What Even Is a Syllable? (correction in the description)

CORRECTION: I'm no longer sure whether syllables can or can't span multiple words. It might depend on the language.
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[@Xidnaf]

CORRECTION: I'm no longer sure whether syllables can or can't span multiple words. It might depend on the language.

[@Nahasapasa]

je ne sais quoi

[@sirraven2499]

Syllables can indeed span multiple words. A good example is French where you have the liason. For example to say "they like" would be _ils aiment_ or _elles aiment_ which is said as [il zɛm] or [ɛl zɛm]. Generally if the next word starts with the vowel, sometimes the end consonant of the previous word blends into the next word. You sometimes also have this in other languages too like in Spanish, Hungarian or Turkish.

[@maciejszulc2684]

Another example of syllables spanning multiple words - in Polish we've got prepositions built with a single consonant. And every Polish syllable must have exactly one vowel, so these little prepositions get tied to nouns going after them. "Idę z psem" is divided to I-dę-zpsem (pronounced as [i-dɛ̃-spsɛm].

[@felixswadel5017]

Latin poetry is also full of multi-word syllables due to all the elision. E.g. "Pectora semiferi atque extinctos faucibus ignes" is pronounced "Pectora semiferatquextinctos faucibus ignes" where "rat" and "quex" are counted as single syllables.

[@jan_kisan]

Hey, it seems like in non-rhotic dialects of English syllables can also span two words: ðɪs kɑː ɪz bɪg -> ðɪs kɑː ɹɪz bɪg, where 'ɹ' is actually coming from "car". But, of course, it can be substituted with ʔ, or this ɹ can start appearing everywhere, paying no attention to etymology.

[@pootisspencer6229]

A cool little fact: The word "xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓" in the Nuxalk language of British Columbia gave linguists a serious challenge when it comes to what a syllable is.

[@pootisspencer6229]

Like, how would you divide that into syllables?

[@pootisspencer6229]

It literally means "He had a bunchberry plant"

[@cosmopoiesecriandomundos7446]

@@pootisspencer6229 thats the weirdest language I've ever seen. this word doesn't even uses vowels.

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

Null vowels maybe??

[@cosmopoiesecriandomundos7446]

@@Emile.gorgonZola no, litteraly no vowels.

[@cjatfenway]

love the baby calling his parents "slaves" "BRING ME FOOD SLAVE" lol

[@Bluey]

Ma Ma Ma

[@NugisBiboSchicken]

Ma ma ma! Bring me food, slave!

[@cjsk]

How about liason in French? When a word ends with a silent consonant and is followed by a word that starts with a vowel, the silent consonant is not only pronounced, but forms the beginning of the first syllable of the second word. For example, "les amis" is prounounced /le zami/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaison_(French)

[@EpicBzzBoy3]

Yeah. I was about to make that point too. Jezz, Syllables are sure tricky guys eh?

[@japaris75]

My point exactly! I am a native French speaker and that assumption on word boundaries does not always work in French (les liaisons entre les mots décrits ci-dessus par cjsk)....so that definition of syllables has exceptions. A lot of syllables in French (and, again, I believe syllables exist) are shared between two words. Too bad for this theory.

[@cjsk]

Jo Ama Mon Nom actually, thinking about it further, I think this might not mean the theory is completely rubbish. We only recognise the /z/ as being the initial of the syllable /za/ in /le.zami/ because even French speakers recognise it's pronounced as if it were the beginning of a new word. We recognise it's pronounced differently to /lez.ami/. This means we can still think of syllables in the same way +xidnaf was describing.

[@japaris75]

Yes, if you like but /z/ (or /s/ if you prefer) is not the only "liaison" we make in French. Liaisons also include /n/, /m/, /l/, /p/, etc...

[@AlinaLynn]

Don't forget the Linking R of some dialects of English! Slightly irrelevant, but this reminds me of a proposal that spoken French may be on the path to becoming polysynthetic. (see matnat.ronet.ru/articles/Arkadiev_TypSchool_Polysynthesis_Hand.pdf)

[@jonathanmcculley3728]

It's probably easy to write haikus in Japanese because it's literally a syllabary. Each basic character is a single syllable.

[@kori228]

Uh... yeah. Japanese use mora, not syllables. Most notable case is that long vowels count as 2 mora each. So, from the Wikipedia page, one way mora is written is モーラ. There are 3 characters here, but the 2nd character here, the ー is used to indicate extended vowels, extending the モ (mo) to (possibly transcribed as) mou, moo, or mō. This would mean mora is pronounced as 2 syllables, one long one short, but has 3 mora. For more information, check the wikipedia page for mora. Better case of syllabary is Chinese.

[@thenewtonium3521]

Yes but Japanese *also* uses moræ not syllables for line length in haikues, so +Jonathan Mcculley's point still stands.

[@paulhanck1123]

They did invent haikus

[@JamieDNGN]

@bumboni ん is a sonorant which mean it can form a syllable witout being a vowel. Czech and other slavic languages, some varieties of English etc. As stated before - Japanese uses morae and ん is one mora long - いん is pronounced as long as かな. So while it isn't de facto a separate syllable - it can form one without a vowel and be pronounced with the same length as a syllable.

[@WatermelonEnthusiast9]

Which is why Haiku is a Japanese word

[@ArturoStojanoff]

You know, in Spanish there can very often be one syllable between two words due to synalepha.

[@fabrv_del]

Quesa baina es solo en poesia. Tons' nel.

[@lucasfranco1758]

@@fabrv_del Esto lo lee uno no hispanohablante y le explota la cabeza xd

[@GellyGelbertson]

Xidnaf, I'd like to thank you for making these videos, even after a long hiatus. I just found this channel a couple of days ago and I ended up watching all your videos in a massive binge. I knew language was interesting, but I never thought that it's been studied to this intricate of a degree. I really like your presentation of concepts and how you move from one thing to another so fluidly and just - everything fits! Thanks so much and please keep making more!

[@thepersonwhocomentz]

A little disappointed that you didn't go into syllablactic construction differences between languages, like how English can contain a large amount of sounds and letters in one syllable while something like Japanese for example will usually only ever have two sounds in each syllable, as far as I know. For example, in English, you can have the word "strength" as one unique syllable that doesn't break at any point, which would be a major no-no in a lot of other languages. You'd have to split the word up into a lot of different syllables if you wanted to pronounce it (as spoken in English) in Japanese.

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

thepersonwhocomentz Phonosyntactics you mean?

[@ambi3nttech]

su to ren gu su from 1 syllable to 5

[@andersyu4464]

actually japanese can have 4 sounds per syllable these are all sounds japanese has V CV CyV CVn CyVn

[@ciren___]

@@andersyu4464 what does 'y' mean in the context of syllable structure? I know that C - consonant, V - vowel, n - nasal but what is 'y'?

