4 ms·
> Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables. Not that it changes your point, but "de rien" is two syllables!
by 19690401 7y ago
> Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables.
Not that it changes your point, but "de rien" is two syllables!
- mediocrejoker 7y agoI only took a few years of French in Canadian high school but we were also taught this as three syllables.
- FeteCommuniste 7y ago"Rien" has the same number of syllables as all the other consonant sound + "ien" words: one. (tien, sien, chien, bien, lien)
- davidy123 7y agoIt's pronounced in three syllables (de re-an) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rien https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rien
- davidivadavid 7y agoNope. Two syllables is correct, as you can see by looking at the IPA transliteration, /də ʁjɛ̃/.
- bgilroy26 7y ago"j" is a semi-vowel so you're both right!
- foldr 7y agoCould you expand on that? Semivowels don't usually give rise to any uncertainty regarding syllable boundaries. E.g. Spanish 'tieso' clearly has two syllables (though many English speakers would misperceive it as having three), and it also has a semivowel following the initial consonant: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tieso https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tieso
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- foldr 7y agoThat page lists it as a two syllable phrase (look at the categories at the bottom). English speakers would be tempted to think it as a three syllable phrase because ʁjɛ̃ isn't a possible syllable in English, but in French "de rien" should be two syllables. This is similar to, e.g., English speakers incorrectly pronouncing the Spanish word "luego" with three syllables.
- davidy123 7y agoI should have specifically called out the audible pronunciation, where it's clearly more than two syllables in pronunciation. As pointed out below, it has "two and a half" syllables, I guess the site has no category for that.
- foldr 7y agoNo, you're misperceiving "rien" as having two syllables because you are (I'm guessing) a native English speaker. You can't just "hear" how many syllables something has as syllabification rules are language-specific. The nearest corresponding sequence of English phonemes would have to be split into two syllables - but English has different syllabification rules.
- ebruchez 7y agoNative French speaker here. Maybe it's confusing to discuss this in terms of syllables unless you are a linguist. If you just want to learn how to say the word, what matters is how people actually say the word. Specifically, you pronounce "rien" in one quick shot. (So it's definitely closer to one syllable if we care about this. But if I am to say the word very slowly to teach somebody how it sounds, it might progressively become closer to two syllables. Languages are complicated.)
- foldr 7y ago>But if I am to say the word very slowly to teach somebody how it sounds, it might progressively become closer to two syllables. Languages are complicated. I'm sure that's true, but I don't think it gives rise to any real doubt as to the syllable count. For example, you could stretch out the English word "near" into two syllables in very slow and deliberate speech, but it's definitely a monosyllabic word in most (possibly all?) varieties of English.
- bsder 7y agoYeah, what the native language considers the break is not consistent between languages. Japanese, for example, has "desu" (a form of "to be" so it's really common) which is nominally "two" syllables, but English speakers simply hear "dess" which they perceive as one syllable. The issue is that Japanese relies more on time length to delineate syllables while English relies on vowel presence.