excitedly and found a wooden spoon, a pie dish, a funnel and a tin can. 'What joy!' he said to himself, yet at the time he didn't know why...

Later that evening the happy tramp bedded down for the night in the doorway of M&S. Stretching his weary body he was pained to see the last button on his jacket pop clean off. 'If only there'd been a needle and thread in that bag,' he thought, 'I could have sewn it back on and saved my poor empty belly from the cold London air'. Sad at such a turn of events he looked to the sky and wept in the light of the moon.

In the morning the tearful tramp awoke to a strange feeling of excitement. He'd dreamt that the moon was a huge button in the sky and that a man, called Mr. Spoon, had adventures there with his friends. Wandering through the streets the tramp played the stories over in his mind and then he had an idea. 'This would make a great TV series!' he thought, 'kids will love it!'... 

... and love it they did for that very day, the tramp got a series commissioned by ITV. The series was called Button Moon and had eight successful years on telly. And the tramp? He now lives in a huge mansion with 80s TV legend, Pat Sharp.

We've been to Button Moon,
We've followed Mr. Spoon,
Button Moon. Button Moon.

So, here we are, Compound Nouns part 2. Last time I went through the typical stress pattern for compound, the first element. Now let's look at the exceptions.

In the true story above try to find the compounds. You should have: wooden spoon, tin can, Oxford Street, doorway and pie dish.

The first two, 'wooden SPOON' and 'tin CAN' are stressed on the second part because the first element describes what the thing is made of. So we don't get 'pie DISH' unless that dish was actually made of pie!

Other compounds that go in this group:

• where the first element is a name: Bermuda TRIANGLE, Euston STATION, London ROAD.
• where the first element is a value: 100% EFFORT, ten pound NOTE, fifty p. PIECE.
• where the second element is 'window': bay WINDOW, sash WINDOW.
• other exceptions include: combine HARVESTER, county COUNCIL, kitchen SINK, trade UNION.

Pat Sharp - confused.

Pat Sharp: Hold on! If the first noun is a name then what's going on with OXFORD Street?

Lizz: Any name with 'Street' is stressed on the first noun.

Pat Sharp: And what about CHRISTMAS cake?

Lizz: 'cake' words are another exception, I'm afraid. CHEESEcake, ECCLES cake, all of them.

Pat Sharp: Anything else?

Lizz: Nope.

Practice exercise

Using the spot the difference from the previous blog post (The green ONE - Compound Nouns part 1.) ask students to find compound nouns following both stress patterns, they should have:

• Compounds stressed on the first element: lighthouse, baseball cap, banana skin, rowing boat, fishing boat, power boat, seagull, seal trip, life ring, litter bin, recycling bin, fishing rod, coastline, ponytail.
• Compounds stressed on the second element: rubber boat, rubber ring, steel drum, cotton T-shirt, wooden mast. 

Follow up with the sitting/standing drill in the previous post.

For those of you who haven't seen the amazing Button Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f20BLJGHNXY