[@andersyu4464]

@@ciren___ /◌ʲ/

[@radishpineapple74]

An example of variable syllable boundaries is for "Wisconsin." I've noticed that there is a trend for non-Wisconsinites to place the boundaries as "Wis.con.sin", which makes the /k/ in "con" aspirated, while Wisconsinites place the boundaries as "Wi.scon.sin," with an unaspirated /k/.

[@EmdrGreg]

Maybe syllable is more a concept of music than it is of language or words per se. That's why the concept may have more of a connection with poetry, and there may be a little less ambiguity there.

[@GT-tj1qg]

If it's not related to the words, how come everyone agrees how many syllables to use in a given word?

[@Kikkerv11]

+Xidnaf At 05:20 you forgot about ''la liaison'' in French. Many French word end with a secret consonant that belongs to the next word, but only if the next word starts with a vowel. For example: ''un'' is pronounced /œ̃/ but it's pronounced /tœ̃/ in ''C'est un''. The first and second sound in this syllable belong to a different word.

[@stevend285]

This is about 90% of why I hate french and love it at the same time

It's actually "la liaison"

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

If you actually study some linguistics, you'll discover there's a distinction between the semantic word and the prosodic word

[@supechube_k]

no thats just the consonant entering the next word

[@Kikkerv11]

@@supechube_k That's what I said. In French, a syllable can have two parts of different words in it.

[@ellebarry3243]

When I was a kid I was told that syllables can by counted by the amount your jaw lowers while speaking

[@AshtonSnapp]

But that is also inaccurate as you can accidentally force it.

[@nbksrbija1039]

When you pronounce OO or EE your jaw doesn't lower at all, let alone the L in apple or bottle

[@MonkOrMan]

apple, naive, woman... There are loads of words that disprove this

[@rhomaioscomrade]

The definition of a syllable in Greek (which is where the word "syllable" comes from anyway) is actually much more clear. Each syllable is always only one vowel (singular or a diphthong) along with nearby consonants depending on the word. There are also rules on how to divide the consonants in a word for each syllable. For example: άρρητος (arrhetos = unable to be spoken) will be broken down as άρ-ρη-τος with the double consonant breaking to the two nearby syllables instead of into just one. For a more vowel-esque word, the initial basic rule remains: αέρας (aeras = air) will broken down as α-έ-ρας. And for a slightly more complicated word: άνθρακας (anthrakas = carbon) will be broken down as άν-θρα-κας.

[@boptillyouflop]

+Eutychius Raptor Each language has its twist on that basic concept of a syllable being 1 vowel/diphthong + preceding and following consonants. For instance, in English, consonants in the middle of words (between 2 vowels) are kindof ambi-syllabic and it's hard to say precisely which syllable they belong to, which is why you see syllable breakdowns such as "bat-tle" (impossible because English doesn't have long consonants). IRL no European language has a simple syllable structure - there are way better examples in places like Africa (where some languages allow only Consonant+Vowel and absolutely nothing else!)

[@rhomaioscomrade]

+boptillyouflop I agree, but I'm just stating that (complications aside), you can definitely see very clear rules on how to split syllables in Greek. For example, the "split two identical consonants between syllables" is a very common rule that is taught in schools to be able to break down words when the line doesn't fit them. The problem with many European languages is that the pronunciation doesn't match the letters. In your example, battle sounds like it has a rounded vowel in the end before the l, but there is none written. In languages where pronunciations are more consistent the syllable rules can be applied more universally without this problem.

[@boptillyouflop]

Eutychius Raptor Yeah, syllable separation IRL applies to real world pronounced consonants and vowels, not their written versions.

[@bonbonpony]

+boptillyouflop That's because in English, sounds doesn't exactly match the letters. For example, how to break "exile" into syllables? You can probably say with ease that "eg-z(eye)l" is what it should be, but the problem is that these "g" and "z" are combined into one letter "x" which cannot be split in the middle, so you need to either connect it to the first syllable or the second. But which way is the more "correct" one? (I know that there are official ways of how to break that word, but I'm just playing with the idea to make my point.) But this isn't yet as bad as, for example, in Polish, where you can bunch several consonants together. For example: "strzecha" or "krztyna" ;) Can you guess how many syllables are there? (the number is the same in both). Similarly with Czech & Slovak. For example, "krtek" (a little mole). But when you compare this word with its Polish counterpart, which is "kret" (a mole) and "krecik" (a little mole), you should start to see a pattern :> Because there are pretty much the same consonants in both: "KRTeK" vs. "KReCiK", where the "eK" or "iK" in both languages is a diminutive suffix. But since it has the "i" vowel in Polish instead of "e", the "i" makes the "T" softer, transforming it into "C`" (pronounced roughly as "tsh" but softer). So the root of the word is "KRT" in Czech and "KReT" in Polish. And this can mean only one: in Czech, the "e" vowel between "R" and "T" has been _lost_ (!) leaving this weird bunch of consonants "KRT" :> In Polish, the "e" is still in place. A Japanese, due to how their phonology works, would pronounce it as "KeKeTu", making it 3 syllables, while in Polish it is 2 and in Czech it seems to be 1 syllable, where the "-eK" suffix is attached to it. (The "R" kinda works like a consonantal vowel there.) So my theory is that originally these languages might have worked similarly as in Japanese, with very simple syllables of the CV type. But with time, in fast speech, some of the vowels could start getting shorter and shorter to make up for the "rhythm" of the language, and ultimately some of them might have disappeared altogether, as long as the consonants could be easily distinguished from each other.

[@Terrendum]

I am Dutch and the syllable finding algorithm (for Dutch) I was taught in primary school was: 1. If a word is a composite of smaller words split between them; 2. split of any pre- or postfixes; 3. Split these groups of letters such that every resulting group has exactly one vowel (a diphthong is counted as a single vowel). a. If there is one consonant between two vowels spit before it; b. If there are two or more consonants split before the last, except for 'sch', 'ch' and 'ng' which are treated as a single consonant Example (a nice long one): arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekeringetje (small TPD insurance) 1. arbeids ongeschiktheids verzekeringetje 2. arbeids on-ge-schikt-heids ver-zekering-etje 3. ar-beids on ge schikt heids ver ze-ke-ring e-tje result: ar-beids-on-ge-schikt-heids-ver-ze-ke-ring-e-tje A definition that I generally use for 'a syllable' is a part of a word within were you can't take a breath/pause.

[@Bardockfan150]

Personally, I do empathize with the early plight you expressed at the video's beginning. At some point in time, though, I came to be under the impression that syllables were simply vowels that were pronounced. That is to say, in the word "chives," for instance, "i" would be counted as a syllable, but "e" would not be. Indeed, when asked about the topic, this was how I explained it. More than this, as far as I recall, I never had an intuitive sense as to what syllables were before using this definition. Also noted, in your "Hell Mit, Helm It, Helmet," demonstration, testing it myself, I seemed to pronounce "helmet" and "helm it" in almost identical manners.

[@catennator]

Hey Xidnaf I found your channel tonight from a suggest video and just binge watched all your videos (excluding one, you know which one). I never like language, I hate my English class and can't stand sitting in it. But you sparked my interest in not the art of language but the science and history of it and I love it. Thank you for opening my eyes to the world of linguistics!

