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?
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