Do you know what a syllable is? This article will provide you with all of the information you need on syllables, including its definition, usage, example sentences, and more!
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Kevin
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December 28, 2021
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Common Questions
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What is a syllable?
According to Reading Rockets, Collins English Dictionary, and Dictionary, a syllable is an uninterrupted segment of speech consisting of a vowel sound, a diphthong, or a syllabic consonant. This element of speech may or may not have preceding or following consonant sounds. There are six types of syllables: Closed, Vowel-Consonant-e syllable (VCe), Open, Vowel Team (including diphthongs), Vowel-r (r-controlled, er, ir, ur, ar, or), Consonant-le (C-le or Cle), and odd or schwa syllables.
The word syllable was first used in 1350-1400 (14c-15c) as the Middle English sillable, which comes from the from Anglo-French and Middle French sillabe, from the Latin syllaba, from the Greek syllabḗ and from Greek sullabē, from sullambanein meaning to collect together, from sul and syn with lambanein, which is equivalent to the syl- prefix meaning “with or together” and lab, the base of lambánein meaning “to take”.
A syllable is a unit of pronunciation, and there are many different types of syllables. These can make a short sound where a closed syllable ends, a long vowel sound with a long sound syllable, vowel team syllables, a single vowel sound, semivowels, and others in this set of symbols and sonorous element. These are present in the writing systems of certain languages to create rhythm as the smallest amount of speech that can be uttered. Some syllables have clarity and are twang-less, some are open syllables or in another category, and some are used in the written word to form a rhyme.
To identify the amount of syllables in something, try clapping with each syllable – words like cheek and boil only have one syllable, whereas something like bubble has two – bub-ble. Couple has two syllables – cou-ple, butter – but-ter, dotted – dot-ted.
Many different languages also contain words that mean syllable. You may notice that some of these translations of syllable look and sound similar to one another. These are called cognates, which are words and phrases in different languages that likely have the same root or language of origin, causing them to sound the same. The below list of translations of syllable is provided by Word Sense.
- Latvian: zilbe (fem.)
- Italian: sillaba (fem.)
- Bokmål: stavelse (masc.), staving (masc.) (f)
- Turkish: hece
- Azeri: heca
- Russian: слог (masc.), склад (masc.) (dated)
- Burmese: ဝဏ္ဏ
- Greek: συλλαβή (fem.)
- Mandarin: 音節, 音节 (yīnjié)
- Arabic: مَقْطَع لَفْظِيّ (masc.)
- Icelandic: atkvæði (neut.), samstafa (fem.)
- Gujarati: અક્ષર
- Nynorsk: staving (fem.)
- Hebrew: הֲבָרָה
- Khmer: ព្យាង្ (pyieŋ)
- Albanian: rrokje (fem.)
- Armenian: վանկ
- Indonesian: suku kata, silabel
- Esperanto: silabo
- Bashkir: ижек
- Norman: syllabe (fem.)
- Urdu: شبدانش, اکشر
- Bulgarian: сри́чка (fem.)
- German: Silbe (fem.)
- Bengali: অক্ষর (ôkshôr)
- Tatar: иҗек
- Catalan: síl·laba (fem.)
- Czech: slabika (fem.)
- Danish: stavelse
- Kyrgyz: муун
- Lower Sorbian: złožka (fem.)
- Malay: suku kata (literally “a quarter of a word”)
- Georgian: მარცვალი
- Romanian: silabă (fem.)
- Volapük: silab
- Crimean Tatar: eca
- Lithuanian: skiemuo (masc.)
- Korean: 음절
- Mongolian: үет
- Finnish: tavu
- Ukrainian: склад (masc.)
- Afrikaans: lettergreep, lettergrepe (pl.)
- Slovene: zlog (masc.)
- Macedonian: слог (masc.)
- Vietnamese: âm tiết
- Tagalog: pantig
- Swahili: silabi
- Lao: ພະຍາງ
- Dutch: lettergreep (fem.)
- Estonian: silp
- Kazakh: буын
- Turkmen: bogun
- Latin: syllaba (fem.)