[@Diego3Ke]

You've never studied Latin, have you, Xidnaf? Latin poetry is a big fan of elision, in which a syllable can, in fact, span more than one word.

[@calinnilie]

Back in 1st grade, my teached gave us one definition of the syllable which has always made sense to me: they are parts of speech that are divided up by the moment which your jaw drops slightly. She used to tell us to place a hand underneath our jaw and make us observe this.

[@FKLinguista]

To be fair, Haikus are separated by morae in Japanese rather than by syllables. If you haven't learned about the mora yet, it's even more confusing than the syllable. It's why desu in roumaji has the -u- at the end.

[@Pining_for_the_fjords]

I've been learning Polish for some years, and in Polish you can say 'w aucie', meaning 'in the car', or 'z nami', meaning 'with us'. Both the 'w' and 'z' are non-sylabic words, which always seem to add themselves onto the first syllable of the word they proceed. The w is pronounced [v] or [f], meaning 'in', and the z is pronounced [z] or [s], meaning 'from' or 'with'. This looks like another example of syllables spanning multiple words.

[@wtftode]

"Bring me food, slave." -Baby

[@mrpellagra2730]

That was a DBGT reference.

[@BGP00]

A syllable is a sound that is produced with a single movement of the mouth Say the syllables in "syllable" but focus on how your mouth moves. Between every syllable, you have to move your mouth to a new position

[@Vengir]

5:20 - I disagree with that. For example, my language has two zero-syllable words: „w” and „z” - to pronounce them you have to join them with the first syllable of the following word. There you go, syllable spanning the boundaries of word.

[@Xidnaf]

Vengirni In my next video I'm going to get into how ambiguous the idea of a "word" is, but my understanding of a "word" has always been that you have to be able to pronounce it on its own for it to count as a word. What language are you talking about?

[@Vengir]

Polish, but similar rule apply in various other Slavic languages (those words are typically "v", "z/s" or "k" - the last one disappeared from modern Polish and now we rarely use one-syllable word "ku"). What is interesting, is that there are alternative variants of "words" „z” and „w” in Polish - „ze” and „we”, which we use when pronouncing them together with the following word would be too difficult and they mean exactly the same thing as normal „w” and „z”. According to your definition of a word, zero-syllable variants are not a words and the one-syllable variants are, even though they mean exactly the same thing and the use of either variant is strictly regulated, so you never have a choice and it depends only on how the following word is pronounced.

[@Xidnaf]

Vengirni English has two words, "a" and "an," which mean exactly the same thing, but we use one or the other depending on whether the next word begins with a consonant or a vowel. I count these as two separate words, even though they mean the exact same thing and only very depending on the pronunciation of the next word, so I think the same probably applies to the polish words "w" and "z." I, at least, would define a word as a distinct string of phonemes which have a particular meaning, that can be pronounced on their own without surrounding words, that can vary in position relative to other words and that very minimally in pronunciation based on their surroundings. Do you have an alternative definition?

[@Vengir]

I'm not a linguist, mind you (though I'm possibly more knowledgeable in that field than an average person). I always associated words as "something surrounded by spaces". I'm aware of the problem it creates, especially with non-written languages or languages that don't use spaces. Your definition of a word looks logical. I always considered „z”and „ze” as two separate words, similar with „w” and „we”, but WORDS. It's funny, that even though they behave (without going into details) similar to English "a/an", two of them apparently are words and the other two aren't. There's one way you could pronounce Polish „w” and „z” as separate words. This is used when we really want to emphasize those prepositions (for those reading us: they mean more or less "in" and "from" respectively) and I believe this might be considered incorrect, but they can be then pronounced as „wy” and „zy”. Note that this is different from how those letters are called in Polish alphabet and spelled in acronyms („wu” and „zet”). We never write „zy” and „wy” is completely different word (plural "you") and we also never write „wy” when we have „w” in mind. By all means I consider those emphasized forms the same words as non-emphasized variants pronounced with the following word. I wonder, though, what are „z” and „w” if not words? If you asked a Pole whether those are words, you would probably get mixed answers, but if you asked whether „w Polsce” ("in Poland") is just one word, I doubt anyone would say yes. You would sooner hear "No, those are two words" or "No, only „Polsce” is a word". The situation is further complicated by the fact, that both „w” and „z” behave like any other preposition with syllable in them (except that other prepositions don't need two variants for easier pronunciation) and our grammar doesn't formally define eight and ninth (and tenth, eleventh and twelfth if we go deeper) grammatical case for those two prepositions (Instrumental is often taught with „z” preposition as an example, but it can also be used without preceding „z”). PS: When describing pronunciation I used normal Polish orthography in transcription to make words easier to recognise in written text.

[@Xidnaf]

Vengirni The more you describe them, the more the Polish „w” and „z” seem like clitics. I'll talk about them in my next video, but basically these are things that are sort of half-words. They move around relative to other words with ease, but they're heavily affected by the pronunciation of their surroundings as if they were just part of an adjacent word. An English example would be the "s" that indicates possession, as in "the dog's bone" or, more interestingly, "the dog who belongs to my aunt's bone." Here, "'s" is attached to the word "aunt" as if it's just part of the word "aunt's," but it describes the word "dog" rather than the word "aunt" as if it were its own word. I don't know. The idea of a syllable, as well as the idea of a word, is rather ambiguous. Thank's for sharing more about Polish with me! Also, cool icon :) /)

[@talideon]

One thing you glossed over in the 'helm it' vs 'hell mit' vs 'helmet' segment was that 'it' starts with a glottal stop, which is omitted in the written language.

[@Xidnaf]

Cíat Ó Gáibhtheacháin Well, I omit that because in the word "helmet," as well as in the phrases "helm it" and "hell mit" (when spoken casually at least," there is no glottal stop. If you emphasize the word "it," or say the word in isolation, then yeah, there's a glottal stop, but not when spoken normally in context.

[@rosetonic6924]

“it’s kind of hard to deny the existence of something you just kind of /know/ is there” hey you’re right....and you know what? you could make a religion out of this ! no, wait, don’t

[@somemaycallthisjunkmeicall133]

A division between a rhythmic alternation off a vowel and two or more consonant that are put together in a single word

[@fendas123]

I thought my name had two syllables. They told me that it has three, and I just accepted it. You had critical thinking.

[@fendas123]

@Kayin Oguntoyinbo Gabriel. And I’m Swedish.

[@fendas123]

@Kayin Oguntoyinbo So I thought. Ga-briel. But the teacher said Ga-bri-el.

