5 ms·
Counting syllables in "fire" and other words
- gourneau 16y ago#from http://goo.gl/6U7f3 http://goo.gl/6U7f3 count syllables with nltk from nltk.corpus import cmudict d = cmudict.dict() syllables = [len(list(y for y in x if y[-1].isdigit())) for x in d["count"]]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- endtime 16y agoDid you read the link? >CMU's Pronouncing Dictionry (http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict?in=fire http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict?in=fire), however, indicates two possible pronunciations (F AY ER | F AY R), the first of which seems to indicate a two-syllable word.
- biotech 16y agoThis is a question from "Google Answers", a website that ran from 2002 through 2006. People were paid a small amount (usually; occasionally the amount would be reasonable) to do research (usually on the internet) and answer arbitrary questions. In general, the quality of the answers was very high.
- Bud 16y agoI taught Singers' Diction in grad school for several years. Technically, "fire" contains a triphthong, three vowels in a row, and is thus one syllable. In International Phonetic Alphabet, it's [a] then [I] then a schwa, which I can't type in ASCII. The only other triphthong in English is the one in the word "our" or "hour", which is [a], then [U], then a schwa.
- tome 16y agoWikipedia has three more examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triphthong#Stress_on_the_first_element http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triphthong#Stress_on_the_first_...
- bdr 16y agoCan you shed any light on "owl"?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- michaelfairley 16y agoDepending on how much emphasis you put on the word, it can range from one to two syllables. If you use it in a sentence ("The owl ate the mouse") spoken at a conversational speed, the sounds that come from your mouth are likely to be indistinguishable from saying the name Al. If you say the word slowly, you'll have an [æ] (the vowel in cat) or an [a] (the first vowel in father), followed by [wl̩] (sounds like a sheep's hair).
- Bud 16y agoThis is just a straight up [aU] diphthong, one syllable, in virtually every dictionary you can find. Certainly all the ones that use IPA. Same in my compact OED (the tiny-print one that comes with a magnifying glass).
- michaelfairley 16y agoIt's actually not a triphthong, because the r is not a vowel. Rather, it's a syllabic consonant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant The IPA represenation is not [ə], but rather [ɹ̩]. (There's a tick under that ɹ). And, to be fair, your statements are accurate for British dialects of English that don't have syllable final rhotics, but the original article was about American English.
- Bud 16y agoThe interpretation of the [aIə] as triphthong or diphthong varies according to one's source. For singers (I stated that my background was from diction as taught to singers), we tend to be taught that it's a triphthong, because for singing or stage diction, it's often desirable to not be saying an American "r" for seconds at a time...not a pleasing sound. The IPA symbol used varies as well, for the same reasons. Of course, in some places in the South, "fire" has the same pronunciation as "far".
- philwelch 16y agoSimilarly, "squirreled" is considered by some to be the longest one-syllable word in English (rhymes with "world").
- cperciva 16y agoDo these people pronounce "squirrel" as "squirl"? That seems... odd.
- michaelfairley 16y agoMost Americans I know use the latter, in which the r and l do not have a vowel between the two.
- endtime 16y agoAre you from the southeast US? I've always heard "squih-ruhl". You also mentioned pronouncing "owl" like Al, which doesn't sound right to me either.
- JonnieCache 16y agoI'm guessing these are the same people who pronounce "terrorist" almost the same as "tourist"
- philwelch 16y agoPacific Northwest here. I pronounce "squirrel" as "squirl". It gets worse. There's a town, "Sequim". The way you know someone isn't from around here is if they pronounce it "See-quim". It's actually pronounced "Squim".
- nitrogen 16y agoWow. Google actually listed a support e-mail address at the bottom of the page. I'm floored.
- frobozz 16y agoI'm surprised at the lack of variety-awareness in these answers. For me, there is a clear distinction between higher and hire. Isolated, fire is a tripthong. In connected speech, I'd hazard that it is a monopthong.
- codingthewheel 16y agoWhen you burn someone in TF2, they scream.
- javaru 16y agoI'm amused that CMU listed two pronunciations but neither was that native Pittsburgh pronunciation, which is the same as 'fur' on a dog.