# English: Syllabification in Oxford dictionaries



## Paintdrop

Hi! Please let me know if I'm doing something blatantly wrong, or if it's Oxford's fault. I recently began using the free, online Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary as my preferred dictionary. However, I am having tremendous difficulty understanding how some words are pronounced due to the fact that Oxford does not divide their words into syllables. 

For example, the pronunciation for the word *public *is written phonetically as ...*ˈpʌblɪk*. As you can readily see, Oxford has absolutely _no dashes or dots _that divide this word into two syllables. This is extremely ambiguous because it could be pronounced *"**pʌ - blɪk"* or  *"**pʌb - lɪk"*? I totally understand how to pronounce the sounds; my confusion comes from not understanding _exactly which letters _go to each divided syllable. 

Listening to the audio pronunciation helps, but it will only get you so far. In my short time using this dictionary, I have come across dozens of words that are ambiguous due to Oxford not dividing their words into syllables. Therefore, I quite often have had to guess exactly how a specific word is divided into syllables. This technically means that I am sometimes forced to guess how to precisely pronounce a word, yet I am using a dictionary (ironically counterintuitive is you ask me). 

Again, listening carefully to the audio pronunciation helps a lot, but not every single time. Here are a coulple more examples where the audio pronunciation is not precisely clear on how a word is divided into its syllables. 

*Village* = *vɪlɪdʒ               *Is it pronounced *"**vɪl-ɪdʒ"* or *"vɪ-lɪdʒ"*? 

*Current = **kʌrənt     *Is it pronounced *"**kʌ-rənt"* or "*kʌr-ənt"*?   

The confusion only gets uglier and gradually increases when there are three or more syllables involved. 

So, I'm wondering if there is something I'm doing wrong, or if this is simply a flaw in Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary? 

Thanks a bunch!


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## Beryl from Northallerton

Welcome to the forum by the way. And what amazing start!! - I'm going to have to think quite hard about that.


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## Elwintee

I'm not quite clear about your problem, Paintdrop.  I cannot make a distinction between the pronunciation of the words just on the basis of the division into syllables.  Are you in fact unsure of which syllable bears the stress?  That seems to be indicated by Oxford (as in *ˈpʌblɪk*), and you could hear it in the audio version.  We don't say words by syllables, that is an artificial division only visible in writing.  Sorry if I have misunderstood the nature of your problem.


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## Valvs

Just as Elwintee above, I am very confused. Paintdrop, would you care to explain to us how pronunciation of /'*vɪlɪdʒ*/, for example, can be ambiguous in your opinion depending on the syllabic division of the word?


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## Paintdrop

Beryl from Northallerton said:


> Welcome to the forum by the way. And what amazing start!! - I'm going to have to think quite hard about that.



Any help would be appreciated. Thank you for the welcoming! 



Elwintee said:


> I'm not quite clear about your problem, Paintdrop.  I cannot make a distinction between the pronunciation of the words just on the basis of the division into syllables.  Are you in fact unsure of which syllable bears the stress?  That seems to be indicated by Oxford (as in *ˈpʌblɪk*), and you could hear it in the audio version.  We don't say words by syllables, that is an artificial division only visible in writing.  Sorry if I have misunderstood the nature of your problem.



Hi Elwintee! I totally understand how stress/intonation are notated and used for words in this dictionary. My specific issue with this dictionary is exactly how a word should be prounounced. Lets stick with the word public, for instance. 

We know that the word public has two syllables. Therefore, most dictionaries will break this word into two syllables to give the learner the precise way of pronouncing the word. 

CAMBRIDGE writes public as */ˈpʌb.lɪk/*  The dot lets you know to pronounce it *pʌb.lɪk*, _not _pʌ.blɪk.  

MERRIAM WEBSTER writes public as *p**ə-blik*. The dash lets you know to pronounce it as *p**ə-blik* _not _pəb-lik.

The problem is that OXFORD's Advanced Learner's dictionary doesn't use dashes nor dots to divide their words into syllables. They just give you one long undivided word. This means I have to guess on the correct pronunciation. As you can see, this is not an issue with Cambridge or Webster.

I hope you better understand my question. However, I would gladly elaborate more if needed. Thanks for your help nevertheless. 


 .


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## Beryl from Northallerton

Forgive me if I have misunderstood you, but does your difficulty in grasping these pronunciation guides concern the stress patterns being prescribed?


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## Cagey

The _Concise Oxford English Dictionary_ is the one we link to in this forum.  The odd thing is that if you click on the linked pronunciation key ˈpʌblɪk/﻿ it takes you to a guide of their pronunciation symbols that includes this explanation:
Stress:
The mark ' before a syllable indicates that it is stressed.  Secondary stress is shown by the mark ˌ before a syllable.
​ However, they do not include an explanation of their system for indicating syllable division.

In the full-size online OED, if you click on the pronunciation key for _public_, you see a drop-down guide for the pronunciation of each symbol, or pair of symbols in the key. That tells you that the letters 'bl' are pronounced as one sound, which means that they begin the next syllable.  The printed copy of the _Concise Dictionary_ may have such a key somewhere, but I can't find it in our online version.


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## ewie

Welcome, Paintdrop


Paintdrop said:


> CAMBRIDGE writes public as */ˈpʌb.lɪk/*  The dot lets you know to pronounce it *pʌb.lɪk*, _not _pʌ.blɪk.
> 
> MERRIAM WEBSTER writes public as *p**ə-blik*. The dash lets you know to pronounce it as *p**ə-blik* _not _pəb-lik.


These two contradict one another
Like previous posters, I'm finding it a bit difficult to know why you place so much importance on syllabification: we don't divide words up into syllables when we speak.  I suspect the reason Oxford doesn't syllabify its pronunciations is to reflect that.


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## se16teddy

Paintdrop said:


> Listening to the audio pronunciation helps, but it will only get you so far.


I don't think that listening to the audio pronunciation helps at all.  The English language does not divide syllables in the way Paintdrop is suggesting, and it makes absolutely no difference to comprehension whether you say pu-blic or pub-lic or publ-ic.

Paintdrop, in what way were you proposing to mark in your pronunciation where the syllable division comes?


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## Paintdrop

Valvs said:


> Just as Elwintee above, I am very confused. Paintdrop, would you care to explain to us how pronunciation of /'*vɪlɪdʒ*/, for example, can be ambiguous in your opinion depending on the syllabic division of the word?



Hi, and thank you for asking! 

As for village, some dictionaries would pronounce it as *vɪl-ɪdʒ. *This means the first syllable would sound like "vill" and the second "idge". These dictionaries also prove that they pronounce village as '*vɪl-ɪdʒ *by using a dash to separate the two syllables according by how they will individually sound. 

Other dictionaries may pronounce village as '*vɪ-lɪdʒ. *This means the first syllable would sound like "vi" and the second "lidge". These dictionaries also prove they pronounce village as '*vɪ-lɪdʒ *by using a dash to separate the two syllables according to how they will individually sound. 

The problem is that Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary simply gives you '*vɪlɪdʒ *with no separation of syllabes via dots/dashes. Therefore, not all, but for many words, I have to guess if it should be pronounced one way or the other. 

This is ambiguous because Oxford does have a certain way of pronouncing the word, but the listener is often forced to guess what that right way is due to no dashes/dots dividing the words into its syllables.  

You see, Merriam Webster specifically writes out vi-lage, while Cambridge writes out vill-age. Oxford doesn't write out anything but village. Therefore, when it comes to multiple syllables, I'm forced to guess pronunciation using this otherwise fantastic dictionary.


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## ewie

If one dictionary writes *vɪl-ɪdʒ *and another writes *vɪ-lɪdʒ*, doesn't that kind of suggest to you that only one of them may be right?  When those dictionaries are of the magnitude of Cambridge and Merriam Webster, doesn't it kind of suggest to you that syllabification is rather low priority for them?


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## Hermione Golightly

I wonder why as a fluent native speaker you are using the Oxford Advanced Learners dictionary but it is perhaps the best online free version and of course we do need to use dictionaries, despite 'knowing it all'. When I was very young, in the days of handwriting, we had to know how to use hyphens because we had to have the ends of our lines matching down the right-hand side of the page, leaving no gaps, so we had to know the rules about where to put the hyphen. You would be in deep trouble if you wrote righ-thanded or vi-llage. 
I can see that learners need to know. When I was very immersed in German I sometimes got confused by consonant clusters when reading English. There's no reason why a learner would know where to make the division in a word like corkscrew, to take an extreme example, considering they might not know the words 'cork' and 'screw'. Or 'righthanded' come to that - the temptation could be to pronounce it riff - thanded. So I agree it is strange. Why not write and ask them?

Hermione


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## se16teddy

Hermione Golightly said:


> I wonder why as a fluent native speaker you are using the Oxford Advanced Learners dictionary but it is perhaps the best online free version and of course we do need to use dictionaries, despite 'knowing it all'. When I was very young, in the days of handwriting, we had to know how to use hyphens because we had to have the ends of our lines matching down the right-hand side of the page, leaving no gaps, so we had to know the rules about where to put the hyphen. You would be in deep trouble if you wrote righ-thanded or vi-llage.
> I can see that learners need to know. When I was very immersed in German I sometimes got confused by consonant clusters when reading English. There's no reason why a learner would know where to make the division in a word like corkscrew, to take an extreme example, considering they might not know the words 'cork' and 'screw'. Or 'righthanded' come to that - the temptation could be to pronounce it riff - thanded. So I agree it is strange. Why not write and ask them?
> 
> Hermione


But Paintdrop isn't talking about this.  Paintdrop is talking about pronunciation, not spelling, and all dictionaries that include a pronunciation guide explain whether you pronounce "righthanded" as "riff-thanded".  Paintdrop is assuming that English is like Swedish and marks with a gap or a glottal stop that you are now moving from one syllable to the next.  But English does not do this: English does not even put such a marker between words, let alone between syllables.


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## AmEStudent

Because  that's how it is pronounced, all sounds at once. 
I can see how it might be useful to separate into syllables in some caess though. 

Take the word *current * you mentioned. In Most American dialects, current is pronounced /kɚɹənt/. In some dialects and especially in British English, it's /kʌɹənt/. Now if we were to use a phonetic system that uses ə instead of ʌ, like Merriam Webster's, the only way to distinguish the two pronunciations would be to write the former as 'kər-ənt and the latter as 'kə-rənt.


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## Hermione Golightly

> For example, the pronunciation for the word *public *is written phonetically as ...*ˈpʌblɪk*. As you can readily see, Oxford has absolutely _no dashes or dots _that divide this word into two syllables. This is extremely ambiguous because it could be pronounced *"**pʌ - blɪk"* or  *"**pʌb - lɪk"*? *I totally understand how to pronounce the sounds*; my confusion comes from not understanding _exactly which letters _go to each divided syllable


. 

