How Many Syllables?

Syllabic Resonants

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?  It really isn’t.  Most of you know what a syllable is; it’s the part of the word that gets one beat when you’re tapping it out.  So, for example, university has 4 syllables, while French has one and English has two.  And if you look carefully, you’ll notice that each syllable has one and only one vowel (SOUND, not letter).  So a syllable is a vowel plus whatever consonants can go around it.  The crucial idea here is that a syllable MUST contain a vowel.  Well, here is where English and French differ somewhat.  In English, the group of consonants called resonants (that means [l] and [r]) can on occasion be syllabic.  In other words, they can act like vowels and make a syllable.  They don’t do that in French.

Compare the following words with their English counterparts.  The English words all have one more syllable than the French.  When pronouncing the words in French, make sure that you don’t give a beat to the final [l] or [r].

English: muscle (2), capable (3), admirable (4).
French: muscle (1), capable (2), admirable (3).