Units of spoken English, such as words, phrases, and sentences have some syllables or words stressed. Stress means relative emphasis on some sounds. In English, emphasis is made through the variations in volume (loudness), pitch (highness), tempo (duration), and articulation (clarity in pronunciation). So, stressed sounds are louder, higher, longer and clearer than unstressed sounds. All multisyllabic English words must have stress on some syllable. The stress given to a syllable in a word is called the word stress or lexical stress. Word stress is the foundation for all other types of stress since without this knowledge we cannot stress phrases and sentences correctly. So, in this first chapter, we learn how to stress words correctly.
Syllable
The English syllable
All English words with more than one syllable have stress. That is, in multisyllabic words, one syllable must be emphasized more than any other syllables in the word. Stress is intrinsically related to the meaning of English words. So for instance, the name “Nancy” has stress on the first syllable, NANcy (Stressed syllables are in upper case). If we say it in any other way, we are not saying the word correctly, and might not be understood. This is not the case with some other languages where stress is not involved with meaning. Korean for example is such a language. Korean words do not have intrinsic stress. Consider my Korean name, Nanhee, for instance. It can be said in any of these ways: NANhee, nanHEE, nanhee, and NANHEE.
Since multisyllabic English words have stress on some syllables, to stress words correctly, we first need to know how many syllables a word has. A non-native speaker is not understood if she speaks a word with the wrong number of syllables as well as if she stresses on the wrong syllable. To know how many syllables a word has, we need to know how to count the number of syllables of English words. For some languages, syllable counting is as easy as counting one, two, three. In Korean and Chinese, for example, words are written in the unit of syllables. So to know how many syllables a word has, we can simply count the syllables in its written form.
English words are not written in the unit of syllables as a word is a string of letters strewn from left to right. By merely inspecting the string of letters in a word, we cannot tell how many syllables there are in a word. Vowel letters in words are often silent, without making any vowel sound. So for instance, ‘come’ has two vowel letters, but only ‘o’ has a vowel sound. Two adjacent vowel letters, even when the same letter, can together make one vowel sound (thus one syllable) or two independent vowel sounds (thus two syllables). For example, with ‘reach’ and ‘react,’ ‘reach’ is a one-syllable word, but ‘react’ is a two syllable word. One consonant between two vowels also presents problems since it is sometimes attached to the preceding vowel (forming the end of a syllable) and sometimes to the subsequent vowel (forming the beginning of a syllable).
Trying to infer the number of syllables, based on existing knowledge, can also lead to an error. Consider these words: ‘tome’ and ‘epitome.’ ‘Tome’ is a one syllable word, as it is pronounced as /toʊm/. So, we might think that ‘epitome’ must be a three syllable word, e-pi-tome. However, ‘epitome’ is pronounced as /ɪpɪtəmi/, so it is actually a four-syllable word. While ‘tome’ and ‘epitome’ come from the same root, ‘epitome’ retains its Greek root pronunciation. So ‘tome’ is a one syllable word, but ‘epitome’ is a four syllable word.
These examples indicate that counting the number of syllables of English words can be difficult for a non-native speaker. Then, how do native speakers count the syllables of words correctly? Actually, they can, only if the natives know how to say the word correctly. If they do not know the pronunciation of the word, or have never heard the word spoken before, they may not be able to analyze the word into syllables correctly. Consider the word, ‘Infrared,’ which means lightwaves beyond the red lightwaves. So, ‘Infrared’ is made of two different words, ‘infra’ and ‘red,’ rendering the word as three syllables: ‘in-fra-red.’ But some English natives mispronounce the word as a two syllable word, ‘in-frared,” making the second ‘r’ as a part of an r-colored vowel. A person who pronounces ‘in-fra-red’ as ‘in-frared’ hints that she does not know the meaning of the word. This example underscores the importance of listening to the speech of learned natives.
Unlike the case with Korean or Chinese, to count the number of syllables of English words correctly, we may not rely on their written form: we must instead rely on the correct pronunciation of the word. This advice might not be so helpful to many non-native English speakers. The reason is that languages differ in the notions of the well-formed syllable. Compare the differences, for instance, between Korean and English. Words such as cake, boy, and sour are monosyllabic words in English. But Koreans may think that cake and boy are two syllable words, and sour is a three syllable word since they have to be written with these many syllables. The linguistic difference here is that in English certain vowels contain two sounds but make one syllable (such vowels are called diphthongs), but in Korean, any sound in which two vowels are heard must make two syllables. The consonant cluster, which is a string of consonants without a vowel sound, is another difference between Korean and English. In English consonant clusters do not make a syllable, but in Korean, where consonant clusters are almost non-existent, each consonant can end up being viewed as its own syllable. So, such monosyllabic English words as ‘trucks’ and ‘strange’ can be viewed as four (tə-ruc-kə-sə) and five (sə-tə-re-in-gə) syllable words, respectively, in Korean.
So when we count the syllables of English words, we should not transpose our own conceptions of the syllables formed from our own native languages as this will likely lead to a mis-calculation and thus wrong pronunciation of words. Instead, we should learn the methods native English teachers use to teach their students. Keeping this in mind, we learn the syllable division rules of English.