[@MorganJonasson]

for me it's kind of simple. the simpliest method of counting syllables in a word is to count the vowel "chunks" containing each one or more vowels. for example, "information" has four vowel "chunks" (i,o,a and io). the chunks of consonants between them is what separates the vowel chunks and thus also separates the syllables. however, now we talk about phonetic vowels and consonants, not the ones in written text. for english words, you have to first transform many words to a entirely phonetic version. for example, "separates" has only three syllables, since the last e is not pronunced, thus what would be a seperate vocal group is now a last consonant group (ts) and thus you only have three vowel chunks which are e, a and a. the hard thing can be to divide the syllables correctly. "cinema" may be ci-ne-ma as well as ci-nem-a or cin-em-a. more examples: transport -> tr-a-nsp-o-rt -> a - o -> 2 syllables pleasure -> pleasur' -> pl ea s u r' -> ea u -> 2 syllables but "cooperation", does it have 4 or 5 syllables? well, when this word is spoken slowly, usually there are a silent pause or some kind of sound difference between those two O:s, which will act as a consonant chunk and thus divide the two oes into two vowel chunks. cooperation will thus be c o o p e r a t io n -> o o e a io -> 5 syllables however, in words like pool and roof, there are no special sound shift between the two O:s, and thus are the O dublets treated as a single vowel chunk. so, now I at least gave a suggestion to an algorithm for how to count syllables.

[@salalal7491]

“What makes a syllable a syllable” Korean: Where’s the question?

[@GALA89]

In the Italian language we have a very precise definition of what a syllable is

[@Liggliluff]

I thought we knew what a syllable is. It's each vowel or dipththong, or syllabic consonant, together with its onset and coda. Are there any syllables out there breaking this definition?

[@wilh3lmmusic]

I don’t think so but there are places where the onset and coda are in strange places

[@prieglius]

I love your channel, keep going! And the pictures are really cute and funny :D What I really find interesting in English is 'you'. How could 'thou' just dissapear from the language? Does it show the politeness or the reticence of the English people? And what's even more interesting is that the English lost the feeling of thou/you and while reading Bible, for instance, think that 'thou' is more formal because people address to God with 'thou'. But that's the whole point that we say the informal 'thou' to God and the formal 'you' to elder people, etc. You really should make a video about thou/you I'm a Lithuanian, by the way :)

[@ConiferConnieTreeCow]

I'm late here, but to summarise it, the "th" sound was a letter "thorn" that got lost in translation and replaced with "y"

[@montivdg]

I'm in my third year of linguistical studies and it's fun to see all of this come back, albeit presented in an amazing way. Keep up spreading the love for linguistics!

[@marcoponzio1644]

I think the "e" in "les" is pronunced [e], not [ɛ]

[@AlinaLynn]

I always think of "weird" as two syllables like "wee-yerd". Maybe I just tend to split diphthongs into two. For me, "flower" and "flour" are both disyllabic.

[@joshmetcalfe7681]

i love your intro man

[@Xidnaf]

josh metcalfe Thanks! There's a link in the description if you want to hear the full song it's from.

[@BaggyMcPiper]

Your videos have improved dramatically in quality! It's always nice to see entertaining and informative videos about subjects I find interesting.

[@daniellbondad6670]

1:55 Bring me food slave!

[@daniellbondad6670]

Ca-té-go-ry Cá-te-go-ry Cat-é-go-ry

[@zombiedude347]

The rule that a syllable can't transcend 2 words depends highly on you're definition of a word. For example, is a contraction its own word, or still 2 words? In Twilight Sparkles, I would probably pronounce it as [tʰʷwaɪ̯.laɪ̯.t͡spä˞ kl̩z] . The "t" at the end of Twilight assimilates with the "s" at the beginning of Sparkles, becoming the affricate [t͡s], so technically a syllable crossed word boundaries.

[@Jackson-rx8sm]

Syllable - A vowel sound and consonants surrounding it that are bound by a word

[@robert_wigh]

Mhm...but there are two vowels, both phonetically and orthographically, in words like ‘thought ’ and ‘bought’ still, both are composted of only one syllable. That definition doesn’t hold up to the requirements of reality.

[@ryanmurray5973]

I believe that what was meant was that vowels, syllabic consonants and/or groups of vowels/syllabic consonants bound by consonants constitute syllables.

[@brettlol]

+Robert Andersson diphthongs are considered one vowel sound and therefore are in a single syllable.

[@xenomann442]

Edit: A vowel sound that may or may not be surrounded by consonants. For examples 'react' is two syllables but the e and a are not separated by consonants. Otherwise the definition is correct.

[@robert_wigh]

Adam Wojtczak Good definition!

[@laurgao]

A great example on how the simplest things that seem so universal at a basic level is hard to comprehend when you really try to look deeply into it.

[@PepsVideoArchive]

well, xidnaf, some syllables in Spanish do span multiple words, especially in poetry, where we even have this weird name thing for it: the "sinalefa". This happens when a word ends in a vowel, and the next one beings with one as well, so the sounds just end up connecting. For example: "Quiero ir a comer" (I want to go eat), is technically separated Quie-ro-ir-a-co-mer, but when saying it out loud, most people end up saying it Quie-roir-a-co-mer, merging the vowels into a diphthong. Another example could be: La rosa es hermosa (the rose is beautiful) La-ro-sa-es-her-mo-sa would be the "correct" way, where most people say it as La-ro-saes-her-mo-sa and so on and so forth

[@RobertAdoniasCostaGomes]

same in Portuguese... poetic/metric syllables (which resembles speech), makes it span more than one word, sometimes... that's why "Minha terra tem palmeiras, Onde canta o sabiá" becomes: "Mi/nha/ te/rra/ tem/ pal/mei/ras/, On/de/ can/ta o/ sa/bi/á/" BTW the non-poetry version division divides "ta" and "o", something one only does when emphasizing in speech: "Mi/nha/ ter/ra/ tem/ pal/mei/ras/, On/de/ can/ta/ o/ sa/bi/á/"

[@kasra72389]

I'm learning Spanish, so I may not be the best person to judge, but some of your syllables seem to be more than one syllable, and I'm trying to articulate it the way you're saying, and it's much harder. French on the other hand, which is a romance language, just like Spanish, does have actual cases where YOU HAVE TO make syllables span two words or more, like in "Les amis" it's pronounced (each word) "Le ami", but because of French grammar, which states, if you have a word ending with a consonant (Normally the consonants aren't pronounced, since French love historical spelling) have to span they're sound to the next word, if said word begins with a vowel. Basically, the word "Les" is normally pronounced "le", and the word "amis" starts with a vowel, so the "s" from "les" which is normally not pronounced has to become pronounced with the word following it, so you end up with the pronunciation "Le zami".

[@RobertAdoniasCostaGomes]

I am also not a Spanish speaker but, speaking from Portuguese, it is because we kind of join vowel sounds in speech if there is not a consonant in between... and, poetic syllable counting (also known as metric counting) looks at syllables the way we speak (kind of like the "Les amis" example you gave)... BTW in school, we are first taught to divide syllables "the dictionary way", which does not span more than one word... but the poetic division is how we say in everyday life, with the exception of someone emphasizing one word by fully pronouncing the leading vowel in the word...

