Please can someone help me with me English related question?

[theplanb]

Hi all

Ok, today's question is.. do you (as a native English speaker) make distinction between syllables when you speak a word? You know.. like.. first syllable, then second one and so on.
How do you know where one syllable starts and ends?

What I mean by that is...
do you make conscious, unconscious, physical or psychological effort to give a distinction between syllables in a word when you speak them?
If so, that means you know how many syllables there are in a word and you know what they are, right?
Then how did you manage to make such syllabic divisions in a word when the English alphabetical spelling doesn't tell you how to do that.

For example, when you say the two syllable word 'playing' /pleI.Ing/ ,
Do you first say, /pleI/ then /Ing/ so it's aurally different from one syllable word /pleIng/ (I know the word doesn't exist in English..)?

*please note that I used a dot (.) to indicate syllabic division

Or..

For the word 'better'
should /bet. er/ sound different from /be. ter/ (if the accent difference is disregarded)?

If they sound different, is it because you gave a small pause or glottal stop between the two syllables? If not how did you differenciate the two examples above?

Ok, here is a background of why I'm asking such questions..

I always believed that syllables are the order of consisting sounds when a word is spoken because I do consciously speak by syllables when I speak my native language (Korean) which incidentally spelled in syllables.

There is only one letter for one syllable where one letter can be consisted of multiple phonemic symbols.

So there is no chance of confusing where the inter-vocalic consonent should go (to the left syllable or to the right) as I do in English.. and I can't even begin to fathom how on earth can one syllable have upto 9 or 10 letters in it as they do in English. (ie. scrunched)

The word scrunched would sound like it has 5 syllables for a Korean because, in Korean, you can't have a consonent only sound (like 's' in scrunched).In other words, we actually have a vowel for every syllable we pronounce, and yes even the "s" only sound. So a Korean would pronounce the word "scrunched" as below

/s. k. run. ch. t/

5 syllables, not one..and it sound completely different from original one syllabic word.
Hence...I'm stumped because I can't figure out where the syllables start and ends in English and whether I should give any kind of indication (ie: a small pause maybe?) in between 2 syllables due to the problem I described above.

Sure I can check it with my dictionary, but am I not supposed to "know" it naturally? Sometime, I get confused how many syllables there are in one word.

In Korean, if one syllable consists of one onset, one nucleus and one coda (not obligatory), it's represented as one letter consisting 3 phonemes with onset on top, the nucleus in the middle and the coda at the bottom (not always though).

For example, the word cook would be represented as

C
oo
k
(in English)

or

?
?
?
(in Korean)

and that's one syllabic letter with 3 phonemic symbols in it. (2 dimensional)

And also there is physical and psychological stop (almost like glottal stop) between the syllables when you say them, so I must say Korean is very syllable oriented language..and sort of syllable timed when you are reading also.

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining it right, I tried my best to be as specific as possible.

Can someone please help me.... it took a whole day to complete this post.. T_t

 

[Goosemaster]

memorization.

 

[AndyHui]

That's a fundamental difference between languages where a single glyph represents an entire word as opposed to a variable length series of letters to represent a word. While arguably in Korean and Japanese a whole word may be spelled out with a series of characters, each character can also represent an independent word, which English, for example generally cannot.

Therefore as each glyph corresponds to a word, it is natural for each syllable to be enunciated clearly, just like there are clear demarcations between words in English (well, depending on how lazy you are).

It's easy for something like Japanese or Korean as a vowel will almost always follow a consonant. You can tell where the edges of the syllables are. While it is similar for most other languages, as from your own post, this is not always the case.

I have always thought that a syllable will represent a single mouth action within a word. When that mouth action changes, you move to another syllable.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
memorization.

I learned a different way: phonics. It's sort of a "ground-up" approach to learning the language, where you learn each "building block" or sound as you go. Then you learn to put them together.

 

[theplanb]

that was very enlightning post Andy.. thanks for that..

Astaroth33, did you have some kind of special training to do that, or did you teach it by yourself, if you don't mind telling me..

 

[xirtam]

You've clearly given more thought to the linguistic processes regarding each of our languages than I have. My answer to your question is therefore inherently somewhat simple and most likely incomplete.

There are a few ways of knowing how a word is pronounced, but as with any language, the major way is through practice. Verbal practice. In English especially, you have to have heard a word before you can really know how it's pronounced. There's nothing to indicate how to pronounce the vowel sound of "a" in the word "scared" versus "scarred", for example. Most of the rules in English are broken sometimes, so you kind of have to just get an idea based on experience with the language and go with it. The more experience you have with the language, the better your guesses are.

