How many syllables in babbling

Do regional variations in the pronunciation of babbling effect the syllable count? Has language changed?

Provide your comments or thoughts on the syllable count for babbling below. A comprehensive resource for finding syllables in babbling, how many syllables are in babbling, words that rhyme with babbling, how to divide babbling into syllables, how to pronounce babbling in US and British English, how to break babbling into syllables.

Syllable Count What's a Syllable? Words: babblery , babbles , babbling , babblings , babbly. Let's step back a bit.

How many syllables does "babble" have? My ears tell me two; if it was spelt "babbel" the sound would be the same. Add one syllable for "ing" the way I pronounce it and that makes it three. Of course it would be possible to do it as two syllables, but I don't, and I don't know anyone else who does. Similarly I don't know anyone else who pronounces "rattling" and "Gatling [gun]" similarly. Of course, I'm no expert on such things, and don't know the exact definition of a "syllable"; there is obvious scope for semi-syllables.

Regards, Mike. This week's hot tips for the lottery: 12, 14, 23, 32, 38, Is it pronounced "bab-bling" two syllables like my dictionaries have? Is it acceptable to pronounce it "bab-ble-ling" three syllables? Since there are only two vowels written, I pronounce only two. The same with rattling "RATT-ling". Modern British dictionaries aren't good about giving the pronunciations of derivative formations, so I don't get any clue from any of them as to the pronunciation of "babbling".

Anyway, it appears that it's not safe to try to deduce the pronunciation of "babbling" from that of "babble". There is indeed, and you're also right that the matter at issue is what counts as a "syllable".

Asking people for answers to how many syllables a word has, in their own unheard speech, without being very clear about what's meant by "syllable", is not unlike calling somebody up on the phone and asking them to tell you how much money you have in your wallet.

Without specifying what country's money you're talking about. Syllables are composed from consonants and vowels, but they're an independent unit, best thought of as composed simply of a beginning, middle, and end called, respectively: "syllable onset", "syllable nucleus", and "syllable coda"; you can drop the "syllable" if you get tired of saying it. The prototype syllable has a consonantal onset and a vocalic nucleus, and is divided into "open" or "closed" depending on whether there's a coda: "too" is open, "toot" closed.

It's the nature of the nucleus that causes the problem. The problem is that, while that's close enough for government work or phonemic transcription, it's a bad representation of the phonetics.

Many kinds of linguistic theories have similar properties, and even acknowledge the analogy overtly, as Maxwell did for the analogy between electromagnetism and hydrodynamics.

But I digress. That's just a fact about the way we produce the chest pulses that we hear and count, and time as individual syllables; it's a fact about the physiology of the human vocal tract, and about the processing of human speech by the aural centers in the brain. Nothing to do with English per se, though every language does vary in how syllables are treated. English only pays full attention to stressed syllables, which are usually not at the end of a word. The question with "babbling", then, is how one adds numbers like this.

This is another half-syllable. But do two half-syllables count as one whole? Sometimes they do, it appears. I usually do, myself, at least in the phrase "babbling brook".

These look different in phonemic transcription, but aren't much different in reality, because the reality of syllables is the peak at the nucleus, and all that matters is how many peaks there are.

And, naturally, how high the peaks need to get for us to notice them. Of course, "half" is not a really exact measure. But then, this wasn't a notably exact question to start with. No doubt we could measure some complex of stress, length, and vocalic density and come up with a fuzzy syllable-count.

Or perhaps we could talk about quarks, leptons, and spin, and wind up with Schroedinger's syllable. Syllables, after all, have some count properties and some mass properties, just like quantum electrons. There are more of these analogies linguists argue about them all the time , but I'll spare you. Wouldn't it be easier to parse if the "only" was moved way to the right, where it "belongs"?

Hope this helps. David Combs. Thanks, John, for taking the time and effort of post this sort of stuff. I must say that I appreciate it greatly. I can even claim that I often understand most of it, which is not always the case in discussions of linquistics and the like. Maybe it would be easier for some kinds of software to parse, but it wouldn't sound as good. Definition of: Babble New window will open. Are you a freelance writer?

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