[@kasra72389]

That's pretty interesting, but from what I'm understanding, it's not technically correct to use syllables this way, it just feets colloquial sppech. The difference with French is YOU HAVE TO do it, or else you'd be speaking incorrectly, you're actually taught in school to do, it's actually complicated enough for a child, that we don't even learn it as we learn to read, they add it after we've learnt to read at a reasonible pace. It seems to follow the same rules, it happens when you can only hear two vowel sounds, but because of French's historical spelling, we know what the dropped consonant used to be, so when speaking, you have to actully sound out the dropped consonant of the last word as the first letter of the next one. Update: I also want to add, in French, when two vowels meet, on at the end of a word and another at the beginning, and the old word used to have an ending consonant, you have to pronounce what the ending consant would have been as the starting consonant of the next word over. Turning "Les amis" to "les zamis" (I keep French writting rules, just added the "z" to signify the consonant spanning over, essentially make a syllable that spans over two words). The examples you gave with Portuguese seems to only combine a lone vowel into the last syllable of the last word, which I think also happens in French, although I can't think of any examples right now. If that's case with Portuguese, then I don't see why it's special, it could even happen in English. Example: The boy is taking a book It's normally The/ boy/ is/ Tak/ing/ a /book/ But I see it more as The/ boy/ is Tak/ING A/ book. I believe the French liaison (That's what this is called, sorry for not naming it before) is truely something unique.

[@wassapdude94]

Soy de argentina y no entiendo a q te referis, capaz que es el mal ejemplo, ya que es imposible decir "Quie-roir" porque "ir" va con 'acento' y "Quie" tambien", como no podes estresar todas las silabas de una palabra, suena terrible

[@brettlol]

I was always taught a syllable contained 1 vowel sound, so each section of a word with a vowel sound was a syllable.

[@heimdall1973]

+Brett Rabine How about English word swindle? How many syllables? It feels like 2, but the 2nd one doesn't have a vowel sound, it has the LLLLL sound instead.

[@brettlol]

+heimdall1973 the second syllable of swindle is -dle which sounds like d uh l, which has a vowel sound.

[@LH1980XX]

Oddly enough I quite like messing with the applied linguistics lecturer at a local university. She is completely unable to place my accent as I'm a master of code switching speaking 4 languages fluently, yet I had multiple accents and I also mix and match my accents and pronunciations.

[@joule400]

In finnish it seems simple, syllable breaks before the next consonant that is followed by a vowel. Ka-las-sa, or before a vowels of different diphthong Ko-me-a / kor-ke-a

[@iyokan7979]

I was thinking "Japanese" the whole time xD

[@obviativ123]

I don't know a lot about Japanese, what is about its syllables?

[@caiocaguiar9310]

@@obviativ123 Basically Japanese has an obsession with syllables in a CV (consonant - voel) form, the crushing majority of the words have just CV syllables. And also that one of the Japanese writing system is a syllabaries, a symbol for every syllable.

[@obviativ123]

@@caiocaguiar9310 thanks

[@HonneTheFinnicHeathen]

Finnish is same

[@normatrkovnik6719]

Hey Xidnaf I just love your videos, not that they help me with my linguistic studies, they are also fun. But I have only one objection - you are really talking quite fast on your videos and I think that it would really help, not just me, but all the other fellow non-english speaking linguists to understand you better and to learn much more from you. Or at least having your words written on the bottom of the screen as you speek would really help alot. I hope you don't mind me sharing my opinion. You're awesome. Love you. :)

[@Czar_Moss]

my teacher banned me from recess like twice a week cause I literally could not understand grammar subject object verb, adjective noun, you name it I couldn't now I can but things from other languages important like dative confuse me

[@MonkOrMan]

It's funny how that happens cos for me I understood nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. intuitively as soon as I heard about them

[@deathsticks7327]

The first minute of this video is, like, word-for-word an exact experience I had in elementary school. Trippy.

+Death Sticks Clapping is kind of a bad way to count syllables; a phrase has as many syllables as it does vowels: thE rIvEr hAs wAtEr.

[@yo19951O9rk]

OK, the syllable thing is way more complicated then I thought. and welcome to East Asian languages, where the syllable boundaries are sooo clear, yay.

[@alejrandom6592]

not all of them

[@30803080308030803081]

Some of them seem unclear. In the Northern dialect of Vietnamese (which is also standard), there’s a tone that falls and rises, with a jump in the middle when it begins to rise. It sounds like two syllables.

[@PastaTurtle]

Most underrated channel of 2022

[@parasatc8183]

As I watched this video, I was thinking that a syllable is, at the least, comprised of a single vowel or a single diphthong. Sounds too simple though.

[@danted8842]

+Star Guy Thing Well it is, in spanish at least xD

[@someoneslife]

+Star Guy Thing This is very often true in Enlgish, and it's what I was taught in school. All you have to do is count the vowels or sets of vowels in a word to get the number of syllables. The only exception I can think of is that when there is an e at the end of words like "like" or "face", it is often not pronounced and so doesn't count as a syllable. But then often the e at the end is pronounced (like in the word "syllable") so that doesn't really help.

[@squidsquidproquo9610]

+someoneslife it would probably be more accurate to say the number of pronounceable vowels

[@prismarinestars7471]

someoneslife It’s based on the vowel SOUNDS, not the written letters.

[@Enceladus2106]

Syllabic consonants exist, so unfortunately no 😕

[@Andmunko]

Maybe I can add something to this. For one, the legitimacy of words is contested much more heavily than that of syllables. So using words to define syllables doesn't lead anywhere. If by "word" you mean "morpheme", then crosslinguistically there are plenty examples of morphemes smaller than a syllable (and English is no exception). However, I always thought syllables are very easy to define: a syllable is the longest well-formed combination of phonemes as defined by a language's phonotactics (keeping in mind the maximization of onsets).

[@Xidnaf]

Andmunko Yes. All of that. This person right here seems to know much more about linguistics than I do. Everybody stop doing what your doing and listen to them.

[@Farto126]

My definition of sylable is: a join of phonemas where a vowal or a diptongue is the nucleous of this phonemas when it is pronuncied

[@dorkmax7073]

YPG "Oil" is one example that doesn't fit your definition.

[@petercarioscia9189]

Coda Mission one could argue that oil feels like it's two syllabals

[@TheLegend2T]

My thought is this: take any word, and say it but with you mouth closed the number of hums equals the number of syllables

[@josetortos5037]

Josef Ruiz what about words like stupid? Granted, in spanish I believe that method works, but not in english, where consonants can be pronounced as sound that would be considered vowelly in other languages

[@alejrandom6592]

@@dorkmax7073 phonetic dipthongs, not orthographic

[@JayBowen]

After learning Spanish, I realized that some words can have a different amount of syllables depending on how fast they're said. Like with the words, 'tienes' or 'Dios'. I've noticed that when they're pronounced slowly, they sound like they have 3 and 2 syllables, like 'ti-e-nes' and 'Di-os'. But when people say them fast, it then sounds like they have 2 and 1 syllables, like 'tye-nes' and 'Dyos'

[@JayBowen]

Miles Conlan Yea, I agree with you. I suppose the I and U in Spanish are like semi-vowels like the English Y or W. Also you've reminded me of another thing I learnt about Spanish, and that's how most of the words which have IE or UE in them are actually broken down (or 'caved in') forms of the letters E and O. This happens many times when stress is put on E and O, or when certain words have evolved from other Latin languages (incl. Latin itself) or non-Spanish languages and become Hispanicised. For example: The stressed E in "te-nEr" breaks down into IE in "tIE-nes". Or, the word "port" in Portuguese is "pOr-to", then in Spanish the O breaks down into UE and becomes pUEr-to.

