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I think I've solved another problem. With the stress rules as they are, I've been frustrated that I can't borrow words like Himmel or Finger (German) without distorting the stress - hi-MEL, fi-QER. And while I can't remember many at the moment, I know there are a lot of words in English and German that end with el, er, en, and em that aren't, of course, stressed on the last syllable. Then I remembered that the e is really just a spelling convention, and that in English, at least, there's really no vowel there, unless you consider the r, l, etc. as vowels. So why not spell it "himl", "fiqr"? I think that in the case of the German word, it's actually arguable as to whether it's one syllable or two. That is, the -el, -er syllable is minimal (to my ear, anyway), and can be considered so faint ast to not be counted as a syllable at all. More words are coming to me now. Zimmer, demon, fennel, hammer, dollar...