- Kalmyk: ниилвр
- Swedish: stavelse (common) (1,2)
- Roman: slog (masc.)
- Portuguese: sílaba (fem.)
- Tajik: ҳиҷо
- Hindi: शब्दांश (masc.), अक्षर (masc.)
- Spanish: sílaba (fem.)
- Belarusian: склад (masc.)
- Nogai: бувын
- Polish: sylaba (fem.), zgłoska (fem.)
- Maori: kūoro
- Slovak: slabika (fem.)
- Japanese: 音節 (おんせつ, onsetsu)
- Cyrillic: слог (masc.)
- Uzbek: boʻgʻin, hijo
- Hungarian: szótag (literally “word element”)
- Maltese: sillaba (fem.)
- Sanskrit: अक्षर (neut.)
- Thai: พยางค์ (pá-yaang)
- Persian: هجا (hejâ)
- Luxembourgish: Silb (fem.)
- French: syllabe (fem.)
- Irish: siolla (masc.)
- Scottish Gaelic: lide (fem.)
- Yiddish: טראַף (masc.)
What are other literary techniques and devices?
There are many different literary and grammatical techniques and devices that you might see when you are reading prose or poetry. It is important to recognize these terms because they are always used for some purpose. Knowing these devices can help readers understand the author’s deeper meaning and why they are using such a device. Take a look at the below list of grammatical devices from OED and see how many you know! Then try researching ones that are unfamiliar to you.
- genitive
- declarative
- ellipsis | elliptical
- construction
- transitive
- compound | compounding
- indefinite
- personal pronoun
- stem
- prefix
- inflection | inflected | inflectional
- impersonal (impers.)
- conjunction (conj.)
- infinitive
- protasis
- modal verb | modal auxiliary verb | modal auxiliary
- collective noun
- interrogative
- adverbial | adverbially
- dative
- auxiliary verb | auxiliary
- syllable
- indirect object
- definite article
- clause
- reflexive
- demonstrative
- third-person
- intransitive
- phrase (phr.)
- possessive pronoun
- masculine
- determiner
- non-referential
- pleonasm | pleonastic
- appositive
- gerund
- second person
- postmodify | postmodifier
- locative
- unmarked genitive
- base form
- direct speech
- main verb
- case
- nominative
- singular
- number
- direct object
- count noun
- vocative
- collocation | collocate
- interjection
- construed (const., constr.)
- special use
- agent noun
- part of speech
- copular verb | copula
- proper noun | proper name
- zero
- active
- subject
- indirect speech
- preposition (prep.)
- bare infinitive
- syllable
- participial adjective
- complement
- conditional
- filler
- possessive adjective
- present participle
- instrumental
- noun (n.)
- passive
- superlative
- absolute (absol.)
- mass noun
- possessive
- non-finite
- past tense
- to-infinitive
- element
- cataphoric
- pronoun (pron.)
- subjunctive
- mood
- sentence adverb |sentence adverbial
- combining form (comb. form)
- neuter
- main clause
- prepositional object
- adverb (adv.)
- periphrasis | periphrastic
- pro-form
- accusative
- first person
- simple
- adjective
- present tense
- that-clause
- prepositional phrase
- predicative
- phrasal verb
- progressive
- past participle
- prepositional passive
- indirect passive
- intensifier
- similative
- indicative
- comparative
- common noun
- combination
- apposition
- premodify | premodifier
- anaphoric
- quasi-
- passive infinitive
- modify | modifier
- causative
- optative
- gender
- agree | agreement
- cognate object
- direct question
- anticipatory
- apodosis and protasis
- verb (v.)
- verbal noun
- positive
- parenthetical | parenthetically
- imperative (imper.)
- perfect
- antecedent
- attributive
- objective
- concrete
- plural
- parasynthetic
- indirect question
- complementary
- relative
- noun phrase
- subjective
- article
- subordinate clause
- abstract
- tense
- object | direct object | indirect object
- finite
- feminine
- participle | past participle | present participle
- head
- double object
- dual
- morpheme
- person
- nominal relative | nominal relative clause
Overall, a syllable is a unit of pronunciation.
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