Syllables and Word Stress

Syllables and Word Stress Posted by heather on Apr 21, 2012 in English Grammar, English Language

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Do these three words sound the same when you say them out loud? If you are pronouncing them correctly, then they shouldn’t. The reason (and no, it is not just because they are three slightly different words) has something to do with syllables and word stress.

What are Syllables?

Syllables are blocks of uninterrupted sound. Each word is made up of syllables. A word can have one, two, three or more syllables. Here are a few examples:

Word		Number of Syllables
dog	dog	1
orange	or-ange	2
expensive	ex-pen-sive	3
realistic	re-al-is-tic	4
unexceptional	un-ex-cep-tion-al	5

Here is also a short video that explains some ways that can help you to figure out how many syllables a word has:

The Six Syllable Types

You might notice that every syllable (with a few rare exceptions) contains at least on vowel (a, e, i, o, u) or vowel sound. You can go a step further by learning the six syllable types.

Type	Example	Note
closed	not	closed in by a consonant – vowel sounds short
open	no	ends in a vowel – vowel sounds long
silent e	note	ends with an e that is not pronounced – vowel sounds long
vowel combination	nail	two vowels together to make a sound
r controlled	bird	contains a vowel followed by r – vowel sounds neither short nor long
consonant	table	ends with an l-e

Why are Syllables Important?

Syllables are important if you want to learn English because they influence the way we pronounce words and help when you are trying to read English. They will also help you to understand word stress.

Syllables and Word Stress

In English, we do not say every syllable with the same strength. In English words with more than one syllable, we will usually say one syllable loudly and the other syllables more quietly. Here are some examples. The syllable in capital letters is the syllable we would stress or say more loudly.

TEACH-er

de-MAND

con-ver-SA-tion

If you use word stress correctly when speaking English, your pronunciation will be much better.