I don't understand what Paintdrop's problem is, as a highly literate native speaker who knows how to pronounce the words. To be accurate knows how "to pronounce the _sounds_". Isn't pronouncing the sounds the same thing as pronouncing the words to a native speaker?  What native speaker knows how to 'pronounce the sounds' but not the words? What and where does it matter where the syllables start and end? Yes, of course stress is important, especially with controversial words like 'controversy'.

I have thought of three scenarios in which a native speaker might be interested: if they need or want to know about prefixes and suffixes or word origins in general; if they are writing some form of verse, light verse such as a limerick or a clerihew; writing some very original. clever, or 'modern' verse for,  which in some way plays on deliberate 'misunderstandings' of English word  meaning, formation, spelling and pronunciation.

I don't know why Swedish is any more relevant in this context than southern African click languages.

Hermione


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## natkretep

Like others, I'm surprised at the issue of syllabification. I think for most speakers, you just combine the segments in the order in which they are given, so it is not an issue. Most of the time, I reckon, it doesn't matter one way or other.

Syllabification does affect some aspects of sound production though, so if you have a word like _respite_ (pronunciation given as /ˈrɛspʌɪt, -spɪt/﻿ by the W R Dictionary), you might think (just picking up the first pronunciation): is it /ˈrɛs.pʌɪt/ or /ˈrɛ.spʌɪt/? If you chose the former, you might then use an aspirated /p/ (ie /p/ with a puff of air following it as in 'pea' in most English accents); if the former you might use an unaspirated /p/ (without a puff of air following, as in 'spit' in most English accents). (And in case you're wondering, it's an unaspirated /p/ for _respite _in my accent.)


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## Merrit

Paintdrop said:


> <...>
> This is extremely ambiguous because it could be pronounced "pʌ - blɪk" or "pʌb - lɪk"? I totally understand how to pronounce the sounds; my confusion comes from not understanding exactly which letters go to each divided syllable.
> <...>


 

I'm sorry, I still don't understand why you believe that written syllable division is important to pronunciation. In your example "pʌ - blɪk" or "pʌb - lɪk", whether the 'b' is on the end of 'pʌ' or on the beginning of 'lɪk' makes absolutely no difference to the pronunciation.

The same applies to your other examples. Whether they are written "vɪl-ɪdʒ" or "vɪ-lɪdʒ", "kʌ-rənt" or "kʌr-ənt", each word has only one pronunciation. 

Syllable division is useful as a tool in teaching word stress (e.g. 'permit', 'record' -- with stress on the first syllable are nouns, with stress on the second syllable are verbs). Since consonants are rarely if ever stressed in English, their placing is irelevant for this purpose.  

In a few words, such as 'apartheid' * and (Hermione's example) righthanded, if you didn't know any better, you might pronounce the central 'th' as in 'this' or 'thing'. Written syllable division (apart-heid; right-handed) would be a giude to avoiding this error. Your friends laughing at your pronunciation would be an equally good guide.

m


* - not a click language word, but still southern African.


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## natkretep

Agreed. In the case of _public_, _village _and _current_, it makes no difference as far as I am concerned.


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## JulianStuart

Paintdrop said:


> *Village* = *vɪlɪdʒ               *Is it pronounced *"**vɪl-ɪdʒ"* or *"vɪ-lɪdʒ"*?
> 
> *Current = **kʌrənt     *Is it pronounced *"**kʌ-rənt"* or "*kʌr-ənt"*?
> 
> Thanks a bunch!


Having established that the stress is on the first syllable of each, how would the two choices for pronunciation differ when you pronounce them?  The English speakers here are puzzled by the presentation of a choice, because the two "syllable diivisions" have no impact on what sounds come out of the mouth during pronunciation (there is no break between the syllables when saying these words).  If you can explain how you would pronounce the words differently, perhaps we can help.


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## Paintdrop

Ok! For those wondering why syllabication matters, it is important because you are training your brain to memorize a certain pronunciation, as well as how to utter that pronunciation correctly, and promptly when needed.

 Take the word “escape,” for instance. 

Merriam Webster has two forms of pronouncing escape: *is-kap*, or *es-kap. *

Other dictionaries pronounce escape as *i-skape*. I actually prefer this form because *i-skape* flows much more naturally while conversing than saying *is-kap*. Still don’t believe there is a difference? Try saying *is-kap* five times, then *i-skape*. Even though both convey the same word, some pronunciations may flow a bit more naturally than others. 

Now, lets go back to the word village. Some dictionaries pronounce it as *vi-lidge*, while others pronounce it as *vill-idge*. There is a big difference between saying *VI-LIDGE* versus *VILL-IDGE*. We pronounce words based on their syllables. Therefore*, VI-LIDGE* has the first syllable as *VI*, and the second as *LIDGE*. On the other hand *VILL-IDGE* has the first syllable being *VILL* and the second *IDGE*! Thus, you will eventually train your brain to say either *VILL-IDGE* or *VI-LIDGE*. Between these choices, I prefer *VILL-IDGE.*

*NOW HERE IS THE ACTUAL PROBLEM! 
*
The actual problem is *NOT *which pronunciation is right or wrong. I love and respect the fact that English has multiple dialects across the world. The actual problem is that Oxford’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary doesn’t divide their words into syllables at all. In other words, they aren’t even giving me a pronunciation to study. Instead, they just give you the entire word, leaving you somewhat clueless on *exactly* how they want you to pronounce it. 

For instance, if you look up escape, they will not divide it into *es-kap*, *is-kap*, nor *i-skape*, nor anything. It is extremely rare for a dictionary not to use dashes or dots to divide words into separate syllables for the sake of practicing accurate pronunciation of each syllable. 

Finally, I must point out that I am totally aware that English is spoken fast and fluently, just like every other language. However, dividing words into syllables allows learners to slowly practice and master the phonetic sounds of each syllable. Therefore, if you are given a five-syllable word, mastering the precise pronunciation of all five sounds (hence five-syllables) will allow you to enunciate that word eloquently each and every time.  Unfortunately, this particular edition of Oxford doesn’t use dashes or dots to help learners understand the phonetic sound of each and every syllable. I’m disappointed because this is otherwise an absolutely fantastic dictionary. 

Nonetheless, I highly appreciate all of your insight/inquiry!


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## Alxmrphi

Does MW actually have "is-kap" and "es-kap" as a guide to pronunciation?
That's pretty awful.

I really think you're reading into the syllable thing far to deeply.
When we speak there is no big gap with extra stress like you're making out that there is.

Any linguistics student that studies syllabification and how to diagram it comes across the problem of multiple possibilities of having different mappings for sounds, where a consonant can be considered in the coda of one syllable or the onset of another syllable, and they are advised that most linguists go with the onset where possible, fullfilling "onset maximilisation", i.e. if it can exist in both and onset and a coda, put it in the onset. This is really variable and has absolutely no bearing on the stress or pronunciation of the word, so what you're defining as a syllable here is not going to be obvious or different untill you really put an unusual amount of stress on a certain syllable, and have a significant delay that wouldn't be present in anyone's actual real utterances.

So if you can draw a syllable tree for exactly the same word in two different ways, spoken the same way, then that shows that this sort of division isn't really relevant at all. Talking about stress on syllables yes, that's really relevant, but the divisions of a crossover such as where does the [l] go in 'village', next to the _ or not, doesn't matter.

"Village" is bisyllabic, and can be represented as /vɪlədʒ/ in IPA.
Splitting the syllables, and deciding what to do with the [l] looks like this:

[vɪ] [?l?] [ədʒ]

Now we also no the stress is on the first syllable, so the two possibilities are:

['vɪl].[ədʒ]
['vɪ].[lədʒ]

So esentially it's /'vɪl.ədʒ/ and /'vɪ.lədʒ/.
These two options of where to divide the syllable doesn't change how the word would be pronounced in a normal way.
Taking a big breath between them, of course, will, and it's that difference I think you're focusing on.

If the stress was on the second syllable, it'd have a bigger influence, but the timing would be pretty much the same.
_


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## Dan2

Like many of the other respondents, Paintdrop, I am surprised that you think that one needs to know the precise syllabification of a word like "village" in order to know how to pronounce it correctly.  A possible source of confusion occurs to me: Your profile identifies you as a native speaker of English, and I think the surprise that so many of are expressing reflects our feeling that for native speakers, the syllabification of a word like "village" is hard to define and not relevant to its pronunciation.  If you are in fact NOT a native speaker of English, then your questions become much more understandable.  I've encountered several cases on WRF where people have incorrectly entered "English" in the native speaker field (perhaps meaning, "I speak English well and wish to use it as my default language on WRF").  So, may I respectfully ask, are you indeed a native speaker of English?

Thanks,
Dan


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## JulianStuart

Elwintee said:


> We don't say words by syllables, *that is an  artificial division only visible in writing*.  Sorry if I have  misunderstood the nature of your problem.





ewie said:


> ... *we don't divide words up into syllables when  we speak*.  I suspect the reason Oxford doesn't syllabify its  pronunciations is to reflect that.





se16teddy said:


> The English language does not divide  syllables in the way Paintdrop is suggesting, and *it makes absolutely no  difference to comprehension whether you say pu-blic or pub-lic or  publ-ic.*





Hermione Golightly said:


> .
> *Isn't pronouncing the sounds the same thing as pronouncing the words* to a  native speaker?  What native speaker knows how to 'pronounce the  sounds' but not the words? What and where does it matter where the  syllables start and end?





natkretep said:


> Like others, I'm surprised at the issue of  syllabification. I think for most speakers, *you just combine the  segments in the order in which they are given,* so it is not an issue.  Most of the time, I reckon, it doesn't matter one way or other.





Merrit said:


> . In your example "pʌ - blɪk" or "pʌb - lɪk",  whether the 'b' is on the end of 'pʌ' or on the beginning of 'lɪk' *makes  absolutely no difference to the pronunciation*.
> Whether they are written "vɪl-ɪdʒ" or "vɪ-lɪdʒ", "kʌ-rənt" or "kʌr-ənt", each word has only one pronunciation.





JulianStuart said:


> The English speakers here are puzzled by  the presentation of a choice, because *the two "syllable divisions" have  no impact on what sounds come out of the mouth during pronunciation*  (there is no break between the syllables when saying these words).  If  you can explain how you would pronounce the words differently, perhaps  we can help.





