How many syllables are in even

Six Syllable Types | Reading Rockets

By: Louisa Moats, Carol Tolman

Six written syllable-spelling conventions are used in English spelling. These were regularized by Noah Webster to justify his 1806 dictionary's division of syllables. The conventions are useful to teach because they help students remember when to double letters in spelling and how to pronounce the vowels in new words. The conventions also help teachers organize decoding and spelling instruction.

Warm-up: Why double?

Read this fascinating tale. As you read, underline words in which there are two or more consonants between the first and second syllables.

Thunker's pet cats, Pete and Kate, enjoyed dining on dinner. They were fated to fatness. The pet Pete, who was cuter than Kate, was a cutter cat with sharp claws and teeth, scary scars, and one jagged ear.

Pete was ripping up ripening apples and biting bitter strips of striped bug bits as he stared into the starry night. The cat Kate was not as scared or scarred. Kate liked licking slimy slops that slopped from a bucket, sitting at a site that sloped and caused the slop to slide. Kate liked sitting at the site where the slops slid.

— Created by Bruce Rosow (Moats & Rosow, 2003)

What do you notice about the vowel sounds that come before the doubled consonants?

Why teach syllables?

Without a strategy for chunking longer words into manageable parts, students may look at a longer word and simply resort to guessing what it is — or altogether skipping it. Familiarity with syllable-spelling conventions helps readers know whether a vowel is long, short, a diphthong, r-controlled, or whether endings have been added. Familiarity with syllable patterns helps students to read longer words accurately and fluently and to solve spelling problems — although knowledge of syllables alone is not sufficient for being a good speller.

Spoken and written syllables are different

Say these word pairs aloud and listen to where the syllable breaks occur:

bridle – riddle     table –   tatter     even – ever

Spoken syllables are organized around a vowel sound. Each word above has two syllables. The jaw drops open when a vowel in a syllable is spoken. Syllables can be counted by putting your hand under your chin and feeling the number of times the jaw drops for a vowel sound.

Spoken syllable divisions often do not coincide with or give the rationale for the conventions of written syllables. In the first word pair above, you may naturally divide the spoken syllables of bridle between bri and dle and the spoken syllables of riddle between ri and ddle. Nevertheless, the syllable rid is "closed" because it has a short vowel; therefore, it must end with consonant. The first syllable bri is "open," because the syllable ends with a long vowel sound. The result of the syllable-combining process leaves a double d in riddle (a closed syllable plus consonant-le) but not in bridle (open syllable plus consonant-le). These spelling conventions are among many that were invented to help readers decide how to pronounce and spell a printed word.

The hourglass illustrates the chronology or sequence in which students learn about both spoken and written syllables. Segmenting and blending spoken syllables is an early phonological awareness skill; reading syllable patterns is a more advanced decoding skill, reliant on student mastery of phoneme awareness and phoneme-grapheme correspondences.

Figure 5.1. Hourglass Depiction of the Relationship Between Awareness in Oral Language and Written Syllable Decoding
(Contributed by Carol Tolman, and used with permission.)

Click to see full image

Closed syllables

The closed syllable is the most common spelling unit in English; it accounts for just under 50 percent of the syllables in running text. When the vowel of a syllable is short, the syllable will be closed off by one or more consonants. Therefore, if a closed syllable is connected to another syllable that begins with a consonant, two consonant letters will come between the syllables (com-mon, but-ter).

Two or more consonant letters often follow short vowels in closed syllables (dodge, stretch, back, stuff, doll, mess, jazz). This is a spelling convention; the extra letters do not represent extra sounds. Each of these example words has only one consonant phoneme at the end of the word. The letters give the short vowel extra protection against the unwanted influence of vowel suffixes (backing; stuffed; messy).

Vowel-Consonant-e (VCe) syllables

Also known as "magic e" syllable patterns, VCe syllables contain long vowels spelled with a single letter, followed by a single consonant, and a silent e. Examples of VCe syllables are found in wake, whale, while, yoke, yore, rude, and hare. Every long vowel can be spelled with a VCe pattern, although spelling "long e" with VCe is unusual.

Open syllables

If a syllable is open, it will end with a long vowel sound spelled with one vowel letter; there will be no consonant to close it and protect the vowel (to-tal, ri-val, bi-ble, mo-tor). Therefore, when syllables are combined, there will be no doubled consonant between an open syllable and one that follows.

