The rules for assigning stress in English are quite complex. Stress in English is lexical, that is, it comes with a word and usually has to be memorized. Similar words often have similar stress patterns, but this is not always true.
Words that appear to be similar can have completely different stress rules. This can really confuse people that are just learning English language.
Example
Take the following two words:
photograph
photographer
Notice that these 2 words are very similar (same root word) and will even appear in the dictionary as one entry. The stressed syllable is different in each case. For photograph, stress the 1st syllable. For photographer, the 2nd syllable is stressed. Even if you stress the wrong syllable (or stress no syllables at all), most English speakers will still know what you mean, although the word may sound a bit unusual. There are a lot of other English words like this which change their stress patterns completely even though a simple suffix (such as "-er") is added.
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