Alxmrphi said:


> "Village" is bisyllabic, and can be represented as /vɪlədʒ/ in IPA.
> Splitting the syllables, and deciding what to do with the [l] looks like this:
> [vɪ] [?l?] [ədʒ]
> Now we also no the stress is on the first syllable, so the two possibilities are:
> ['vɪl].[ədʒ]
> ['vɪ].[lədʒ]
> So esentially it's /'vɪl.ədʒ/ and /'vɪ.lədʒ/.
> These* two options of where to divide the syllable doesn't change how the word would be pronounced *in a normal way.


 


Paintdrop said:


> Now, lets go back to the word village. Some dictionaries pronounce it as *vi-lidge*, while others pronounce it as *vill-idge*. There is a big difference between saying *VI-LIDGE* versus *VILL-IDGE*. We pronounce words based on their syllables. Therefore*, VI-LIDGE* has the first syllable as *VI*, and the second as *LIDGE*. On the other hand *VILL-IDGE* has the first syllable being *VILL* and the second *IDGE*! Thus, you will eventually train your brain to say either *VILL-IDGE* or *VI-LIDGE*. Between these choices, I prefer *VILL-IDGE.*
> 
> *NOW HERE IS THE ACTUAL PROBLEM!
> *
> Instead, they just give you the entire word, leaving you somewhat clueless on *exactly* how they want you to pronounce it.


Dear Paintdrop.
The comments above yours all say that the choice you present us with (highlighted in red in yours) is a false one because there is no difference in the pronunciation of the word village between those two representations of sounds.  Your comment in blue (which is the actual problem for us) leaves *us* somewhat clueless on what your concern is - given that the division into syllables is not needed for describing the pronunciation (whether using IPA or other systems).  Being concerned with syllabification is healthy eek for understanding stress, some typography and other issues but not for pronunciation.


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## Paintdrop

Alxmrphi said:


> Does MW actually have "is-kap" and "es-kap" as a guide to pronunciation?
> That's pretty awful.



Actually, Merriam Webster has escape written as "*is-'kāp*" or "*es-'kāp*" for pronunciation. However the "*ā*" in both examples have only means it has the sound of "a" as in "ape." 

However, that's not even my main concern. I'll pronounce it however the dictionary instructs me to. As long as they offer a pronunciation guide, I'm satisfied. My dissatisfaction was due to Oxford not even having a pronunciation guide. Even though *is-kap *is an awkward pronunciation, I'm extremely thankful that Merriam Webster at least broke the word escape into two syllables. Also, I read your post, but I still think syllabication is extremely important when it comes to speaking eloquently. If you have to speak in front of a large audience, it's a wonderful feeling to know beforehand that your words already sound crisp, natural, and eloquent. 

*@ DAN

*Yes, I am a native speaker. My issue is not necessarily with the word village. The issue is that none of Oxford's words are broken down into syllables for the sake of accurate pronunciation. Thanks!


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## Loob

Can you explain why you feel syllabification is important for pronunciation, Paintdrop?


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## Paintdrop

@Juilan and others!

This is getting really interesting. I take it you all are arguing that how a word is divided into syllables doesn't matter as long as the sounds are pronounced correctly. 

For instance, if a dictionary pronounces village as VILL-AGE, you all are saying that it's perfectly following the rules of English to pronounce it VI-LAGE. If this is your argument, then my question to you all is what about the word "APRON?"

Most dictionaries say "A-PRON." Would I be violating the rules by saying AP-RON even if my syllabic sounds were correct?  Please share insight on this thought so I can better understand all of you.


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah, you talk about eloquent speaking in public, but nobody can understand how syllable division changes everything.
Can you explain how it changes the word? You've been given the primary stress.

Syllables are ways for people to analyse language in an artificial way, syllables aren't "actually" there, you can make a lot of good generalisations and see the inner workings of them, and come up with phonological rules where syllable placement has a big effect, but these are all artificial ways of looking at word analysis, whether a sound goes at the end of one syllable or the beginning of another one doesn't change the pronunciation, and is therefore impossible to be used as a way of speaking more elegantly.

Okay, I've just seen your last post above me pop up when I posted (I replied without seeing it).
I really think you're confusing syllable placement and stress placement.

You're not giving any stress markings in your examples and I think that's because the way you're dividing the word is meant to indicate that, but that's not how anyone else is looking at it, which is what is causing this confusion. The stress placement is given in the Oxford dictionary, which is why none of us can see a problem.



> Most dictionaries say "A-PRON." Would I be violating the rules by saying  AP-RON even if my syllabic sounds were correct?  Please share insight  on this thought so I can better understand all of you.



No, you wouldn't be violating any rules in dividing the word up that way, it doesn't change the pronounciation.
The stress is still on the very first sound of the word, no matter if it's "A-PRON" / "AP-RON" / "APR-ON".

You must be shifting your pronunciation by writing those in a different way, which means we are not talking about syllable division, we can't be.
You must be talking about where the stresses lie, which is something different.


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## xiaolijie

I don't believe that we need to know how to break words into syllables in order to sound natural or eloquent, but I understand that like many matters in language, _if you think it's the case, then it'll  feel the case to you._ The truth is: "a name" and "an aim" will sound the same by the same speaker because _linking syllables is a feature of English, not dividing into syllables _(But for the same reason I've said, I wouldn't be surprised if someone tells me that they pronounce the two differently )


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## Alxmrphi

xiaolijie said:


> I don't believe that we need to know how to break words into syllables in order to sound natural or eloquent, but I understand that like many matters in language, _if you think it's the case, then it'll  feel the case to you._ The truth is: "a name" and "an aim" will sound the same by the same speaker because _linking syllables is a feature of English, not dividing into syllables _(But for the same reason I've said, I wouldn't be surprised if someone tells me that they pronounce the two differently )



Exactly.
Did you know adders (snakes) used to be called nadders?
The indefinite article pronunciation sounded identifical and it was reanalysed as an adder.

"A nadder" / "An adder" - they were the same pronunciation and that's why we now have "an adder" where the "n" at the start of the noun was reanalysed as the "n" from "an". Words are written differently, but in speech very often there isn't a perceptible difference.

The same thing (but opposite direction) happened with "nickname", it used to be "ickname" and "an ickname" was reanalysed as "a nickname".
So this whole division in writing and what's actually there in the sound is artificial. If two things can be written in different ways and sound the same, then you can easily have different syllabic representations splitting up an utterance, without any change in the word.


----------



## Paintdrop

Loob said:


> Can you explain why you feel syllabification is important for pronunciation, Paintdrop?



Read post #20. 

Other than that, I just think perfecting your syllables (however you divide them) can only increase elocution.


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## Alxmrphi

Paintdrop said:


> Read post #20.



We have, and we've challenged those assumptions, trying to get to the bottom of the matter.
We can't then be deferred to an earlier post after we've looked at it and challenged it.

Can I ask a question?
For you, is there a difference in the syllable structure of the word "present" in the following examples:

_The *present *for Jane is on the table.
We're going to see them *present* the award later today._

??


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## Paintdrop

HERE'S A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY. 

Lets use the four-syllable word disintegrate. Say you have come across this word for the first time, and you want to master its pronunciation.

Merriam Webster allows you to practice the pronunciation of disintegrate by giving you this translation: 

*ˌdis-ˈin-tə-ˌgrāt

*Do you see how the dashes allow a learner to practice and master the phonetic sound of each syllable independently? A person trying to increase elocution could practice each four sounds repeatedly until satisfied. 

Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary only gives you:
*dɪsˈɪntɪɡreɪt*No dots, nor dashes to help the learner know how the four syllables are divided. 

Now take a look at what Cambridge gives you for disintegrate. 
*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
*
Even though Cambridge differs from Merriam Webster's way of pronouncing the word, at least Cambridge uses DOTS to separate the four syllables so the learner can PRACTICE Cambridge's approach to pronouncing disintegrate. 

The problem with Oxford is that they won't let me practice. Please tell me you understand my point now. Thanks!


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## Alxmrphi

But that's such a bad way to learn how to speak.
That's really not a good thing if you want to speak well.

There are all sorts of connection speech phonemena that we all do all day every day, and splitting up words like that to practice them independently means you're treating it as if there's a bigger space between two sounds than another sound, which is completely and utterly not the case, the complete opposite, in fact.

All /n/ phonemes in English, before a velar sound (either 'g' or 'k') become [ŋ] and are velarised by a phonological rule in English.
So if you have the word 'clingon' for example, and you split it up, you have "clin-gon" (potentially).
Taking that [n] and pronouncing it as if there was a separate word "clin" is not the same sound as when the sounds run together, so you're putting in spaces as if they are there in the word and they're just not.

Nobody is saying that syllables aren't useful, but what you're saying now is not what you were saying before.
For learners, to follow the pronunciation syllables are useful, nobody is denying that, but in your earlier example "village", where the [l] belongs, in the first or the second, made no difference, that's what didn't change. It seems you now mean more about using it as a practice tool rather anything else, which does change things.

Probably dictionaries that label syllables like the other dictionaries do help learners more, I can't bring myself to deny that.
But that is not what we've been talking about so far.

So if that is actually what you mean, then I agree.
But in the word "*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt*" that 'ti' in the middle isn't more separated from the 'gr' than the 'e*ɪ*' is that follows it.


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## JulianStuart

Paintdrop said:


> Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary only gives you:
> *dɪsˈɪntɪɡreɪt*No dots, nor dashes to help the learner know how the four syllables are divided.
> 
> Now take a look at what Cambridge gives you for disintegrate.
> *dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
> *
> Please tell me you understand my point now. Thanks!


Sorry, no I (we?) don't.

Do the sounds that come out of your mouth differ depending on which of these representations you follow?  They shouldn't!
Those extra dots in the Cambridge version do not affect - in any way - how I say the word, and it would be the same as the one above it.  All I needed was to know where the stress was to be placed and then to say the indicated sounds in order.  Seeing them in syllables does not help me.

Would you distinguish the two following by pronouncing them differently? I wouldn't.
*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪs **ˈ**ɪn.tɪ.greɪt*


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## Alxmrphi

> Would you distinguish the two following by pronouncing them differently? I wouldn't.
> *dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
> **dɪs **ˈ**ɪn.tɪ.greɪt*



Exactly.
Only someone who says the word artificially to highlight the boundaries would make a distinction, and that wouldn't be considered correct pronunciation to anyone in a natural circumstance. That's it in a nutshell, basically.


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## PaulQ

Paintdrop said:


> HERE'S A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY.
> 
> Lets use the four-syllable word disintegrate. Say you have come across this word for the first time, and you want to master its pronunciation.
> 
> Merriam Webster allows you to practice the pronunciation of disintegrate by giving you this translation:
> 
> *ˌdis-ˈin-tə-ˌgrāt
> *


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disintegrate This gives syllables, IPA (including stress) and a sound file. It is quite good. 

I think that, after a lot of searching, you have found that dictionaries are not always consistent. Given the myriad dialects and accents, you would be surprised if they were.

You add that you have your own chosen pronunciations. Doubtless, you have your own chosen set of syllables, or will develop them.


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## Paintdrop

Alxmrphi said:


> a velar sound (either 'g' or 'k') become [ŋ]   So if you have the word 'clingon' for example, and you split it up, you have "clin-gon" (potentially).
> Taking that [n] and pronouncing it as if there was a separate word "clin" is not the same sound as when the sounds run together, so you're putting in spaces as if they are there in the word and they're just not.



Yes but dictionaries do exactly what you posted all the time. Except in your case, they would keep the "ŋ" and not change it to n as you proposed.

The word "INEVITABLE" is a good example to your case. 

Merriam Webster pronounces it as *i-ˈne-və-tə-bəl   

*Oxford pronounces it as *ɪnˈevɪtəbl
*If I had to choose between the two approaches, I would much rather pronounce it Oxford's way. On a side note, how do you pronounce inevitable?

Oh, and was this not similar to your clingon example? 

*@Julian
*
*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
dɪs ˈɪn.tɪ.greɪt*

Although both pronounciations would readily register as "disintegrate," I would easily be able to recognize the different pronunciations. I've heard people use both. I personally feel comfortable pronouncing the latter. There is a big difference between dis-in versus di-sin.  

Most importantly, I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm only saying that there is a distinction.


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## Hermione Golightly

*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪs **ˈ**ɪn.tɪ.greɪt*

It's a  huge disservice to the learner to make artificial divisions like this 





> *dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt*


because _dis- _is an important prefix an entity. Who says a syllable has to start with a consonant? Learners need to acquire an idea of English word formation. It makes no difference whatsoever to the pronunciation when the word is pronounced normally. The risk is getting an unnatural  degree of stress on 'sin' as if 'sin' was a meaningful element in the word.

If as a native speaker, it helps your elocution then go ahead, but get a dictionary that suits your needs better. I've managed somehow to speak clearly and eloquently for decades without the slightest thought about the syllables. I decided to check out if this monster word 'syllabification' was real and discovered I needed to practise saying it. So I broke it into syllables and noted down syll-ab-ifi-ca-tion. 
I have no idea what a 'correct' version might be - perhaps syl-la-bi-fi-ca-tion. I get the stresses right, then I run it all together anyway.

Hermione


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## Alxmrphi

Paintdrop said:


> dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
> dɪs ˈɪn.tɪ.greɪt[/B]
> 
> Although both pronounciations would readily register as "disintegrate," I would easily be able to recognize the different pronunciations. I've heard people use both. I personally feel comfortable pronouncing the latter. There is a big difference between dis-in versus di-sin.
> 
> Most importantly, I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm only saying that there is a distinction.




Mind making a recording of it and uploading it somewhere?
I think your pronunciations would sound quite false and you wouldn't actually be saying the word naturally.
I want to check.

If you're hearing differences that don't lie in differences in stress, then I'd suggest you book an appointment with some scientists/psycholinguistics because you have an unhuman skill, a fantastically advanced and pretty amazing ability to recognise tiny differences that the rest of humanity can't, that I'm sure they'd be interested in studying.

Either that, or, as we've been saying, you're associating syllable structure somehow with stress, which makes all your posts make sense, but sadly has nothing to do with breaking up of syllables.


----------



## Paintdrop

PaulQ said:


> I think that, after a lot of searching, you have found that dictionaries are not always consistent. Given the myriad dialects and accents, you would be surprised if they were.



Exactly! I honestly don't care much about how a dictionary decides to pronounce their words. What I do care about is having a guide. My argument was not "How come it's pronounced this way?" My argument was "How come Oxford doesn't even allow me to see how the syllables divided and pronounced?"

Oh, and I use that site often for language translation, but that's about it. Many universities don't consider dictionary.com as a reputable source. Believe it or not, that site ended a perfectly good game of Scrabble once due to someone getting upset because I used a word from there.  I do appreciate your generosity! Thanks!


----------



## Alxmrphi

Think of it like a piece of music, if you have a melody of 30 notes,  you can see sort of easy rising scales, there are three of them.
The  music on the sheet is boxed off into three bars, each bar has 10 notes  and is one of these scales, it's fairly natural to see the logic behind  it.
Now there are harder notes pressed down on the piano at the start of each bar, then that's the "stress" falling, and you can see, new bar = first note is a bit louder, a bit more resonant.

Okay,  now if I take that music, and split it into 30 bars of 3 notes, the  piece would sound exactly the same, and the harder stresses would come  every 10 bars, not every bar like in the other example. The piece sounds  exactly the same to the listener, but how it's represented is quite  different on the sheet of music. This is comparable to what happens in  syllables, and which is what we've all been saying.

You're saying  the Oxford dictionary is like a music sheet production company that  doesn't use musical bars on their printings, and are therefore saying  you don't know how to group it, of course MW's printing has different  "bars", that are logical, the rising scales, being 3 in number, show a  pattern and it's easy and convenient to see it like that. If you rub out  the bar line and shift it 2 notes along, the piece of music would not  sound different, and neither would a word with a different shifted  syllable. The markings on the piece tell you where the stress falls,  even on the piece of music without any bars.

If I can give one piece of music to someone, with no bars, 3 bars, or 10 bars, and they play the notes the same, then you can come to the conclusion that how you divide a piece of music into bars doesn't change the sound of the piece, its trills are in the same place, the accented notes are indicated anyway, the bars could even be a different length, first two bars have 4 notes, then a 25-note bar, and one bar with one note. There's nothing that would make the piece sound any differently.

Organising a syllable is pretty similar, you have the stress given in the Oxford dictionary, and having "unkind" as "un-kind" or "unk-ind" is irrelevant. For logical reasons like Hermione said it's good for learners to see the negative prefix "un", and it's not as clear with "unk", but linguistically it makes no difference at all. What you're doing, is applying the logic that the beginning of a new "bar" in a piece of music, requires some sort of stress, which would make all different printings of this piece of music sound different, and you can say "I can hear a difference in someone playing the music with 30 bars and 3 bars". The fact is, the person playing it is doing it wrong, if that's the case.

Syllable boundaries = bars.
You can throw that "k" over the first syllable or the second, you know the stress is on the second syllable just like the accented notes are indicated on the piece of music.

I hope that clarifies it a bit.


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## Paintdrop

Alxmrphi said:


> Mind making a recording of it and uploading it somewhere?
> I think your pronunciations would sound quite false and you wouldn't actually be saying the word naturally.
> I want to check.



Keep in mind that these are not my pronunciations. They are from the aforementioned dictionaries. 

I can easily hear the difference between Cambridge's *dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt* and Merriam Webster's *dis-ˈin-tə-ˌgrāt. 
*
Go right ahead and listen... 
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/disintegrate?q=disintegrate

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disintegrate?show=0&t=1314493594

The same could be said about Oxford's *ɪnˈevɪtəbl *versus Merriam Webster's *i-ˈne-və-tə-bəl   
*Listen... 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inevitable

http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/inevitable


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## Alxmrphi

> I can easily hear the difference between Cambridge's *dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt* and Merriam Webster's *dis-ˈin-tə-ˌgrāt.
> *
> Go right ahead and listen...
> http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dict...q=disintegrate
> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...0&t=1314493594


They are different pronunciations, and the written form represents what is being given.
I said before when stress comes into play, noticeable differences are perceptible.
In my first post on the matter I said:


> So if you can draw a syllable tree for exactly the same word in two  different ways, spoken the same way, then that shows that this sort of  division isn't really relevant at all. Talking about stress on syllables  yes, that's really relevant, but the divisions of a crossover such as  where does the [l] go in 'village', next to the _ or not, doesn't  matter.__
> _


_

So here, this distinction relies primarily on the placement of the stressed syllable, which is relevant.
The other examples were not. Obviously having primary stress highlights everything, so if your stress goes on one sound or another, it's audible.
But not for anywhere else.

The Oxford dictionary would also indicate this, and does in its entry-> dɪsˈɪntɪɡreɪt.
That'd be agreeing with the MW version more than Cambridge. 

But as for the rest of the word, nothing matters.
What you're hearing is differences in stress placement, however the syllables are organised.
In one version, the 's' is starting a syllable, and in another, it's not, this is different syllable organisation on the main syllable.
Different ways of writing different pronunciations, that's all.

You can get all the information needed to correctly pronounce the word from the Oxford dictionary, having organisation of syllables there would not change anything._


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## JulianStuart

Paintdrop said:


> Keep in mind that these are not my pronunciations. They are from the aforementioned dictionaries.
> 
> I can easily hear the difference between Cambridge's *dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt* and Merriam Webster's *dis-ˈin-tə-ˌgrāt.
> *
> Go right ahead and listen...
> http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/disintegrate?q=disintegrate
> 
> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disintegrate?show=0&t=1314493594
> 
> The same could be said about Oxford's *ɪnˈevɪtəbl *versus Merriam Webster's *i-ˈne-və-tə-bəl
> *Listen...
> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inevitable
> 
> http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/inevitable



Of course you can hear different pronunciations - that's because they_* ARE*_ different - MW (AmE in general) turns an unstressed i into a schwa while BrE (Oxford/Cambridge) will keep the i sound even when unstressed.  Listen to someone sing the American national anthem one day and they often pronounce the sounds very slowly and distinctly, yet the i in perilous always comes out as uh!

Would you distinguish the following
*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪˈsɪnt.ɪ.greɪt
**dɪs**ˈ**ɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪs**ˈ**ɪnt.ɪ.greɪt?

*Again, I wouldn't!


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## Paintdrop

@Alxmrphi


I must say that I find your post extremely amusing, entertaining, and even a bit charming. Perhaps its because of your assumption that I have a solid enough grasp of music theory to properly interpret your analogy. Then again, perhaps it is entertaining because I actually do study and enjoy music theory. Also, I was thrown off a bit with the terminology. I hesitated when you said "bars" (measures where I'm from). 

Nevertheless, I disagree that we are playing the same notes. I'm arguing that Merriam Webster is playing C,E+G, A, while Cambridge is playing C+E, G, A. Same 4 notes used, but played differently. 

If we use the word public, one dictionary would say puh, then blick. The other would say pub, then lic. They are two different ways to pronounce the same word. In music, C will always be C. Pub is not the same as Puh. 

Now, it's not to say that the word public wouldn't be easily interpreted. However, their is a slightly noticeable difference between dialects that say puh-blick versus pub-lic.


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## Beryl from Northallerton

Paintdrop said:


> @Alxmrphi
> 
> 
> I must say that I find your post extremely amusing, entertaining, and even a bit charming. Perhaps its because of your assumption that I have a solid enough grasp of music theory to properly interpret your analogy. Then again, perhaps it is entertaining because I actually do study and enjoy music theory. Also, I was thrown off a bit with the terminology. I hesitated when you said "bars" (measures where I'm from).
> 
> Nevertheless, I disagree that we are playing the same notes. I'm arguing that Merriam Webster is playing C,E+G, A, while Cambridge is playing C+E, G, A. Same 4 notes used, but played differently.
> 
> If we use the word public, one dictionary would say puh, then blick. The other would say pub, then lic. They are two different ways to pronounce the same word. In music, C will always be C. Pub is not the same as Puh.
> 
> Now, it's not to say that the word public wouldn't be easily interpreted. However, their is a slightly noticeable difference between dialects that say puh-blick versus pub-lic.



Nevermind music theory, lets take butchery instead.
A French butcher will look at the same pig, very differently from an American butcher. Anatomy leaves the pig intact.


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## Beryl from Northallerton

JulianStuart said:


> Would you distinguish the following
> *dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
> **dɪˈsɪnt.ɪ.greɪt
> **dɪs**ˈ**ɪn.tɪ.greɪt
> **dɪs**ˈ**ɪnt.ɪ.greɪt?
> 
> *Again, I wouldn't!



Well I would - your last was spelled with a question mark.


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## Alxmrphi

I think we're getting close to the whole dictionary-fallacy here, too.
Dictionaries are not really about how we should speak, but rather a way of documenting how people *do *speak.
There are loads of words now that people say, that aren't in the dictionary, but will be in 5 years time. Does that mean those words are wrong? No, it doesn't.
Dictionaries follow what because widely-accepted, and when you look to a dictionary to figure out a meaning (or in this case, a pronunciation), what is given is an analysis that relates to breaking down what the opinion of the lexicographer(s) that manage the dictionary.

So given a sound, a word, an utterance, a phrase, whatever - the analysis into syllables then happens (or can happen).
This is going from sound to written form, and is an analysis that is not present in the actual word itself, it's a way of looking at it. 

So, when you look to a dictionary, it's an analysis of something, being split up and divided into a way of analysing it, it's not really a document of how you should go about saying it, so syllabification isn't meant to be something you take into account when building up a word back to the audio level. Sorry to go back to music again, but when Beethoven was writing his masterpieces, he wasn't aware about the physics of sound production and maths of how wavelengths that sound best together are divided equally, this is an "after-the-fact" analysis, from the future. That doesn't mean he needed to know all this when the music was being played, or he had to take that science to then get to the understanding that a G chord going to a C chord sounded the most 'complete'. It's a unidirectional way of looking at something. There's obviously something about syllabification that needs to be explained, as nearly everyone can count syllables in a word, with no linguistic training, there's something there to be investigated.

As JS pointed out, the 'I' sound could be classed as its own syllable in that word, or it could come after 't', it's not on the stressed syllable and when said naturally there are no breaks or divisions that make it stand alone. Please tell me we're getting through a bit! The only time it matters when pronouncing a word, is when you're talking about how it would be in syllables, which is a giant circle, and isn't really helpful. Everyone agrees there are 5 syllables here, the vowels are the nucleus of the syllable, they are what matter, consonants around it are not in any way obvious, unless the primary stress is immediately next to it.

I think if we switched the IPA and the recordings around, we could convince a lot of people it was the same.
If you see the IPA then you can 'hear' it already, the audio file just confirms what you've already got in your mind if it's reasonably close.


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## Beryl from Northallerton

Alxmrphi said:


> I think we're getting close to the whole dictionary-fallacy here, too.
> !



It's absolutely about the whole dictionary fallacy thing.
You no would more consult a dictionary for the purposes of improving oratory, than you would consult a car instrustion manual for the purposes of (say) learning how to do a hand-brake turn.
No mind the fact that your instruction manual will be more up-to-date than your dictionary.

Also prounciation schemes, as found in dictionaries are perforce crudely approximative, for many reasons, most notably though, and most relevantly to this thread, they can take no account of how words (would) sound in 'motion'.


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## JulianStuart

Beryl from Northallerton said:


> Also porounciation schemes, as found in dictionaries are perforce crudely approximative, for many reasons, most notably though, and most relevantly to this thread, they can take no account how words (would) sound in 'motion'.


I read* right over that although perhaps I should have porounced on it... 

*Actually, we don't read we do a complex pattern recongition performance and porounciation matched the pattern well enough.  A bit like all these different syllabifications that render the same word with the same sound?


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## CapnPrep

Paintdrop, you are absolutely correct to say that syllable divisions can provide crucial information about the correct pronunciation of many words, because many rules of English phonology depend on knowing whether a given consonant sound is at the end of one syllable or at the beginning of the next. Most native speakers don't know that they "know" this, which is why so many of the participants in this thread are so puzzled at why you seem to want this information.

It is also true, however, that the position of the syllable boundary isn't that important in a lot of cases, and may in fact be impossible to determine. For example, some consonants appear to be "ambisyllabic" — i.e. they seem to belong to both syllables at once. The fact is that phonologists are not always in agreement about where the syllable boundaries are in English, and this explains in part why dictionaries often contradict each other and why some dictionaries decide not to indicate syllables at all in the phonetic representation.

This short, but rather technical, essay by John Wells may be of interest to you (and to other posters): Syllabification and allophony. It reviews many of the syllable-based phonological rules of English and explains the how and why behind the syllable divisions given in the _Longman Pronunciation Dictionary_.


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## Beryl from Northallerton

JulianStuart said:


> I read* right over that although perhaps I should have porounced on it...


 
Thank you so much. False nails bedding in - were there any more?


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## JulianStuart

CapnPrep - Thanks - a very technical essay and _some_ insight (for me) about the issues at hand.
The example that I focused on was "selfish", (my own word: "shelfish" (like a shelf)) and "shell-fish" and the possible ways these might be rendered in a dictionary to guide learners about the slight differences in pronunciation.  The one that stands out is the _shell-fish_ one, where the hyphen (the loss of which is bemoaned in the essay) provides enough clue (to me) to insert a slight break (or lengthen the L or whatever the technical term is) to distinguish its pronunciation.  Some of the other examples are a tad contrived (toes track and toast rack (or whatever it was - again we have a word break to help!).  



> Most native speakers don't know that they "know" this, which is why so  many of the participants in this thread are so puzzled at why you seem  to want this information.


  I can add this to my list  of unknown knowns, I think.  I can see that in _some_ cases, (but I suspect realistically _quite a small fraction_ of words) a notation to distinguish subtleties such as in the example above selfish/shelfish vs shell-fish would be helpful if the word did not have the hyphen already.  Do you have a feel for how many actual mispronunciations might occur as a result of (e.g.) Oxford's lack of syllabification?

Paintdrop hasn't come back yet, but would *you *distinguish the following if trying to pronounce them based on the symbols? (Note the BrE i before the g and not a schwa)
*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪˈsɪnt.ɪ.greɪt
**dɪs**ˈ**ɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪs**ˈ**ɪnt.ɪ.greɪt*


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## xiaolijie

Good morning to all!
After a good sleep I'd like to share with you some thoughts that occurred to me during my sleep: 

1. So we've got among our examples three publishers giving us three "different pronunciations" for "public": *"pʌ - blɪk", "pʌb - lɪk"* and *"pʌblɪk"*. If the differences in their presentation reflect differences in the pronunciations of the word, I'm sure we all should say the word very differently among ourselves in relation to how we divide the syllables in our natural speech, but I don't think this is the case. _I don't think these experienced publishers are contradicting one another _either, but that _their syllable breaks are only a practical guide to possible break points if you have to break the word into a new line._ The guide is for writing, not speaking. 

2. As I said in my previous post, syllabification is not a natural feature of English. If it is, then we should pronounce, for example, "_stop it_" as "stop // it" and "_sail away_" as "sail // away" ( the "//" represents a natural break between syllables) but this way of prouncing is mostly observed in learners of English, whereas native speakers and experienced learners would sound more like *"...pit"* for "sto*p it*" and *"...laway"* for "sai*l away*" (I only want to show the merging of one syllable into another without getting into how the first syllable is pronounced. The *"..." *is to represent the omitted information). Remember how we tell English language learners to run the syllables together to sound more like native speakers? 

3. The fact that there is no practical dividing line between syllables in English can also be seen in our problems in learning languages where the dividing line exists. Let's take an example: in Japanese there are words like these: *kin-en* (= no smoking), *ki-nen *(=memory), *kin-nen *(= these recent years). As a beginning learner of Japanese, no matter how well you think you say one of these words, it'll come out to the Japanese ear more like another. That is mainly because in English one syllable runs into another and _we don't differenciate between kin-en, ki-nen and kin-nen._


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## natkretep

Just to add that I have changed my mind about the syllabification of _village_ not mattering. This is to do with the choice of a 'dark L' or a 'light L' (see wikipedia, for example), and in my accent the L at the end of a syllable receives a 'dark L', whereas the one at the start receives a 'light L'. It's a light L for me, so in this case, I would prefer /ˈvɪ.lɪdʒ/. In general, I think what I do is to move as many of the consonants as possible at the end of a syllable to the following syllable. The constraint is when there is an unacceptable consonant cluster (combination).

Therefore, _lock-up_ is /ˈlɒ.kʌp/ usually, and _locksmith_ is /ˈlɒk.smɪθ/ (because /ksm/ is not a permissable cluster for English).


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## PaulQ

@ Paintdrop,
I re-read this thread in the hopes of coming to a conclusion, not only about your worries but about syllables in general.





Paintdrop said:


> Hi! Please let me know if I'm doing something blatantly wrong, or if it's Oxford's fault. I recently began using the free, online Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary as my preferred dictionary. However, I am having tremendous difficulty understanding how some words are pronounced due to the fact that Oxford does not divide their words into syllables.


You give your native language as English. This raises the question of how, until you realised that the OALD did not give syllables, you pronounced English words.  

You see the question that is hanging, “In whatever manner you did pronounce them, why do you think it was wrong?”





> For example, the pronunciation for the word *public *is written phonetically as ...*ˈ**p**ʌ**bl**ɪ**k*. As you can readily see, Oxford has absolutely _no dashes or dots _that divide this word into two syllables. This is extremely ambiguous because it could be pronounced *"p**ʌ** - bl**ɪ**k"* or *"p**ʌ**b - l**ɪ**k […] Village* = *v**ɪ**l**ɪ**d**ʒ* Is it pronounced *"v**ɪ**l-**ɪ**d**ʒ**"* or *"v**ɪ**-l**ɪ**d**ʒ**"*?


