"A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants)."
A unit of sound consisting of one or more phonemes that form a single, uninterrupted sound.
Phonetics: The study of the physical properties of speech sounds.
Phonology: The study of the systematic organization of speech sounds in language.
Suprasegmentals: Stress, intonation, and rhythm.
Vowels: The sounds produced with an open vocal tract.
Consonants: Sounds produced by obstructing the flow of air.
Sonority: The relative loudness of speech sounds.
The sonority hierarchy: The order of loudness of different speech sounds in syllables.
Prosody: The study of the melody, rhythm, and intonation of speech.
Coarticulation: The production of speech sounds as influenced by the surrounding sounds.
Segmentability: The degree to which a sound can be easily separated from surrounding sounds.
Closed Syllable: This type of syllable ends in a consonant sound, making the preceding vowel short. Examples: cat, sit, map.
Open Syllable: This type of syllable ends in a vowel sound, making the vowel long. Examples: hi, we, go.
Ambiguous Syllable: This type of syllable can be either open or closed, depending on how it is pronounced. Examples: car, letter, dinner.
Nasal Syllable: This type of syllable has a nasal sound (m, n, or ng) at the end, affecting the vowel sound. Examples: ham, ten, sing.
Dipthong Syllable: This type of syllable consists of two vowels that make a single sound. Examples: tie, loud, boy.
Schwa Syllable: This type of syllable has an unstressed, neutral sound, commonly represented by the schwa symbol (ə). Examples: sofa, about, balance.
Vowel-Less Syllable: This type of syllable consists only of a consonant sound, commonly heard in the context of unstressed syllables. Examples: button, rhythm, castle.
"They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns."
"The word ignite is made of two syllables: ig and nite."
"Syllabic writing began several hundred years before the first letters."
"The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur."
"This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called 'the most important advance in the history of writing'."
"A word that consists of a single syllable (like English dog) is called a monosyllable (and is said to be monosyllabic)."
"Similar terms include disyllable (and disyllabic; also bisyllable and bisyllabic) for a word of two syllables."
"Trisyllable (and trisyllabic) for a word of three syllables."
"Polysyllable (and polysyllabic), which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of more than one syllable."
"Syllables are often considered the phonological 'building blocks' of words."
"The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur."
"They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns."
"Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables."
"The word ignite is made of two syllables: ig and nite."
"This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called 'the most important advance in the history of writing'."
"Similar terms include disyllable (and disyllabic; also bisyllable and bisyllabic) for a word of two syllables."
"Trisyllable (and trisyllabic) for a word of three syllables."
"Polysyllable (and polysyllabic), which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of more than one syllable."
"They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns."