A syllable is unit of sound made from a single
vowel, or single vowel/consonant combination - note that syllables
never have more then one vowel sound in them.
Eg: bit; a; un; as; dog; re; ist; bi
Monosyllable / monosyllabic - words with one syllable
Disyllable / disyllabic - words with two syllables, also called
bisyllablic by some
Trisyllable / trisyllabic - words with three syllables
Polysyllable / polysyllabic - words with four or more syllables,
however often people will refer to word with three or more
syllables as polysyllabic.
Feeling the Beat
The easiest way to determine how many syllables are in a particular
word is to sound it out - or even better clap it out. Clap along
while you try the following words:
Monosyllabic: dog there bike he walk bounce
Dysyllabic: doc/tor Fri/day o/ver yel/low chick/en
Trisyllabic: hos/pit/al yes/ter/day de/tec/tive am/bi/ence
Polysyllabic: un/wa/ver/ing no/tif/ica/tion re/an/i/ma/tion
pri/va/ti/zation
Syllable Stress:
Syllables break our words up into sections which can be stressed,
or unstressed. Which syllable is stressed, alters the pronunciation
of the word. Try saying the following words aloud while stressing
the first syllable:
doc/tor Fri/day o/ver mis/take pur/ple
Now try it again putting the stress on the second syllable.
doc/tor Fri/day o/ver mis/take pur/ple
Which one sounds better? If you thought the fist set sounded better you are correct. All of the above words should have their first syllable stressed.
Here are some more examples. The bold O will show you which syllable should be stressed in each word:
monosyllabic O: bike cat black
disyllabic O o: prob/lem en/gine yel/low
disyllabic o O: be/side di/vide un/do
trisyllablic O o o: dif/fi/cult hos/pit/al of/fi/cer
triyllablic o O o: de/tec/tive pro/fess/or re/dun/dant
Want More Practice?
Check out the worksheet PDF attached to this page, you can download and print
the worksheet. Once you've filled it in, compare your answered to
the answer key at the bottom of the page.
Why is 'kw' sound which are pronounced in many English words not represented in the phonetic symbols?
thank you very much…….to teaching…me about syllables……..ok……..see u again………
Hello,
Is there some special rules on stressing of a syllable? or only
practice we have to do.if so, can it be done on all words which
exist in dictionaries?
I need to know more about d rule of the stress placement
i'm so confused and i can't understand stress very well i need mor explanation obout it please thanx a lot
i want some examples for 44 phonetic symbols of monosyullabic, disyllabic, trisyllabic and polysyllabic.
Simple rules of syllables which will help you to pronunce properly.
1)We should never stress on Consonant sounds
2)One syllable word cannot be divided
3)In one word there is only one primary stress
4)In two syllable words the rule which applies to most words
are:
REcord=Noun ReCORD=Verb
ADDress=Noun AddRESS=Verb
5)In Compound Nouns we stress on the first word :
WHITE house, BOOK shelf
6)In Compound Adjectives we stress on the second word:
Old-FASHIONED ,Bad TEMPERED
I hope this might help.Thanks
THANKS FOR TEACHING ME ABOUT SYLLABLE.
KANNUHi Pradeep,
I'll try to explain what a diphthong is as best as I can! It has to do with phonetics and how the words sound when they are pronounced. A diphthong comes about when there are two vowels together, creating a certain sound. Words such as eye, boy, my, weigh and say, all have a diphthong where the vowels are found together. You'll find when saying these words that the"ey" goes up in tone as you say it. The diphthong usually sounds high in pitch and scoops up in your voice going from a low ee to a high eii type sound.
This was good to know What exactly are "Diphthongs". Thanks
Words like that fall under the category of "diphthongs" - two vowels combined in pronunciation, together forming a single, long syllable. To put it bluntly, they don't "count" as separate vowels because they aren't pure (or separately pronounced) vowels.
That's the super short explanation. You can check out the longer explanation - complete with an explanation of Monophthong (or pure vowels) and Triphthong on WikipediaThat's a great lesson… but I've got a question. I never really
understood this one:
If syllables never have more than one vowel in them, are words like
"tour" or "soap" monosyllabic or disyllabic? It's too confusing…
They sound like one syllable but they have 2 vowels… so what are
they?
I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.
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