I would ask you to consider that syllables are no more than a convenient construct and, if they are at all real, fall like flies in the face of accents and dialects. I’m sure that it would not take you very long to find a word in Received Pronunciation that has either 2 or 3 syllables. I’m sure wars have been fought over such minutiae.





> [...]The confusion only gets uglier and gradually increases when there are three or more syllables involved.


Exactly, this is my point but without the emotional adjectives. We may complain that it is raining, but there is little point shouting at clouds. There are not two people on the planet who agree on where all syllables of all words fall, and there never will be. As dictionaries are written by humans, why would you think that dictionaries should be exempt from this universal law?





> So, I'm wondering if there is something I'm doing wrong, or if this is simply a flaw in Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary?


I will be frank. Yes, I do think there is something that you are doing wrong. You are expecting consistency from a construct that is there to act as a guide rather than an infallible source of the final truth. There is no final truth when it comes to syllables – there is, as in quantum mechanics, only a probability.


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## Beryl from Northallerton

PaulQ said:


> @ Paintdrop,
> I re-read this thread in the hopes of coming to a conclusion, not only about your worries but about syllables in general.You give your native language as English. This raises the question of how, until you realised that the OALD did not give syllables, you pronounced English words.



The elephant in the room.

 How could Paintdrop ever know that the dictionary had made a mistake? How could Paintdrop decide between alternative pronunciations of the same word?


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## Paintdrop

Keep in mind that tangencies occur quite often when multiple people are involved in conversation. Although the vast amount of discussion in this thread has dealt with the differences of pronunciations with the same word, that was never ever the original issue. As stated before, I love and respect the variety of English dialects spoken throughout the world. 

The main issue was about me being disappointed with the fact that a specific edition of Oxford did not divide their words into syllables via dots and symbols to assist learners on accurate pronunciation. Somehow (perhaps naturally), the main topic diverged into a debate over dictionaries that contradict one another with their pronunciations as if that was ever the big issue we began with. Again, I couldn't care less if reputable dictionaries slightly contradict one another in the pronunciation of their words. 

If anything, I take full blame for the tangent. At any point in time, I could have strongly emphasized that the contradiction of pronunciations was not the issue, or reinforced that the issue was always about why a particular Oxford dictionary avoided the use of syllabication. 

*Main point*: I don't care if the word *escape *is syllabically divided into *is-kape*, *es-kape*, *i-skape*, or something weird as *e-sk-pa-e,* just at least give me some sort of guide via dashes or dots! Oxford avoids these symbols all together which sometimes forces learners to guess how a certain word is pronounced. That was the orginal issue, not which pronunciation is best!


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## JulianStuart

Paintdrop said:


> *Main point*: I don't care if the word *escape *is syllabically divided into *is-kape*, *es-kape*, *i-skape*, or something weird as *e-sk-pa-e,* just at least give me some sort of guide via dashes or dots! Oxford avoids these symbols all together which sometimes forces learners to guess how a certain word is pronounced. That was the orginal issue, not which pronunciation is best!


I think I still have not understood your point , because I think (especially if you don't care how it is divided into syllables) _the simple order of the letters or symbols _(or representation of the sounds associated with them, e.g., in a dictionary's phonetic guide) AND where the stress is to be put, are all that is needed to teach the pronunciation well enough (and it's not a _guess_ if you know what the letters/symbols represent). (At least well enough for most folks who are not familiar or interested in ambisyllabification or allophony)  

*dɪˈsɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪˈsɪnt.ɪ.greɪt
**dɪs**ˈ**ɪn.tɪ.greɪt
**dɪs**ˈ**ɪnt.ɪ.greɪt*

The dots in those don't distinguish anything (in my mind) to how I would pronounce them, compared to this one
*dɪˈsɪntɪgreɪt*

The subtleties of this absence of ("any old") syllabification* may remain a known unknown for me - but that's OK!


*Not the ability to provide annotations to distinguish subtle differences in pronunciation, secondary stress and fine features etc - but that was not the original subject


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> Paintdrop, you are absolutely correct to say that syllable divisions can  provide crucial information about the correct pronunciation of many  words, because many rules of English phonology depend on knowing whether  a given consonant sound is at the end of one syllable or at the  beginning of the next. Most native speakers don't know that they "know"  this, which is why so many of the participants in this thread are so  puzzled at why you seem to want this information.
> 
> It is also true, however, that the position of the syllable boundary isn't that important in a lot of cases, and may in fact be impossible to determine. For example, some consonants appear to be "ambisyllabic" — i.e. they seem to belong to both syllables at once. The fact is that phonologists are not always in agreement about where the syllable boundaries are in English, and this explains in part why dictionaries often contradict each other and why some dictionaries decide not to indicate syllables at all in the phonetic representation.
> 
> This short, but rather technical, essay by John Wells may be of interest to you (and to other posters): Syllabification and allophony. It reviews many of the syllable-based phonological rules of English and explains the how and why behind the syllable divisions given in the _Longman Pronunciation Dictionary_.


It should be noted that in the article you quoted Wells eventually _rejects _the usefulness of the notion of ambisyllabicity.


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> Organising a syllable is pretty similar, you have the stress given in  the Oxford dictionary, and having "unkind" as "un-kind" or "unk-ind" is  irrelevant.


Well, it does make a difference. /k/ in the onset of a stressed syllable, in the onset of an unstressed syllable, in the coda of a stressed syllable or in the coda of an unstressed syllable receive different VOTs. In this example there would even be a more substantial difference: _unk-ind_ would be pronounced /ʊ*ŋ*kaɪnd/ and not /ʊ*n*kaɪnd/.

As CapnPrep wrote, native speakers apply these rules intuitively and unconsciously and therefore don't need the information. But different syllable boundaries do produce audible differences.


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## Cagey

An example in which the division of syllables is part of what indicates the meaning of the spoken word. (When written, we depend on context to clarify the sense.) 

*record: *[v. ri-kawrd; n., adj. rek-erd]  (Dictionary.com)


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## se16teddy

berndf said:


> In this example there would even be a more substantial difference: _unk-ind_ would be pronounced /ʊ*ŋ*kaɪnd/ and not /ʊ*n*kaɪnd/.
> .


Whether you pronounce this word with *ŋ* or *n *is a matter of personal preference and has nothing to do with syllable division. Personally, I can't imagine ever pronouncing it /ʊ*n*k'aɪnd/ or  /ʊ*n'*kaɪnd/: I only ever pronounce it  /ʊ*ŋ'*kaɪnd/, which is of course the same as /ʊ*ŋ*k'aɪnd/. 



Cagey said:


> An example in which the division of syllables is part of what indicates the meaning of the spoken word. (When written, we depend on context to clarify the sense.)
> 
> *record: *[v. ri-kawrd; n., adj. rek-erd]  (Dictionary.com)


One very significant difference between these two pronunciations is that in the first the stress is on the second syllable and in the second the stress is on the first syllable. It is a mystery to me why the pronunciation guide does not mark this fact. In most dictionaries the stressed syllable is marked with ' at the beginning. 

If you pronouced them as [v. rik-'awrd; n., adj. 're-kerd] nobody would notice any difference.  If the dictionary's pronunciation guide is worth anything at all, the symbol "e" is pronounced the same wherever it occurs in a word or in a syllable.


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## berndf

se16teddy said:


> I only ever pronounce it  /ʊ*ŋ'*kaɪnd/, which is of course the same as /ʊ*ŋ*k'aɪnd/.


And how much aspiration do you give the /k/? As in "*k*ind" or as in "Atlanti*c*"?


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## Elwintee

Paintdrop said:


> Ok! For those wondering why syllabication matters, it is important because you are training your brain to memorize a certain pronunciation, as well as how to utter that pronunciation correctly, and promptly when needed.



I'm tearing my hair out over this, Paintdrop.  None of the posters responding to your question accept your idea that word-division into syllables is any guide to pronunciation.  You say:_ "There is a big difference between saying_ *VI-LIDGE* _versus _*VILL-IDGE*."  For me, and I would say 99% of English speakers, there is *no difference.* To bother about syllables would be positively unhelpful to learners. What you are saying would only make sense if native English speakers made a pause between syllables.  We don't.  Sorry to sound irritable, but I have to confess I am.


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## berndf

Elwintee said:


> I'm tearing my hair out over this, Paintdrop.  None of the posters responding to your question accept your idea that word-division into syllables is any guide to pronunciation.  You say:_ "There is a big difference between saying_ *VI-LIDGE* _versus _*VILL-IDGE*."  For me, and I would say 99% of English speakers, there is *no difference.* To bother about syllables would be positively unhelpful to learners. What you are saying would only make sense if native English speakers made a pause between syllables.  We don't.  Sorry to sound irritable, but I have to confess I am.


How do you pronounce the "l" in "bill" and and "left"? Do you pronounce like most BE speakers the "l" in "bill" dark and and "left" bright? If so, ask yourself how you pronounce the "l" in "village" and you'll know how you syllabify the word.


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## CapnPrep

xiaolijie said:


> I understand that like many matters in language, _if you think it's the case, then it'll  feel the case to you._ The truth is: "a name" and "an aim" will sound the same by the same speaker because _linking syllables is a feature of English, not dividing into syllables _(But for the same reason I've said, I wouldn't be surprised if someone tells me that they pronounce the two differently )


Actually, the truth is (quoting from the essay I linked to above): "The difference between _a name_ and _an aim_ is well-known (Gimson 1980: 295)." This is a measurable phonetic phenomenon and not just something that some deluded speakers feel to be the case.



se16teddy said:


> Cagey said:
> 
> 
> 
> *record: *[v. ri-kawrd; n., adj. rek-erd]  (Dictionary.com)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One very significant difference between these two pronunciations is that in the first the stress is on the second syllable and in the second the stress is on the first syllable. It is a mystery to me why the pronunciation guide does not mark this fact.
Click to expand...

There is no mystery: If you follow the link, you will see that the stressed syllable is in fact marked in bold (it's just that Cagey chose not to reproduce it). There is also an option for displaying an IPA transcription:/v. rɪˈkɔrd; n., adj. ˈrɛk ərd/​This dictionary evidently adopts a Wells-type approach to syllabification, where consonants are attracted by stress. Many other dictionaries assume some kind of onset maximization, and associate the /k/ with the following syllable in both cases. This is not a contradiction, but the issues involved go well beyond the practical concerns of the vast majority of dictionary users. Which is why some dictionaries don't bother at all. 

A (very advanced) learner may want to know that the /k/ is pronounced slightly differently in _rec*o*rd_ vs. _r*e*cord_. Leftward vs. rightward syllabification (as in Dictionary.com's or Wells's approach) is one way of indicating this. It is not strictly necessary in simple cases like this one, however, where we have a single intervocalic consonant and a clear difference in stress levels between the two syllables.