A few single-syllable words in English are also open syllables. They include me, she, he and no, so, go. In Romance languages — especially Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian — open syllables predominate.

Vowel team syllables

A vowel team may be two, three, or four letters; thus, the term vowel digraph is not used. A vowel team can represent a long, short, or diphthong vowel sound. Vowel teams occur most often in old Anglo-Saxon words whose pronunciations have changed over hundreds of years. They must be learned gradually through word sorting and systematic practice. Examples of vowel teams are found in thief, boil, hay, suit, boat, and straw.

Sometimes, consonant letters are used in vowel teams. The letter y is found in ey, ay, oy, and uy, and the letter w is found in ew, aw, and ow. It is not accurate to say that "w can be a vowel," because the letter is working as part of a vowel team to represent a single vowel sound. Other vowel teams that use consonant letters are -augh, -ough, -igh, and the silent -al spelling for /aw/, as in walk.

Vowel-r syllables

We have chosen the term "vowel-r" over "r-controlled" because the sequence of letters in this type of syllable is a vowel followed by r (er, ir, ur, ar, or). Vowel-r syllables are numerous, variable, and difficult for students to master; they require continuous review. The /r/ phoneme is elusive for students whose phonological awareness is underdeveloped. Examples of vowel-r syllables are found in perform, ardor, mirror, further, worth, and wart.

Consonant-le (C-le) syllables

Also known as the stable final syllable, C-le combinations are found only at the ends of words. If a C-le syllable is combined with an open syllable — as in cable, bugle, or title — there is no doubled consonant. If one is combined with a closed syllable — as in dabble, topple, or little — a double consonant results.

Not every consonant is found in a C-le syllable. These are the ones that are used in English:

Simple and complex syllables

Closed, open, vowel team, vowel-r, and VCe syllables can be either simple or complex. A complex syllable is any syllable containing a consonant cluster (i. e., a sequence of two or three consonant phonemes) spelled with a consonant blend before and/or after the vowel. Simple syllables have no consonant clusters.

Complex syllables are more difficult for students than simple syllables. Introduce complex syllables after students can handle simple syllables.

Table 5.1. Summary of Six Types of Syllables in English Orthography

Syllable Type	Examples	Definition
Closed	dap-ple hos-tel bev-er-age	A syllable with a short vowel, spelled with a single vowel letter ending in one or more consonants.
Vowel-Consonant-e (VCe)	com-pete des-pite	A syllable with a long vowel, spelled with one vowel + one consonant + silent e.
Open	pro-gram ta-ble re-cent	A syllable that ends with a long vowel sound, spelled with a single vowel letter.
Vowel Team (including diphthongs)	aw-ful train-er con-geal spoil-age	Syllables with long or short vowel spellings that use two to four letters to spell the vowel. Diphthongs ou/ow and oi/oy are included in this category.
Vowel-r (r-controlled)	in-jur-i-ous con-sort char-ter	A syllable with er, ir, or, ar, or ur. Vowel pronunciation often changes before /r/.
Consonant-le (C-le)	drib-ble bea-gle lit-tle	An unaccented final syllable that contains a consonant before /l/, followed by a silent e.
Leftovers: Odd and Schwa syllables	dam-age act-ive na-tion	Usually final, unaccented syllables with odd spellings.

2.5 Syllables – Psychology of Language

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While phonemes are the smallest units of sound, we don’t actually speak in phonemes. If I say the word ‘cat’ /kæt/ and record it, I won’t be able to break it into three units of /k/, /æ/ and /t/. Therefore, the smallest unit of articulation is not the phoneme but rather the . Most native speakers of a language will know how many syllables are in a word in their language. You can try this in English by saying a word slowly. For example, the word ‘elephant’ has three syllables: e-li-phant. As seen in Figure 2.3, all syllables must have a mandatory or . This is usually a vowel. Some languages can also have a syllabic consonant as a nucleus of a syllable as in the English word ‘button’ [bʌtn̩] where there are two syllables [bʌ] and [tn̩]. You can see that the second syllable has no vowels but a syllabic [n̩] as the nucleus.

