Calculating the number of English syllables

[Katie Alcock]

Silent "vowels" aren't vowel sounds - they are letters, but not vowel
sounds. From this I'm assuming you are meaning you start with the number of
vowel letters, and with the written form of the word.

As some diphthongs are spelled with only one vowel letter (e.g. "go",
"crown") I think you may mean digraphs ("bread").  But since other dipthongs
are spelled with two vowel letters ("near" in Southern British English), and
some words have a syllable transition between two adjacent vowels - hiatus
("naïve" and indeed "hiatus"), I'm not sure such an approach will work with
English written words.

I imagine someone much more knowledgeable than me has attempted to
automatically tag English words with the number of syllables, but I wouldn't
begin to attempt it!

Katie 




Katie Alcock, DPhil, CPsychol
Lecturer
Department of Psychology
University of Lancaster
Fylde College
Lancaster LA1 4YF
Tel 01524 593833
Fax 01524 593744
Web http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/KatieAlcock.html


> From: Gareth <gpmorgan12 at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: "info-childes at googlegroups.com" <info-childes at googlegroups.com>
> Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:22:34 -0700 (PDT)
> To: "info-childes at googlegroups.com" <info-childes at googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Calculating the number of English syllables
> 
> 
> Hello everyone,
> Thank you for the great responses. They have been very helpful and
> have answered some of my questions. I have a related issue that I
> would like to pose the group. When calculating the number of syllables
> in a word in English, what do you think about the following set of
> rules:
> 
> ---count the vowels in the word,
> ---subtract any silent vowels, (like the silent "e" at the end of a
> word or the second vowel when two vowels a
>    together in a syllable)
> ---subtract one vowel from every dipthong, (diphthongs only count as
> one vowel sound.)
> ---the number of vowels sounds left is the same as the number of
> syllables.
> 
> Can any see any major flaws or additional rules/exceptions that may
> need adding?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Gareth
> 
> PS. the rules were taken from http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/syllables.html
> > 


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