Word stress and syllables - English Grammar - English Free Test|Englishfreetest.com

Word stress and syllables - English Grammar - English Free Test



Word stress and syllables are the next important things to learn about English pronunciation and accent.

Syllables

A syllable is a word, or part of a word, which contains a single vowel sound. It is a single unit of speech.

Each word contains one syllable, or more.

Syllable

Here are examples of words with a single syllable:

Example
pen, man, pig, cup, hat

In English, a vowel sound can be made of more than one vowel letter. So the following words have a single syllable as well:

Example
feet, moon, cake, have, break, bought

All of these words contain only one vowel sound, and therefore a single syllable.

Syllables

A word can have more than one syllable. The following words are examples of words with two syllables. Here are examples of words with 2 syllables. The different syllables are shown on the right, and they are separated with a space.

Example
garden: gar-den hotel: ho-tel consist: con-sist object: ob-ject focus: fo-cus

Syllables

Examples of words with three syllables:
September: sep-tem-ber department: de-part-ment telephone: te-le-phone camera: ca-mer-a Saturday: sa-tur-day hamburger: ham-bur-ger vitamin: vi-ta-min

Syllables

Examples of words with four syllables: kindergarten: kin-der-gar-ten information: in-for-ma-tion January: ja-nu-ar-y American: A-mer-i-can discovery: di-sco-ver-y

That is not all, of course. There can be words with even more syllables. But you get the point, right?