[@gustavofinkler1229]

in portuguese a syllable is made of ONE vowel and other consonants/semivowels. Really simple

[@AtariGamerProject]

Não é tão simples assim. Você acabou de dar a definição comum de uma sílaba.

[@gustavofinkler1229]

n entendi o q vc quis dizer kkkk o que eu quis foi explicar qual é a formação das sílabas, q no inglês é diferente. Agora, se for em relação à divisão silábica, tem q prestar atenção aos dígrafos

[@AtariGamerProject]

Sim, entendi. Mas no inglês uma sílaba também pode ter somente uma vogal V, uma vogal e uma consoante CV/VC, vogal e semivogal SV/VS. A diferença é que é bem mais irregular em inglês.

[@gustavofinkler1229]

mas eu falei só sobre o português. dá uma olhada no meu primeiro comentário

[@bernardovitiello]

tho in portuguese two words can kinda of have a shared syllable like in "como é", lots of people pronounce it as "comé" although they are 2 different words

[@Kasamori]

Since in Hungarian there are NO diphthongs, it's a rule that 1 syllable has one wovel in it. Also there is a rule for consonants. SYLLABLES EXIST. At least in Hungarian.

[@delayed_control]

Some prepositions in Slavic languages (z, w in Polish, к, с in Russian etc.) often don't even form syllables by themselves... so yeah, it's more complicated than that)

[@Blargkkake]

I just found your channel, but I'm glad you're back. Great show, subscribed.

[@ebrahimalfardan8823]

In Arabic, syllables are built around vowels. Vowels can be short (i in bit), long (e in bet), extended (ea in beat) or compound (a in bate) and for the sake of syllables they are all treated the same as being just a single vowel. Vowels are completely smooth for example the "a" in tape is a vowel but the letter "A" pronounced in itself contain a consonant (glottal stop) followed by a vowel (a). For other words like "esteem" it's tricky especially in mid speach like "self esteem" where the word appears to begin with a vowel, but it seems to me like it still works if the word was read alone without preceeding words it would be more like 'esteem. Each syllable contains only one vowel and each vowel can only be in one syllable. To breakdown a word into syllables, first all silent letters must be dropped and unscripted sounds must be added (e.g. glottal stops), then, each syllable must start with at least one consonant and contain no more than one vowel. It worked very well for me studying English. It works like a charm to determine how many syllables a word has based on how many seperated vowels are there but if more than two consonant are in sequence in the middle of the word, it can be tricky, for example "Astronaut" has three syllables because there are three separated vowels (a, o & au) but the consonant sequence "str" can be devided such that the syllables are either: - 'as-tro-naut, or - 'ast-ro-naut I hope that this is of any value to anybody. The only

[@DiThi]

I see other people commented about Spanish already. It's one of the many languages where the spelling is translated into phonemes into a completely unambiguous way, without using dictionaries, only rules. Syllable count do merge between words, at least in poetry. Not sure about other languages but in Spanish this is made by just joining all words together as one big "word" (which is pretty much how people speak) and then using rules for dividing it.

[@sullivan3503]

Isn't a syllable just bounded by articulation? Like every syllable must contain a vowel?

[@SgtZaqq]

+Sullivan Muse in some languages syllables may be formed by certain consonants (usually R, L, N). E.g. Serbo-Croatian "trg". Even in English words like "apple" may be pronounced with two syllables (app-le).

[@squidsquidproquo9610]

+Zaqq but the vowel is still implied as long as there's airflow. If there is a word written as appl, if there is no vowel adjacent to the L, you would still pronounce it like there is (appul, appel, appol etc). And trg implies turg, but omits the u when written

[@nbksrbija1039]

くコ:彡[̲̅S̲̅Q̲̅U̲̅I̲̅D̲̅] くコ:彡🐙Squid Pro Quo🐙 I pronounce it like appll. Might be because I'm a speaker of Serbo-Croatian, so I can properly articulate words like prst without a vowel (in this position the r behaves like a vowel so it even has a tone). Weird? Czech has a sentence without vowels.

[@muhilan8540]

There is still air flowing without obstruction for a split second making it a vowel.

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

Some syllables don't have vowels in some languages. Semi vowels complicate things. Etc etc

[@outsider344]

THANK YOU. I hated that in school. "I don't get how to count syllables" "Well clap them like this" "..... I don't get how to clap syllables" Everyone I have mentioned this to as an adult has just looked at me like I'm a moron. As petty revenge whenever one of those people asks me a question like "How often are you supposed to change the oil in a car" I just tell them to clap every time they need to change the oil and that will help.

[@yasikima]

omg, when r u graduating from UIUC

[@Xidnaf]

+yasikima never, since they kicked me out at the end of the semester this video was made during. frankly, i don't blame them, my grades were REALLY bad. with any luck someone else will take me soon and i'll finish there.

[@bonbonpony]

+Xidnaf That's perhaps you were too curious and too sharp-minded for them. I had the same problems with my teachers. If I asked too many questions they couldn't answer and couldn't admit it either, they were punishing me with bad grades & stuff. I nearly had to repeat the semester because of my physics teacher, because I was calling bullshit every time he was describing the Bohr model of the atom - I was studying physics independently on my own since I remember, as a hobby, so I already knew that Bohr model is invalid and highly outdated, but he tried to sell it as truth, and I simply couldn't accept that. I already knew a lot of quantum physics at that time, so I was often correcting him, and he was mad as shit. I avoided the repetition only thanks to the fact that my father took me to his friend, who was a physics professor on a university, to try me out. The professor tried me thoroughly and he concluded that I should be graded A+ because my knowledge surpasses the college level. He signed a sort-of affidavit where he confirmed that. And guess what my dumbass physics teacher said when he saw it :P 1. He got ∞ mad. 2. He said that he cannot give me an A when he gave me F before, he can only raise it up to C. And all of that only because the school's principal forced it upon him, saying that if a university professor says I'm that smart, he shouldn't dispute that ;P I also had a very bad time with maths, because I couldn't get the calculus. I couldn't get how by adding up infinitely many 0s one can end up with a non-zero end result (that's pretty much how integration works according to them :P ). And how can something be infinitely small, but still not 0, yet behave as 0 when we need it (that's pretty much how infinitesimals and differentiation works according to them :P ). I also couldn't accept their ideas of numbers being made of nested empty sets and still be elements of these sets at the same time :P That is some craaaahzy idea right there! But they see it all perfectly fine and dandy and they called _me_ crazy. Now, after several years of studying these things on my own, I finally figured it all out, and I am 100% convinced that _they_ were wrong, not me. They are to this day (well, except the physics teacher who is pushing up the dasies :P ). And they don't even know it. I can explain what numbers are and how they work to a 5th-grader, using geometry. I can not only multiply vectors (something mathematicians say is impossible), but also divide them, raise them to powers, take n-th roots of them and calculate logarithms of vectors. I can do calculus perfectly without any pesky ideas such as infinitesimals or limits, all with finite numbers and college-level algebra & geometry. (I'm in a process of writing a book about that.) So yeah, don't give up, bro. Perhaps you just were too smart for them. But you don't need these pricks. You can do your studies on your own. That's actually better, because no one will be telling you what you _should_ study and what you _shouldn't_, and you can choose the sources of knowledge yourself. But most importantly, you will be able to think freely on these subjects, and this is crucial if you want to find something new instead of just parroting what everyone else tells you (because in many cases they're simply _wrong_).

