В слове «молоко» ударение падает на последний слог.

Because в means in here, so it takes the prepositional case to show location:

• слово = nominative
• в слове = in the word

So в слове молоко means in the word moloko.

If в meant motion into, then you would use the accusative, but that is not what is happening here.

Because молоко is being mentioned as a word itself, not used as part of a normal sentence meaning milk.

When Russian refers to a word as a word, it is very often kept in its dictionary form and set off with quotation marks:

• в слове «молоко» = in the word “молоко”

So here молоко is basically being cited, not grammatically used as the object of something.

Literally, it means the stress falls.

This is the normal Russian way to talk about word stress:

• ударение падает на... = the stress falls on...

English often says the stress is on the last syllable, while Russian commonly says the stress falls on the last syllable.

This is a very common question.

In this expression, Russian uses:

• падать на + accusative
• ударение падает на последний слог

Even though English thinks of stress as being on a syllable, Russian uses the verb падать (to fall), so the structure is treated like something falling onto something.

That is why you get:

• на последний слог = accusative

not

• на последнем слоге = prepositional

You should learn ударение падает на... as a fixed pattern.

It is accusative singular.

• последний слог = accusative singular masculine inanimate

For masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative looks the same as the nominative, so it looks unchanged:

• nominative: последний слог
• accusative: последний слог

That is why there is no visible ending change here.

The stress is on the last syllable:

• молокó

A very approximate pronunciation is:

• mə-lɐ-KO

Important point: the unstressed о letters are not pronounced like a clear English o. In normal Russian speech, unstressed о is reduced, so молоко does not sound like mo-lo-ko with three full o sounds.

Those are standard Russian quotation marks, often called angle quotes.

So Russian writes:

• «молоко»

where English would usually write:

• “moloko” or "moloko"

You should recognize « » as normal punctuation in Russian books, dictionaries, and textbooks.

Yes. Russian also often says:

• В слове «молоко» ударение на последнем слоге.

This means essentially the same thing: In the word moloko, the stress is on the last syllable.

The version with падает is a little more explicit and very common in explanations of pronunciation.

You may also hear:

• В слове «молоко» ударение ставится на последний слог.

That means the stress is placed on the last syllable.

Yes, somewhat. Russian word order is more flexible than English word order.

For example, these are all possible:

• В слове «молоко» ударение падает на последний слог.
• Ударение в слове «молоко» падает на последний слог.

The first version starts with в слове «молоко», which sets the context first: as for the word moloko...

That is very natural in explanations and teaching.

Слог means syllable.

So:

• последний слог = the last syllable

Other useful forms are:

• первый слог = first syllable
• второй слог = second syllable
• ударный слог = stressed syllable
• безударный слог = unstressed syllable

This is very common vocabulary in pronunciation explanations.

Because Russian has no articles like a and the.

So Russian simply says:

• в слове = in the word
• на последний слог = on the last syllable

Whether English uses a or the has to be understood from context. Here the context makes it definite: we are talking about one specific word and one specific syllable.