Consonants that come before the nucleus of a syllable are know as and those that come after it are called . The nucleus and coda of a syllable form a group called a . These onsets and codas can be complicated or simple depending on what is allowed in a language. English allows up to three consonants in the onset and at least as much in the coda. Consider the word ‘twelfths’ /twɛlfθs/. It has two consonants in the onset and four consonants in the coda. Generally, the onset is more restricted in what is consonants are allowed.

In English, you can have almost all consonants other than the velar nasal /ŋ/ as an onset. If there are two consonants in the onset and the first one isn’t /s/ then the second has to be either /l/, /r/, /w/, or /j/. if there are three consonants in the onset, then the first has to be an /s/, the second has to be either /p/, /t/ or /k/, and the third has to be either /l/, /r/ or /w/.

Consider some words in your language and try to syllabify them. Think of what phonemes occur in the onset, nucleus and coda of these syllables. Can you come up with long onsets and codas in your language? Ask a friend who speaks another language to do the same. Are there any differences between your languages’ syllable structure?

As we saw earlier, what is allowed in the onset, nucleus and coda of a language can be different across languages. While a sequence such as /pl/ is allowed in English, /ps/ would not be allowed. However, /ps/ is a legal sequence in Greek which is why we still spell ‘psychology’ with the ‘ps’ sequence even though English speakers don’t pronounce the ‘p’. Similar examples of Greek onsets include /mn/ as in ‘mnemonic’. Figure 2.4 illustrates the syllable structure of the word Tk’emlúps ‘Kamloops’ in Secwepemc. As we can see, Secwepemc allows the sequence of an unvoiced dental stop and a glottalized velar stop /tkˀ/ in the onset of its syllable. The sequence /ml/ is not a legal onset in Secwepemc, so it gets separated between two syllables, the /m/ becoming the coda of the first syllable and the /l/ becoming the onset of the second.

As syllables are the smallest units of articulation, they provide the rhythmic patterns of a language. In languages such as English, syllables carry features such as stress. This determines which syllable in a word receives emphasis. Try saying ‘I am recording a song.’ You will stress the second syllable in the word ‘recording.’ Now say ‘That was a record.’ You will find yourself placing more stress on the first syllable of the word ‘record.’ Languages that place equal time periods for stressed syllables are called stress-timed languages. English is a stress-timed language and we can see how this is employed in Shakespeare’s sonnets with iambic pentameters. Each line consists of five iambs and each iamb consists of two syllables with the second one more stressed that the first. As we see in Figure 2.5, this creates a beautiful pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables that may even go across word boundaries. Read the sonnet out loud and you will notice the stress patterns.

Unlike English, other languages may produce each syllable with equal time. These are called syllable-timed languages. French is a good example of such a syllable-timed language. Poetry in syllable-timed languages will make less use of stress and will take into account what consonants appear in the coda of the syllable to determine the structure of their poems.

Syllables in Poetry (Shakespeare)

Syllables in Poetry 2

Media Attributions

• Figure 2.3 Syllable Structure by Dinesh Ramoo, the author, is licensed under a CC BY 4. 0 licence.
• Figure 2.4 Syllable Structure of the word Tk’emlúps by Dinesh Ramoo, the author is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
• Figure 2.5 Stress Patterns in a Shakespearian Sonnet contains an edited version of The Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare, and is a public domain work of art.

License

Psychology of Language by Dinesh Ramoo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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How to determine the poetic size • Arzamas

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Author Kirill Golovastikov

Hello! Most likely, if you ended up here, you are a schoolboy, a student of a philological or journalism faculty, or even a poor parent of a schoolboy - and you need to determine the size of the poem, because it was given at home. In the past, I did a lot of versification - the science of rhythm in poetry - and I know that very often this not the most difficult thing is poorly understood and even more so explained even by those teachers who teach it. I will try to make your life easier.

Important! Here I want to help with practical tasks - determining meters and sizes. If you are preparing for a theoretical exam, it is better to memorize the definitions from those textbooks that teachers advised you to pass on five. And - I will immediately use terms like "syllabic-tonic" and "foot", without particularly explaining them: since you are reading this material, it means that you are at least approximately in the know.

