4 ms·
How Many Syllables Does English Have? (2009)
- nmeofthestate 7y agoWhat 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'.
- _emacsomancer_ 7y agoIn 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_English_close_back_vowels#Shortening_of_/u%CB%90/_to_/%CA%8A/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis...
- TheRealSteel 7y agoI'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.
- nmeofthestate 7y agoBelieve it or not, I say foot and food with the same oo sound. Weird huh.
- frobozz 7y agoNorthern Ireland? Or Northeast England?
- umanwizard 7y agoI’m curious where you’re from such that food and foot have the same vowel sound.
- mannykannot 7y agoI have an Irish friend who pronounces 'foot' like 'food' ending with a 't'. Similarrly, 'book' like 'boot' ending with a 'k'.
- nmeofthestate 7y agoScotland.
- umanwizard 7y agoCool, thanks!
- swebs 7y ago>The grand total: 15831
- zeckalpha 7y ago> For instance, the following [...] putative syllables are not actually legitimate syllables of English: > ... > t w er k t OUTWORKED Some things have changed in English since 2009!
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAnd foosball f uw s
- madcaptenor 7y agoThe 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."
- shmink 7y agoEnglish has 2 syllables.
- LorenPechtel 7y agoCompare 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.
- faho 7y agoTwo: "Eng" and "lish".