what is a syllable?

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ive been taking syllables for years now, probably since first or second grade, but i don’t understand what a syllable is. i know it’s like a word split into parts or something like that (cant word it properly), but why? am i going to use this in the future, how do i split the word into sound parts? how do i count syllables? i cant figure out, and i haven’t understood it for a long time.

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

ELI5 answer:

A syllable is a word or a piece of a word that has one vowel sound when you speak it out loud.

An example of this would be the word “strengths.” It has one syllable because it has only one vowel sound in it when you say the word out loud. “Crying” has two syllables because you say two different vowel sounds when you say that word.

Why are syllables important? In poetry and in song writing, matching up different lines of the song or poem to have the same (or almost the same) number if syllables can help the flow and make it sound better. It would be weird to hear a song where each line has a totally different number of syllables. One line would feel too long, another too short.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A syllable is an action your mouth takes to form a word or part of a word and what is used to count steps in poetry. It has a lot to do with how vowels interact with consonants.

Time = 1 syllable
Timer = 2 syllables

Adding 1 consonant increases the number of syllables because it changed how we speak a vowel

Become = 2 syllables
Becoming = 3 syllables

Be come
Be com ing

Adding a suffix to this word increases the number of syllables or actions the mouth/tongue/throat need to perform.

Anonymous 0 Comments

So our language is composed of vowels and consonants.

Vowels, we can make without touching our lips together or our tongue to our teeth, etc. Ae, Ee, Eye, Oh, Yu, and others that come along with those letters.

Consonants are, as you may have guessed, all the other ones.

The words we use are made of this combination, one way or another.

Ccv cvccc cv vcv vcv cvcv vc ccvc cvccvcvcvvc, vcv cv(c) vc vcvccvc.

Syllables are a phonetic (sound) way to identify beats in a word, usually created by any vowel being followed by any consonant, or voice versa. It represents that combination of sounds used to make that word. If a word takes one “smooth” sound to make, it’s one syllable. If a word like “harden” takes two separate sounds to make, it has to syllables.

Ex.

Kick = C _vc_ c

Hiccup = C _vc_ c _vc_

Gallery = C _vc_ _cv_ _cv_

Anonymous 0 Comments

it’s easiest when you read something outloud or sound it in your head.

i havent looked up the actual definition of what a syllable is but i would imagine it’d be something along the lines of when the sound is broken by a consonant or something like that.

out-loud = 2 syllables

syl – la – bles = 3 syllables

ion (sounded eye-yun) is 2 syllables, consonant sound despite i and o being both vowels.

con ver sa tion. 4 syllables.

su per ca li fra gi lis tic ex pi a li do cious = 14 syllables

Anonymous 0 Comments

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