How Many Syllables Does English Have? (2009)(web.archive.org)
web.archive.org
How Many Syllables Does English Have? (2009)
http://web.archive.org/web/20160822211027/http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/index.txt
16 comments
And foosball f uw s
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."
"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."
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.
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'.
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...
Historically, they would have had the same vowel, but for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis...
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.
Believe it or not, I say foot and food with the same oo sound. Weird huh.
Northern Ireland? Or Northeast England?
I’m curious where you’re from such that food and foot have the same vowel sound.
I have an Irish friend who pronounces 'foot' like 'food' ending with a 't'. Similarrly, 'book' like 'boot' ending with a 'k'.
>The grand total: 15831
Two: "Eng" and "lish".
English has 2 syllables.
> ...
> t w er k t OUTWORKED
Some things have changed in English since 2009!