So the short answer to your question is that thought typically isn't given to the pronunciation unless you're performing your "guesswork." A lot of the guesswork is done based on similar words... related words that you might already know. Compound words, for example, are easier to determine with regard to emphasis placed on syllables.

 

[EmperorOfIceCream]

You should read saussure

start here: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm

 

[C'DaleRider]

No, you not being a natural-born English speaker, shouldn't know it "naturally", at least right now. What a lot of people seem to forget is that our training in spoken language, whether English, Korean, or any other language, starts essentially at birth. We hear the language being spoken to us and around us form the time we're born. This then bgins our education in the spoken word. This is why you find Korean so easy to work within but find English so maddening. Our educational system used to teach English through phonics which is actually the intuitive way a child learns how to speak.....by sounding out letters. The experience of listening over years to others speak the language gives the groundwork, if you will, for formal education in speaking when one starts school.

Take your example of scared vs. scarred and why the "a" is so different sounding. The difference is in the root of the word.....scare vs. scar. The final "e" on scare begets the long "a" sound in the word whilst scar is a short "a' sound because of the lack of the final "e". This rule is broken throughout the language, but holds true in most cases.

As far as syllables, take your example of better. You forgot a prime rule of English......syllables are split across double consenants if they exist, as in this case the word is split as such: bet.ter Of course, one says the word faster than reading the syllables, so the double "t" blends together, but the word is split into syllables between the "t"s.

I can understnad yoru frustration with learning English.....it's a mutt language with words from all over the world intermingled throughout. And many times, while we keep the original language's spelling of the incorporated word, we "Americanize" its pronunciation. Take "derailleur", a French word for the device on a bicycle that moves the chain from gear to gear on the rear of a bicycle. The French pronunciation of the word, spelled the same as our "American" word, is much different. You can imagine the French version and their pronouncing every vowel there.....that's pretty much how the French language operates. We, on the other hand, say the word "derailer", and its syllables are de.rail.er A tad different than the French version, but it works for us.

The best bet is to listen, listen, listen. The experience we native-born Americans have from birth with our language makes it seem easy to use, which it is not. We grow up with its rules that are broken left and right, but that's caused in most part by hwo we incorporate so many words from other cultures/languages and attempt to make them fit into ours. Korean, Japanese, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, and others......those languages developed and matured in large part in isolation from the "corruption" of foreign influences, so their rules were much easier to define in usage. American English, on the other hand, is constantly being "corrupted" and therefore is constantly evolving and changing. Maddening, I know, but you'll make it through......

 

[theplanb]

thanks guys, somehow I feel /bet.ter/ already
Do you know where I can get some good educational materials on phonics to help me get started?

 

[rh71]

I learned English from watching tv. The educational system when I was a kid had very little to do with it and I really believe that. Grammar in English is one of the toughest to learn... but hearing others use it everyday made it pretty easy. The same goes for pronunciation of words and their syllables. There really weren't grammatical rules that I followed...

If I were born in the south, I'm sure I'd be saying "y'all" a lot because I learned by example, not because it was the cool or proper thing to say.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: AndyHui
That's a fundamental difference between languages where a single glyph represents an entire word as opposed to a variable length series of letters to represent a word. While arguably in Korean and Japanese a whole word may be spelled out with a series of characters, each character can also represent an independent word, which English, for example generally cannot.

Therefore as each glyph corresponds to a word, it is natural for each syllable to be enunciated clearly, just like there are clear demarcations between words in English (well, depending on how lazy you are).

It's easy for something like Japanese or Korean as a vowel will almost always follow a consonant. You can tell where the edges of the syllables are. While it is similar for most other languages, as from your own post, this is not always the case.

I have always thought that a syllable will represent a single mouth action within a word. When that mouth action changes, you move to another syllable.

actually, korean and japanese are fundamentally different. japanese is more or less chinese short hand. korean is a very phonetic language. written korean is very precise. there are 10 vowel sounds and 15? consonant sounds. these sounds are used to form syllable. the syllable is the base of the korean language and often times this syllable unit is translated into english as a "letter". that translation isn't accurate. each syllable is more like a "word root" in english. these word roots can serve as suffixes, prefixes as well as the basis of the word. it's hard to compare a written / spoken language like korean which was designed very scientifically with a language like english that evolved over time.