[@QuikVidGuy]

+Bon Bon Wow that went to a place very quickly

[@QuikVidGuy]

+Bon Bon also you're wrong about a lot of stuff here

[@bonbonpony]

QuikVidGuy For example? (BTW are you one of those teachers I was talking about or something? :P )

[@wariolandgoldpiramid]

Syllables can last for multiple words. In Russian, some of our prepositions can consist of just one consonant. we can have a syllable "в дом" [v dom - into the house], "к тебе", [k tebe - to you]. In these cases, the preposition and the word after it are pronounced as one syllable

[@marbleswan6664]

Do you pronounce "Party" as " 1: Par-ty or 2: Part-y reply with one or two. also reply with what your rules are for pronouncing the word "A" as long or short.

[@naolucillerandom5280]

1 And sorry, I have trouble understanding the long and short vowel thing ;-;

[@gabor6259]

I'm a non-native speaker, I would go with 1. Why does the length of the 'a' matter? Btw I don't know what Merriam-Webster says, but I would write it it like this: e-xam-ple, bo-ttle, o-il, pla-yer, sy-lla-bles. These versions make the most sense to me. I have no idea about 'fire' and 'house' though.

[@Liggliluff]

pa-rty Because "rt" is one consonant in my language.

[@Gamer-uf1kl]

1 long

[@prismarinestars7471]

I always thought of a syllable simply as a single block of vowel sounds, separated by consonant sounds. This video has made me more confused than I was before. I always through the definition was rather strait forward, but you didn’t even mention that definition throughout the entirety of the video.

[@charx225]

5:20 MORE BRONYNESS! Ok I'm done......

[@mylittledashie7419]

+Charx Lovell Ha! That's hilarious, I didn't even notice it.

[@dooplon5083]

Did you miss his earlier mention of Scootaloo or...?

[@corystevens5373]

In my native dialect of English, syllables tend to bleed between words. So a phrase like "what do you want" ends up sounding like "wo-da-yuon*" (* represents a quick glottal stop) and incidentally, the glottal stop is something that can define a string of syllables too. With the removal of that glottal stop you can change that string of syllables to mean "What are you on?"

[@juniorfilmscanada]

3:03 are you a brony?

[@Xidnaf]

+Junior Films yep! If you keep an eye out, there are plenty more references in my other videos.

[@kyungsoonation6189]

yay bronies rule!

[@FanOfManyShows]

Bronies Unite!

[@guidemeChrist]

+Xidnaf Damn, I really like your videos but now I feel disgusted. Lucky that I don't get the references so when you make them I won't be forced to think about how the person talking is a zoophile

[@bonbonpony]

+Xidnaf Then you definitely need to chek out this: mlpforums.com/topic/45522-alphabet-of-the-unicorns/ mlpforums.com/topic/113883-unicorn-language/ and send a PM to that guy ;) Maybe when joining forces you will decode the Unicorn language for other Bronies to use ;) We ain't in any way worse than those Trekkies with their Klingon, are we? ;)

[@jaimebenito620]

In Spanish it is very easy to write an algorithm to separate a word into syllables, at least from a formal perspective (since it does not always match all speakers' voice). In English I've always found syllabic separation puzzling... at best.

[@darthszarych5588]

what is even is the actual difference between a consistent and a vowel?

[@Xidnaf]

Very good question.

[@darthszarych5588]

+Xidnaf when I sang in a choir I learned alot about phonetics. what our director taught us seemed to imply that consonant were just a way of closing a vowel but there are many consonants that can be said without vowels. for a while I thought that vowels were what conectected consonants but you can string together alot of consonants without vowels like in the word sixths. Is there an official answer? Can you have spoken language that is missing all vowels or all consonants?

[@darthszarych5588]

+Xidnaf when I sang in a choir I learned alot about phonetics. what our director taught us seemed to imply that consonant were just a way of closing a vowel but there are many consonants that can be said without vowels. for a while I thought that vowels were what conectected consonants but you can string together alot of consonants without vowels like in the word sixths. Is there an official answer? Can you have spoken language that is missing all vowels or all consonants?

[@globalincident694]

Well I guess you open your mouth to say a vowel, and close it to say a consonant. No, wait, you sort of keep your tongue on the floor of your mouth for vowels and on the roof of your mouth for consonants, unless of course you dont, and you've got to consider the consonants and vowels are letters rather than sounds so they can change from word to word, and they form digraphs like "ar" which don't obey the rules at all. So quite complicated really.

[@maciejszulc2684]

Sorry... Slavs disagree ;( - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant

[@HonneTheFinnicHeathen]

It's interesting that English speakers argue about topic that people in Finland learn on the first day of school. Finland is a language that has syllables that aren't at all confusing because Finnish language is more like "Tu-lim-me ke-räi-le-mään tat-te-ja met-sään." and if you ask a Finnish person to say the same in English he'd probably get confused trying to say "We ca-me to col-lect mush-roo-ms in the fo-res-t" Also in Finnish every word is pronounced how they are written. Also I forgot to add that every syllable ends with next consonant that is followed by a vowel.

[@Doooooof]

Bring me food slave.

[@moth.monster]

I never thought I would be subscribed to a channel on linguistics. No regrets.

[@Astronomy487]

Syllables, at least for me, DO span over words. For example: "This is also a sample" Thi·si·sal·soa·sam·ple Pretty weird...

[@divabootz]

Astronomy487 lmao do you have a lisp or something

[@homemademovies179]

Astronomy487 yea that makes no sense

[@Astronomy487]

I don't have a lisp. The vowel become a diohthong.

