in english, we stress some syllables very heavily and hurry over others. the vowel sound of a stressd syllable is strong and distinct, while the vowel sound of an unstressed syllable is often weak and muffled (technical term for this muffled vowel sound is schwa), no matter what letter or letter team happens to be used
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the habit of stressing one syllable very heavily, and slighting

the rest, is characteristic of the german languages, and this habit has taken over throughout modern english. however, the heavy stress is used in one way on the german (or native english) side of the language and in the very different way on the latin side.
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on the native english side, we follow the german habit of using stress to emphasize the point of what is being said……
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the same principle of stressing the main idea holds good for individual words. since the main idea is contained in the root, the root is stressed no matter where it comes in the word: hammering, remaking, afternoon, afterwards, ovetaken, understandable……fairly easy to spot……
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in latin and its descendants, french, italian and spanish, the stress pattern is entirely different. in stead of falling always on the root, the stress shifts back and forth as the word changes form. e.g. political and politics. in the purely latin languages, the stress, wherever it falls, is fairly light, and theunstressed syllable are spoken fairly clearly –enough so that the vowels of the less-stressed sylllables have maintained their characteristic sounds throughout two thousand years of language development.
when such a word first begins to enter english, its spelling reflects the original vowel sound for each syllables, stressed or unstressed. moreover, the stress continues to shifts in the latin way as the word changes form. but now, wherever the stress falls, it is the heavy english type of stress. this quickly causes the vowels of the least-stressed syllables to become muffled.
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