How Many Syllables Does English Have? (2009)

http://web.archive.org/web/20160822211027/http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/index.txt

by polm23 • 7 years ago

12 16 7 years ago

web.archive.org

What accent is this about? Because if "f uw d" is how you spell the syllable in 'seafood' then "f uw t" is certainly a valid syllable - it's 'foot'.

_emacsomancer_• 7 years ago

In both Standard British and General American 'food' is something like /fuːd/ and 'foot' is something like /fʊt/, with different vowels.

Historically, they would have had the same vowel, but for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis...

TheRealSteel• 7 years ago

I'm a native English speaker and I can't think of any word with the "f uw t" sound. Are you sure you're not thinking of the word foot, which has a different vowel sound to food? "f uw t" would be like saying fruit without the R.

nmeofthestate3• 7 years ago

Believe it or not, I say foot and food with the same oo sound. Weird huh.

umanwizard2• 7 years ago

I’m curious where you’re from such that food and foot have the same vowel sound.

mannykannot• 7 years ago

I have an Irish friend who pronounces 'foot' like 'food' ending with a 't'. Similarrly, 'book' like 'boot' ending with a 'k'.

nmeofthestate3• 7 years ago

Scotland.

swebs• 7 years ago

The grand total: 15831

zeckalpha• 7 years ago

For instance, the following [...] putative syllables are not actually legitimate syllables of English:
...
t w er k t OUTWORKED

Some things have changed in English since 2009!

JoeAltmaier• 7 years ago

And foosball f uw s

madcaptenor• 7 years ago

The original post mentions this:

"Note that in some cases this is a flaw in the coverage of the dictionary, since many speakers of English have, e.g., "foos-ball" as a word."

shmink• 7 years ago

English has 2 syllables.

LorenPechtel• 7 years ago

Compare that with 413 syllables for Chinese if you ignore tones, 1522 syllables if you consider tones. This is why Chinese speakers so mangle foreign names--they have no alphabet to learn the sounds of letters and they have so few syllables that learning to speak by syllables works well. Unfortunately, it works horribly when faced with names that use syllables they don't have.

faho• 7 years ago

Two: "Eng" and "lish".

How Many Syllables Does English Have? (2009)

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