Calculating the number of English syllables

[Marc Ettlinger]

As the other commenters have alluded to, I think English spelling is
too complicated to count syllables with such a simple algorithm.
The mapping from English orthography to modern English phonology is
just too complex.
In addition to the above examples (e.g. hiatus vs. heater) you have
'fiance' vs. 'bottle' vs. 'dance' on final vowels as well as other
near minimal pairs like 'wire'/'tire' (2 syllables for many) vs.
'while'/'tile' (also 2 for some) and 'white'/'tight' (1 syllable for
most), not to mention the dialectal variation on those words.
Figuring something out for syllables would ultimately require first
solving the problem of mapping from spelling to sounds and if you can
figure that out, I'm sure text-to-speech companies would be
grateful ;)


On Oct 26, 10:43 am, Peter Gordon <pgor... at tc.columbia.edu> wrote:
> The rules are a bit circular or redundant.  The second-vowel-deletion rule
> assumes you can tell the difference between one syllable and two syllables
> in a two vowel sequence, so it's a bit circular.  Further, the rule about
> subtracting vowels from diphthongs is a bit murky.  Most diphthongs are
> often written as long vowels with an 'e' at the end of the word or some
> irregular spelling (site, fight) or else when they are written as two vowels
> (bait), it seems that the second vowel deletion rule would handle this
> anyway, so it's a bit redundant.
>
> Peter Gordon, Associate Professor
> Biobehavioral Sciences Department
> Teachers College, Columbia University
> 525 W 120th St. Box 180
> New York, NY 10027
>
> E-mail: pgor... at tc.edu
> Phone:  212 678-8162 (Office)
>         212 678-8169 (Lab)
>         212 678-8233 (Fax)
>
> Webpage:http://www.tc.edu/faculty/index.htm?facid=pg328
>
> On 10/26/09 11:22 AM, "Gareth" <gpmorga... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > 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 fromhttp://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/syllables.html
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