So, first we will learn how to determine the meter, then we will move on to the size. But first -

Small warning

Let's agree on this: in each line, we will assign a serial number to each syllable - counting from left to right. In "The storm covers the sky with darkness" the syllable "bu" is the 1st, "rya" is the 2nd, and so on, up to the 7th "cro" and the 8th "et".

Optional introduction: why is it difficult for many to determine the meter?

Most likely, you were told that iambic and trochee are stops of two syllables. In the iambic foot, the first syllable is unstressed, the second is stressed; in chorea it is the other way around. It turns out that in verses written in iambic, stress should fall on even syllables in each line (2nd, 4th, 6th, and so on), and in trochee - on odd (1st, 3rd, 5th y…).

However, problems begin immediately. You take up "Eugene Onegin", firmly knowing from school that it was written in iambic tetrameter! (in general, most of the examples will be in iambic to make it more convenient, but the same can be said about the trochee):

My best honest right pitchfork,

Everything is in order: even-numbered syllables - 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th - are really stressed.

No He y wa press ce ba for sta pitchfork
And beam she you du mother not could .

Stop. Everything is wrong here. There is no stress on the 6th syllable, on the 2nd, again on the 6th ... What is happening? It's still not iambic, is it?

There are many such examples. Here is another classic iambic tetrameter, now Tyutchev:

Thought out of re che nna i is l o live.

Here there is no stress on the 2nd syllable (“from”) and on the 6th (“I”), but there is on the 1st (“thought”), and also on the 7th (“is”), which seem to be unstressed in iambic. The most striking thing is that there are much more such lines that do not fit the line of the "ideal" iambic than the "ideal" ones! So, is it all a scam?

(In school versification, perhaps, they would have launched into discussions about Pyrrhic and Spondei, but this is of no use to us now - especially since they do not explain anything. )

The same with anapaests and dactyls (trisyllabic syllabic tonic feet). In dactyl lines, stress should fall on the 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th syllables, and so on. In anapaests - on the 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th ... However, in fact, in dactyls very often there are no stresses on the 1st syllable, although they are needed there (" A for ok nom shelle st topo la …"). And in anapaests they are not needed there, but very often they turn out to be:

Child old picture hell,
where seven skins are lowered in the old fashioned way -
they fry alive, beat them thoughtfully,
cor mint herring and do not give to drink.
And when science triumphs,
enlightened torment enters :
paradise lost (view from the window) -
li pa, flowerbed, barbecue, elderberry.

Sergey Gandlevsky

You ask - what kind of nonsense is this?! I'll explain now. But first -

The easiest way to identify the meter

The easiest way to define a simple (classical, syllabo-tonic) meter is the scandovka. The way the fans shout chants in the stands. An attempt to feel the rhythm, substituting accents where they are not, but they are needed, and not making them where they seem to be, but the rhythm tells not to strike. This is done intuitively:

my YA! for SA! my HONOR! PRA! forks

thought And! zre CH! to Me! is FALSE!

Poetry scholar Alexander Ilyushin suggested an elegant way of translating the results of chanting into the language of poetry. He compared the five basic syllabo-tonic meters with five forms of a popular Russian male name:

Chorya: VA NYA- VA NYA- VA NYA- VA Nya
YAMB: and Van Van VAN WAN Dactil: VA Nechka- VA Nechka- VA Nechka- VA Nechka
amphibrachia: Va nyu Sha-vu Sha-vu Shau
Anapaest: Jo Ann -Io ann -Io ann -Io ann

Scanned a line? Now look at what the result looks like more - "Ivan", "Vanya" or "John". This not quite scientific method will always remain with you as a reinforcement. And now -

A bit of science

What are the definitions of iambic and chorea accepted in strict science? Something like this: iambic is a meter in which the stresses of non-monosyllabic words can fall on even-numbered places in a line. Trochee - the same, but for odd numbers.

Here, firstly, the word “may” is added, which means they are not obliged: this explains the lines “When it’s not a joke for couldn’t” (iambic, although there is no stress on the 6th syllable) or “He in is important I forced myself” (there is no stress on the 2nd). Secondly, the word “non-monosyllabic” is added: then you don’t have to think about examples like “ Thought spoken is a lie” or “ Run sledge along the wide Neva” (or, in the case of trochees, “On the same day became reign he"). Indeed, there are “extra” stresses here - but they are all provided with monosyllabic words, and we agreed not to take them into account.