Elwintee said:


> None of the posters responding to your question accept your idea that  word-division into syllables is any guide to pronunciation.


Allow me to disagree. I also take issue with the suggestion that empirical and theoretical questions can somehow be settled by voting.


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## Hulalessar

Any guide to pronunciation of a word that divides it into syllables is doing no more than imposing or reproducing an etymological/orthographical analysis that does not correspond to what happens in speech. The IPA dot-on-the-line is termed a "syllable break" and should only be used to indicate an audible break in the flow of speech, not syllable boundaries.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> The IPA dot-on-the-line is termed a "syllable break" and should only be used to indicate an audible break in the flow of speech, not syllable boundaries.


No. The term "syllable break" does not imply an audible break or pause (see e.g. _The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences_, p. 691). There are other symbols for representing intonational breaks. Of course you are free to encourage others to adopt your more specific interpretation of the dot, but it does not correspond to established practice in much published work.

Moreover, you can avoid the dots if you wish, but the conventional method of marking stress (i.e. with [ˈ] or [ˌ] before the stressed syllable) also forces you to make a decision about internal syllable boundaries.



Hulalessar said:


> Any guide to pronunciation of a word that  divides it into syllables is doing no more than imposing or reproducing  an etymological/orthographical analysis that does not correspond to what  happens in speech.


Not true. It is obvious that etymology (morphology), orthography, and pronunciation are strongly correlated, but each one is a distinct level of information that requires a full system of structured representation.

Again, I recommend reading Wells's essay and, if you can be bothered, the references he cites.


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## Alxmrphi

> Well, it does make a different. /k/ in the onset of a stressed syllable,  in the onset of an unstressed syllable, in the coda of a stressed  syllable or in the coda of an unstressed syllable receive different VOTs. In this example there would even be a more substantial difference: _unk-ind_ would be pronounced /ʊ*ŋ*kaɪnd/ and not /ʊ*n*kaɪnd/.


Yeah, for a lot of this in a syllabic/linguistic analysis you can draw a lot of conclusions.
My comments were more tailored to the OP in the fact that, without a lot of this sort of understanding the differences aren't really useful.

The velarisation isn't really due to syllables here though, if they occur next to each other in connected speech this would happen anyway.
Just like the light/dark [l] situation, you can have a dark-L in a coda of one syllable but if the next syllable is with a giant sonorous vowel, it's going to change.
So word division in this sense is pretty flawed. Usually segments jump over to other words in connected speech anyway, so what you see in a dictionary is completely subject to change where codas become onsets, and unless you're analysing a stream of connected speech, taking the individual words and marking syllable boundaries is nowhere near a clear and reliable way to make these sort of distinctions.


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> The velarisation isn't really due to syllables here though, if they occur next to each other in connected speech this would happen anyway.


It can occur across syllable boundaries (provided you accept /ɪŋ'kɔːt/ as a possible pronunciation of "in court"). It _must_ occur within a syllable coda. /ʊ*n*kaɪnd/ is only possible in _un-kind_ while /ʊ*ŋ*kaɪnd/ is possible in both. That's why I asked to the realization of /k/.


Alxmrphi said:


> Just like the light/dark [l] situation, you can have a dark-L in a coda of one syllable but if the next syllable is with a giant sonorous vowel, it's going to change.


Like where?


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## Alxmrphi

Like:

[*'*kɔ:'di:'jə*ɫ*'dʒu:s]............... (cordial juice)
['kɔ:'di:'jə'*l*ɪn'gɹi:'di:'jənts].... (cordial ingredients)

I wouldn't say it made a lot of sense that a dictionary needed to specify that it was *cor-dial *or *cord-ial *to show that /l/ is in a coda which therefore should then be velarised, when it can be placed in front of another word and have the situation change. My point is that this sort of syllable analysis is perfectly valid when looking at assimilated speech, or casual speech, but not as an orthographic dictionary "entry" division of spelling. Do you see what I mean?



> It can occur across syllable boundaries (provided you accept /ɪŋ'kɔːt/ as a possible pronunciation of "in court"). It _must_ occur within a syllable coda.


Not only "accept", but would "expect", for me anyway (provided it was natural quick casual speech and no purposeful break).


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> Like:
> 
> [*'*kɔ:'di:'jə*ɫ*'dʒu:s]............... (cordial juice)
> ['kɔ:'di:'jə'*l*ɪn'gɹi:'di:'jənts].... (cordial ingredients)
> 
> I wouldn't say it made a lot of sense that a dictionary needed to specify that it was *cor-dial *or *cord-ial *to show that /l/ is in a coda which therefore should then be velarised, when it can be placed in front of another word and have the situation change. My point is that this sort of syllable analysis is perfectly valid when looking at assimilated speech, or casual speech, but not as an orthographic dictionary "entry" division of spelling. Do you see what I mean?


Not really. In both, _cor-dial _and _cord-ial_, the "l" is the syllable coda. I don't see what this has to do with "village" where depending on analysis the "l" may be either coda or onset. In your transcription you seem to draw the same conclusion I would: If the "l" is dark the syllabification is _cor-di-a*l-*juice_ ("l"=coda), if it is bright _cor-di-a*-l*in-gre-de-ents_ ("l"=onset).


----------



## Alxmrphi

> Not really. In both, _cor-dial _and _cord-ial_, the "l" is the  syllable coda. I don't see what this has to do with "village" where  depending on analysis the "l" may be either coda or onset.


Yeah, the /l/ is in the syllable coda, I agree there.
In 'village' however, I wouldn't say depending on how you divide the syllables depends on the type of /l/, you see, it'd be a light/clear /l/ because* it's preceding a vowel*, so whether it's the coda of the first syllable or the onset of the second, there's no phonotactic constraint that needs to be defined by a dictionary listing either "vil-age" or "vi-lage". That's what I meant by that sort of syllable-division being not necessary.



> In your transcription you seem to draw the same conclusion I would: If the "l" is dark the syllabification is _cor-di-a*l-*juice_ ("l"=coda), if it is bright _cor-di-a*-l*in-gre-de-ents_ ("l"=onset).


Yeah, I think we agree on the same point here, but maybe I wasn't clear about what I meant earlier, the syllable boundary moves around when in a string of connected speech, and here moves to be the onset of the syllable witn the vowel, so in a phonetic/linguistic analysis syllable boundaries are important, because we can see how they move and being in the onset, this phonetic process happens, but to list a word in the dictionary as I mentioned before, the "l" is always in the coda, and if you say it alone, you have dark-L, so if you take the dictionary word and think you have to force a "dark-L" sound in an examples like "cordial ingredients", then it's not really natural.

So syllable divisions are important in analysing phonotactics, but not specifically how the OP wanted them.
I admit there has been a sort of two-themed stream of information here, where the link to the 'village' example might not have always been linked, so that could have caused some confusion.


----------



## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> Yeah, the /l/ is in the syllable coda, I agree there.
> In 'village' however, I wouldn't say depending on how you divide the syllables depends on the type of /l/, you see, it'd be a light/clear /l/ because it's being preceded by a vowel...


A preceding vowel makes the "l" dark, not bright, the following vowel makes it bright. The "l" in "village" is intervocalic. The allophone selected depends on attraction either to the preceding or to the following vowel, i.e. syllable boundary.


Alxmrphi said:


> Yeah, I think we agree on the same point here, but maybe I wasn't clear about what I meant earlier, the syllable boundary moves around when in a string of connected speech, ...


We agree on this.


Alxmrphi said:


> ..., so if you take the dictionary word and think you have to force a "dark-L" sound in an examples like "cordial ingredients", then it's not really natural.


Connected speech normally only relocate the onsets of initial and the coda of final syllables and rarely affects syllable boundaries within the word. I don't see why marking intra-word syllable boundaries should be regarded as misleading.


----------



## Alxmrphi

No no, not misleading, but not important to understanding correct pronunciation 


> A preceding vowel makes the "l" dark, not bright, the following vowel makes it bright.  The "l" in "village" is intervocalic. The allophone selected depends on  attraction either to the preceding or to the following vowel, i.e.  syllable boundary.


Woops, I meant when it precedes a vowel, not when a vowel precedes it!
I'll edit the above.

By the way, my phonetics teacher said the choice of the allophonic representation is strictly due to the presence of what follows, either nothing or a consonant = dark, else = light. I, before now, would not have ever said that it is dependent on a vowel preceding /l/. I'm not saying "I" disagree with you, because I just took the word of my teacher, but would you disagree with him on that point?


----------



## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> No no, not misleading, but not important to understanding correct pronunciation


We seem to have reached agreement.


----------



## se16teddy

berndf said:


> And how much aspiration do you give the /k/? As in "*k*ind" or as in "Atlanti*c*"?


Since you ask, in_ unkind _I aspirate the /k/ as it _Atlantic Ocean_, not as in _North Atlantic_.


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## berndf

se16teddy said:


> Since you ask, in_ unkind _I aspirate the /k/ as it _Atlantic Ocean_, not as in _North Atlantic_.


That sounds more like _un-kind_, as you wrote. I agree, pronounced like this the difference between_ un-kind_ and _unk-ind_ is not very big.


----------



## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> No.The term "syllable break" does not imply an audible breakor pause (see e.g.





CapnPrep said:


> _TheHandbook of Phonetic Sciences_, p.691). There are other symbols for representing intonationalbreaks. Of course you are free to encourage others to adopt your morespecific interpretation of the dot, but it does not correspond toestablished practice in much published work.




I was going to use the word “juncture”, but decided against it. It would perhaps have been better if I had said: “...should only be used to indicate a _perceived_ break in the flow of speech, not syllable boundaries”  - the point being that a combination of phonological features may suggest a break even if there is no pause.


No native speaker of English has difficulty in distinguishing between a “black bird” and a “blackbird”.  One clear difference between the two is that the first has level stress and the second is stressed on the first element. It is more difficult to assess if there is a pause; there would be in careful speech, but careful speech is often unconsciously influenced by writing. Whatever is going on, there is a feeling that when you say “black bird” there is a break between “black” and “bird”. The purpose of the dot is to indicate that sort of break, or at least some prosodic feature, and I think that that is what the handbook is saying. In any event, it does not seem to be saying that the purpose of the dot is to mark syllable boundaries as such.





CapnPrep said:


> Moreover,you can avoid the dots if you wish, but the conventional method ofmarking stress (i.e. with [ˈ] or [ˌ] before the stressed syllable)also forces you to make a decision about internal syllableboundaries.




As suggested by the handbook, you can solve that by putting the indication before the vowel.







