How to identify syllables in English | Foundations for pronunciation

What are syllables?

If you are new to pronunciation and if you are interested in doing pronunciation work

or accent work, you are likely to hear the word 'syllable' again and again and again.

I definitely use it quite a lot.

When you pronounce a word, you want to know where the primary stress is,

which actually means where is the syllable that is stressed the most.

So to understand where the primary stress is, you need to understand

what syllables are, and this is what I'm going to talk about today.

Now I'm going to explain it in a very, very simple way.

So even if you don't have any linguistic background or language learning

background, this video is still for you.

Now, before we start, let me introduce myself.

My name is Hadar.

I'm a non native speaker of English.

I'm a speech and pronunciation coach.

And I'm here to help you speak English with clarity, confidence, and freedom.

On my website hadarshemesh.com, you can find a ton of resources and lessons

and free PDFs to help you do just that – improve your speaking, improve

your confidence and fluency in English.

So definitely check it out.

All right.

So what are syllables?

A syllable is the smallest unit in a word.

So if you take a word and you break it down into small units, you're likely to do

it according to the different syllables.

So, for example, if I take the word 'contractions', 'contractions',

then if I were to say it really, really slowly, I would say it

syllable by syllable: con trac tions.

I'm less likely to say something like c-on-tr-ac-shio-nz.

Sounds like I have contractions when I say that.

No, it doesn't.

It sounds a lot worse when you have contractions.

Trust me.

But anyway, contractions.

When you say it separately, syllable by syllable by syllable,

you hear how it's organized.

Now, I'm going to explain the technicalities behind how you divide

a word into syllables, but I want you to see that you can do it on your own,

because this is something that happens in every language, not just in English.

Not just English has syllables, okay?

Every language has syllables.

So, let's look at a few more examples.

Let's take the word 'situation'.

Situation.

How many syllables are there in the word 'situation'?

Say it out loud.

Count the syllables.

And if you said 4, you are right.

si-tu-a-tion.

si-tu-a-tion.

You can also divide it differently, like sit-u-a-tion.

To me, it's less intuitive, so this is how I divide it: si-tu-a-tion.

Now, it sounds a little robotic when I say it syllable by syllable.

That's not how people speak.

When I connect it, it sounds more united, more unified - situation.

We glide from one sound to another.

But for now, it's okay if it sounds a little robotic.

Let's take another word.

Sympathy.

How many syllables do we have here?

Sim-pa-thy.

Sim-pa-thy.

Three.

One last one.

Relationship.

Re-la-tion-ship – 4 syllables.

Re-la-tion-ship.

Now, why is it somewhat intuitive and simple for us to divide a word into

syllables without knowing the rules?

That is because, if you notice, in every syllable there is one vowel sound.

Sim-pa-thy.

si-tu-a-tion.

Right?

So we can have several consonants, or no consonants at all, but we have

to have a vowel - that is the center of the syllable, and that is how

we know that it's a separate unit.

Let me give you another example.

Let's take the two words: blow and below.

Blow and below.

In the first word, blow, we have one syllable.

Why?

Because the 'ow as in go' is one vowel.

Even though it sounds like two sounds, it's considered

one sound, it's a diphthong.

ow, blow.

The B and the L are connected.

So we have two consonants and one vowel.

Blow.

And in the word 'below' we have two vowels, therefore, we have two

syllables: be-low, or b'-low, you can reduce it to a schwa as well.

Below - blow.

Below - blow.

ta-ta – ta.

Now here's where it gets interesting.

Sometimes people struggle with connecting two consonants together - BL,

because that's something that doesn't happen in their first language.

And they might just add a vowel to separate those consonants - below.

But what happens is that they actually turn it into a different

word with two syllables.

The number of syllables is really important for clarity.

So if you tend to add syllables or to remove syllables, it's

going to affect your clarity.

For example, if you say 'practs' instead of 'practice', where people expect to

hear two syllables, because there are two vowels there – prac-tice, but you

kind of like merged it into 'practs', and these are real pronunciations

that I've heard, then what's going to end up happening is that people

are not going to understand it.

Because they're expecting to hear two syllables instead of one when

they listen to the word 'practice'.

Let's look at another example.

Texts.

How many syllables do we have in the word 'texts'?

Try to say it slowly, break it down.

If you said 1 syllable, then you are right.

Because 'texts' has only one vowel - teksts.

Texts.

So even though it's a long word with a lot of sounds, it's still one syllable.

Let's look at the word 'management'.

How many syllables do we have here?

If you said 4, you are wrong.

Even though we have this number of vowels, and intuitively, when you

look at the word, you want to say 4, but listen to the word: ma-nage-ment.

One of the vowels is not pronounced, so actually, we're saying MA - one

syllable, NAGE - another, MENT.

It's not ma-na-ge-ment.

ma-nage-ment.

So it's the number of vowel sounds, not the number of vowel letters.

Management.

Now, once you know what the syllables are, remember that there

is hierarchy between syllables.

Some are longer and more stressed.

MA-nage-ment.

And some are shorter and reduced.

n'g – ma-n'g-ment.

So, this is where we go into the stress of English and how each

syllable receives a different rhythm.

But each of them is still a unit in and of itself.

Now, I'm going to link more videos to talk about the schwa and the stress in English

and the primary stress if you'd like to practice more, but for now, that is it.

Because it's also really important to understand how many syllables we have in

a word and what syllables are in general.

And I hope today it's a little clearer.

Now, to help you put it into practice, I created a few lists of words,

where you'll have to determine how many syllables are in each word.

And the answers are there, of course.

So, click the link in the description to go to my website and

practice, and see if you got it.

All right, I hope this was helpful.

If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing or sharing it with someone

that might find it helpful as well.

And, of course, come back here next week.

Because every Tuesday, I release a new lesson and a new video.

Have a beautiful, beautiful day, and I'll see you next week in the next video.

Bye.