CapnPrep said:


> Nottrue. It is obvious that etymology (morphology), orthography, andpronunciation are strongly correlated, but each one is a distinctlevel of information that requires a full system of structuredrepresentation.




I agree up to a point, but the question is whether there is interference. Any phonetician who when transcribing “black bird” and “blackbird” indicates a difference in some way may be influenced by the fact that there is a semantic difference and/or bythe fact that one is written as one word and the other as two.


It is not possible to describe the phonology of a language you do not understand. It would be interesting if you could conduct an experiment along the following lines:


You record a sentence which contains the word “canning” and present it to a phonetician who knows no English. You ask him to concentrate on the segment “canning” offering two possibilities: (a) “ca” is a free morpheme and “ning” a bound morpheme and (b) “can” is a free morpheme and “ing” a bound morpheme. You then ask him to see if he can determine whether the phonology indicates the division between the two morphemes and to come to one of three conclusions: (a) that the /n/ belongs to the first syllable (b) that the /n/ belongs to the second syllable (c) that the /n/ belongs partly to both syllables? What conclusion is he going to come to? Someone who knows English is almost inevitably going to divide it “can(n)” and “ing” because “can” is a free morpheme and “ing” a bound morpheme. If our phonetician comes to conclusion (b) or (c) can the syllabification of the person who knows English be justified?


We also present him with two further recordings, one of: “Alfred the Great was a thin king” and the other of:  “Alfred the Great was a thinking man”. We ask him to note if there is any difference in articulation between (as we write it) “thin king” and “thinking”. He is clearly going to note a difference and will want to show it on the page in some way.


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## Istriano

English syllabification has nothing to do with pronunciation. Syllabification is a mere orthographic convention.

In Los Angeles (or in any other city in the American West),

*law *is pronounced [lɑ] (with the _f*a*ther _vowel)

but *lawyer *is [loj.ɚ ] ([loj] is a diphthong as in _b*oy*_)

If they pronounced it according to the syllabification rule (law·yer), they 
would pronounce it as  [lɑjɚ] which is hardly ever heard in California ([lɑjɚ] is a Southern pronunciation, or better, one of many Southern pronunciations of this word).


lawyer pronunciation map:
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_14.html


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> I was going to use the word “juncture”, but decided against it. It would perhaps have been better if I had said: “...should only be used to indicate a _perceived_ break in the flow of speech, not syllable boundaries”  - the point being that a combination of phonological features may suggest a break even if there is no pause.


Why do you think a syllable break has something to do with a pause? A syllable is phonological unit of an onset, a nucleus and a coda. I don't see that you necessarily need a "pause" to identify syllables.


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## Hulalessar

Istriano said:


> Syllabification is a mere orthographic convention.



I am inclined to agree. I was taught how to divide words into syllables for the sole purpose of learning the conventions applicable to hyphenating words that come at the end of a line and carry on to the next.

Not only do I agree, but I think the principle can be extended to suggesting that the way a language is written can influence the way it is analysed, both phonologically and grammatically. Of course the way a language is written may presuppose a prior phonological and/or grammatical analysis, so it is a bit of a chicken and egg question.

I would go further still and say that any given concept of linguistics formulated by a particular linguist or group of linguists may be motivated by the way that that linguist or group writes his or their language.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Why do you think a syllable break has something to do with a pause? A syllable is phonological unit of an onset, a nucleus and a coda. I don't see that you necessarily need a "pause" to identify syllables.



I do not think I said that. What I am saying is that, to the extent that one can say where one can say where one syllable ends and another begins, the point where one syllable ends and another begins is not the same thing as an actual pause or the illusion of a pause between syllables created by suprasegmental or intersegmental prosodemes.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> I do not think I said that. What I am saying is that, to the extent that  one can say where one can say where one syllable ends and another  begins, the point where one syllable ends and another begins is not the  same thing as an actual pause or the illusion of a pause between  syllables created by suprasegmental or intersegmental prosodemes.


I am a bit confused. You say "the point where one syllable ends and another begins is not the  same thing as an actual pause". And I ask you again: Why should it and who ever claimed it should?


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> I am a bit confused. You say "the point where one syllable ends and another begins is not the  same thing as an actual pause". And I ask you again: Why should it and who ever claimed it should?



Now I am confused.  Was it not being argued that the IPA dot-on-the-line indicated syllable division?


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> Now I am confused.  Was it not being argued that the IPA dot-on-the-line indicated syllable division?


An what has a syllable division to do with a pause?


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> An what has a syllable division to do with a pause?



If there is going to be a pause it has to be between syllables, doesn't it?


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> If there is going to be a pause it has to be between syllables, doesn't it?


Yes, *if*. In normal speech, there normally are not pauses at all between syllables except at the end of clauses, sentences or interjections. Even cases like "a name" vs. "an aim" I wouldn't see a pause but I would analyse the difference as insertion of a phoneme: /ənaɪm/ vs. /ənʔaɪm/.


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## se16teddy

Hermione Golightly said:


> I don't know why Swedish is any more relevant in this context than southern African click languages.


I mentioned Swedish because my extensive knowledge of Swedish (gained from watching Wallander on TV - with subtitles of course) suggests that, at least when they are enuciating particularly clearly, Swedish speaker mark the gaps between syllables with a kind of little pause. I don't think English does this.


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## berndf

se16teddy said:


> I mentioned Swedish because my extensive knowledge of Swedish (gained from watching Wallander on TV - with subtitles of course) suggests that, at least when they are enuciating particularly clearly, Swedish speaker mark the gaps between syllables with a kind of little pause. I don't think English does this.


I am not sure if you don't confuse this with geminate plosives which are realized (like in Italian) as _closure-pause-release_. Swedish is one of those languages where consonant length is still phonemic.


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## se16teddy

berndf said:


> I am not sure if you don't confuse this with geminate plosives which are realized (like in Italian) as _closure-pause-release_. Swedish is one of those languages where consonant length is still phonemic.


Thank you, berndf, I will listen carefully next time with the benefit of this hint.


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## berndf

se16teddy said:


> Thank you, berndf, I will listen carefully next time with the benefit of this hint.


And please report your findings. I will read them with utmost interest.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Yes, *if*. In normal speech, there normally are not pauses at all between syllables except at the end of clauses, sentences or interjections. Even cases like "a name" vs. "an aim" I wouldn't see a pause but I would analyse the difference as insertion of a phoneme: /ənaɪm/ vs. /ənʔaɪm/.



OK. Let's start again.

If I say: "There is a black bird in the garden" I am clearly indicating that there is a bird in the garden and that its colour is black.

If I say: "There is a blackbird in the garden" I am clearly indicating that there is a bird in the garden of the species _Turdus merula._

How would you describe the difference in articulation?


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## Alxmrphi

The difference is that in the separate word there are two units that contain primary stress while the compound word has primary stress word-initially and secondary stress on the last element. This happens with lots of English Compounds. "Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction" (p.153) labels the distinction like this:

*Compounds:*
greénhoùse
bláckboàrd
wét suìt

*Non-compounds:*
greèn hoúse
blàck boárd
wèt suít  

Also stating: "_There is an important generalisation to be made. In particular, most A-N [Adjective-Noun] compounds are characterised by a more prominent stress on their first component. In non-compounds, the second element is generally stressed [..]_"

John McWhorter also talks about this in one of his lectures in the Linguistics Audiobook he released, talking about how over time phonology and stress can be shown in nominalisation of words, where you'd have talked about "_Chinese f*oo*d_" 50 years ago, it's so accepted in our daily lives that it's become its sort of own entry in our language, not like a typical adj-noun combination. Its stress has shifted for most people to "_Chi*nese* food_", showing again in the non-compound (first example, 50 years ago) it's the second element that also has a lot of stress, when it's treated like a compound the prominence shifts over to the first element.

Another thing like that has just occured to me, with "blue jeans", when they were a relatively new think, just like "red sweater" would have a lot of stress on the second element, as they became so famous it's undergone the same process of the "blue" taking the primary stress. As it's usually the head of the X-phrase that received prominance, it shows that it's not really a complement-head relationship like in a normal combination of words, but the analysis points to more of a unified togetherness where the elements are not so separated as they were beforehand.

I don't imagine anyone getting a ['gri:n.haʊs] and a [.gri:n'haʊs] mixed up (following the notation where . = secondary stress and ' = primary stress).


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> How would you describe the difference in articulation?


Alex said it all. The difference is stress pattern which is very distinctive in English.


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## Hulalessar

I agree the stress pattern is significant. However, is it not also the case that there is a difference between the way the two halves are joined? It seems to me there is, though I am perfectly prepared to be persuaded that this is an auditory illusion.

When I started reading about language some 45 years ago I read about "prosodemes". There were the suprasegmental prosodemes of pitch, duration and stress and the intersegmental prosodeme of juncture. However, when I google "prosodeme" I get very little and with "juncture" even less. However, I am pleased to note that my dictionary (1991) defines juncture (linguistics) as:_ a pause in speech or a feature of pronunciation that introduces, accompanies or replaces a pause_.

Before I first contributed to this thread I would have been happy to have said that in "black bird" there was open juncture between the two halves and in "blackbird" close juncture.


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## berndf

However syllable breaks are realized, the difference between "black bird" and "blackbird" has nothing to do with it as the syllable boundary is in both cases between "back" and "bird".

I think those of us (like me) who argue that syllable break are significant even if no actual pause occurs are trying to identify those phonological features which _...that introduce[s], accompan[yies] or replace[s] a pause_.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> However syllable breaks are realized, the difference between "black bird" and "blackbird" has nothing to do with it as the syllable boundary is in both cases between "back" and "bird"



Agreed.




berndf said:


> I think those of us (like me) who argue that syllable break are significant even if no actual pause occurs are trying to identify those phonological features which _...that introduce[s], accompan[yies] or replace[s] a pause_.



Noted - but is there or is there not a pause when you say "black bird"?


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> Noted - but is there or is there not a pause when you say "black bird"?


You are the native speaker and probably know better.

My answer would be: Mostly yes, but the pause is not compulsory and if it occurs it has probably more to do with a word than with a syllable boundary.


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## Elwintee

berndf said:


> You are the native speaker and probably know better.
> 
> My answer would be: Mostly yes, but the pause is not compulsory and if it occurs it has probably more to do with a word than with a syllable boundary.



I analyse the difference between *blackbird* and *black bird* as not a pause, but, for the latter, a stronger emphasis on both words, with the strongest on the _black_.  With 'blackbird' I say the whole word quckly, almost slurred, but with the stress on 'black'.  With 'black bird', I emphahsise *black *very strongly and *bird *more distinctly then usual but less strongly than 'black': "No it's not a blackbird, it's just a *black *bird'.  There is no pause.


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