[@nbksrbija1039]

so a is pronounced /sow a/ or something so it can't be a diphthong because so already is a diphthong by itself. The syllable thi can't exist because in English the short i can't stand on the end of a syllable. I don't know what language do you speak or do you even know whats a diphthong, but in this sentence it doesn't work

[@aidenaune7008]

a syllable is a singular sequence of open and closed sounds. vowels are open, these are the noises that you do not close your airways to make. consonants are closed, these require the closing of your airways (sometimes even the trachea itself as in the consonant forms of y, w, h, and r). there are two ways a consonant can be spoken, opening or closing; when opening, you put pressure upon the closed airway so that when it opens the air rushes past quickly in the beginning, making a sharp noise, when closing you make a vowel sound and then close the airway, making a sudden and complete stop. it is these stops that create syllables, the stop requires the start of an entire new sound to continue, you cannot flow smoothly from the last one. a syllable is the combination of an opening consonant, vowel, and closing consonant. note that it does not need the opening or closing consonant in order to exist and oftentimes does not have one or both (think "a"), instead using the trachea to quietly open and close the noise on the vowel sound it is also arguable that the opening consonant when on its own can be a syllable. this would mean, for example, that the word consonant would have 4 syllables: con so nan t, under this rule. this is a more rhythmic and structured way of doing it, and even makes more sense, but is not useful for any of the stuff we use the concept of consonants for, so, as far as I know, it is either extremely uncommon or nonexistant.

[@fabrv_del]

That confusion as a kid is mainly because English is written so retardedly. I'm pretty sure Korean or Spanish kids don't have that problem. For example as a Spanish speaker its pretty simple to define; The basic sound between a consonant and a bowel sound. And in confusing situations accents (´) solve the problems. For example: nave = na-ve; acuatico = a-cua-ti-co. And the reason why there is a diptong and not a different vowel paired with 't' is because there is no accent between them. And sure you can say ¿why 'nave' isn't divided like 'nav-e'? and that is because in spanish combinations like that don't exist, 'nav-e' would be 'na-vé'. Where it gets confusing really is with words that end in vowels followed by a vowel beggining word, specially with dialectical regional spanish. For example in my local dialect "¿Que va a haber?" (What are the plans?) tends to end like "¿Que vaber? " or "¿Que onda?" (What's up) ends like "¿Qui'onda? or even the more distorded "¿Quiuvas?"

[@fernandobanda5734]

I can't speak for all of them, but most Spanish dialects I've heard, in common speech, don't distinguish double letters whether vowels or consonants, don't separate syllable boundaries by words, and diphthongize absolutely everything they can even if they have to turn Es and Os into Is and Us. So "ningún amigo" and "ninguna amiga" sound the same except for the last vowel. "aéreo" is often pronounced "aério". "hermanos soberanos" sounds like "hermanos o veranos". "Amor (pause)" often has the rolled R but it becomes a tap in "amor eterno". It's a very efficient system in that speech flows very easily without dealing with situations that are too specific or different, but it also starts to break the rules that very formally establish how to divide syllables, as they don't reflect what people say everyday. Bonus points for recently-removed accents like "crié" where people actually do a hiatus the majority of the time.

[@johngalmann9579]

I always figured that the syllables was groupings around vowels/diphtongs with adjasent constonants. Wich constonats belong to wich deponds on were you have the tiny pause, wich might vary from acsent to acsent. Does it have to be more complicated than that?

[@sereysothe.a]

i am reptilian i can't pronounce words

[@saltyman7888]

+namn At least you can speak asian languages right?

[@bonbonpony]

+namn Can you speak Python at least? :J HISSSSSS...... SHHHHH... HSSSSS...

[@notthatcreativewithnames]

In my opinion, syllables in Thai are more discrete and obvious than those of English. Since English contains "linking sound" (I'm not sure what it called linguistically) which is quite unlikely in Thai. Thai syllables are made by starting consonant + vowel + tone + ending consonant (optional) + "Karan" (only just to keep how this word is spelled in the original language, they are not sounded and, of course, optional). The starting consonant will mark the starting point of a new syllable automatically while the ending consonant will stop this syllable.

[@dew3968]

That was a great vi de o my de ar Xid naf. In my per so nal o pi ni on sil la bles are fo ne tic u ni ties whi ch can be bro ken down and re con nec ted and still ma kes sen se. For e xam ple: Say the se wor ds di vi si ons se pa re te ly and then try to say them fas ter and fas ter un til they glue to ge ther: I ca n sp ea k eng li s h I can s pea k eng lish I can s peak en gli sh Did u no ti ce the dif fe ren ce? A sil la ble is a u ni ty that con veys the pho ne tic me a ning e ven if read se pa re te ly If u say S then H (the sounds) they wont ma ke the shhh sound as in "she". The sa me wor ks for the word sound it self.. read SO, UN, D se pa re te ly and see how the fo ne tic of the vowel chan ges.. Or just think a bout how eng lish sounds dif fe rent from english, though it s the sa me the g sound chan ges, instead of ng li it is just ngli, see? The sounds kind a mix to ge ther.. though I think this sil la ble thing ma kes more sen se in spa nish and por tu gue se! Al so su fi xes and pre fi xes are some how of ten a se pa re ted sil la ble... May be we just made up lan gua ge by "a glu ti na ting some pho ne tic sounds to form words"...

[@ArchmageNydia]

Xidnaf, I thoroughly enjoy the content of your videos. They are informative, interesting, entertaining, easy to understand and occasionally funny. I in general very much enjoy the type of presentation you use, bleeding off from channels like CGP Grey and WonderWhy. There's just one problem, however, and that is the ponies. Don't get me wrong, I am not against bronies whatsoever. In fact I tend to support their motives when discussion appears. The problem is in the way you have presented it. And that is everywhere. I think I can speak on the behalf of most of your fans here that not everyone is a brony and we don't want to see that type of stuff plastered everywhere it can be plastered, relevant or not. Some aspect or another of this has been in most of your videos, ranging from this video which was simply just a word (Scootaloo) to your "How to pronounce Xidnaf" video which included several images and MLP-related macros blatantly superimposed in the background. It's simply not something a lot of us do not want to see, and in my honest opinion should be more of a personal thing. "But how will I give info to the public on my whereabouts and con-goings-to?" you may ask. I personally can not speak on your behalf since, well, I'm not you, but I think keeping it to the end of a video, posting it as an announcement on your channel, making separate videos, or even making a new channel could all work well. Keep the ponies out of the non-pony stuff, and keep the information where it needs to be. Not everyone in the public is a brony, and not everyone in the public likes the show. (I can personally attest to this because I tried to be a brony, and simply could not get to liking the show or any sort of fanbase). Again, I am not shunning your actions and/or your beliefs. Your videos have helped me understand a hell of a lot about language and other history, and I most likely learned more from just your videos than I did through the entirety of my English and Literature classes in middle school and high school, and the information is helping me keep the German I learned through Middle and High school in my brain. It's just distracting having to stare at this irrelevant content through a bunch of relevant content, even if it is subtle. I simply ask that you consider trying to phase out the MLP related content from your general videos and place it somewhere else where it is more relevant. Sincerely, ArchmageNydia and presumably a lot of your fanbase. P.S. Please don't start a flame war in the replies here. I'm not trying to diss any aspect of anything. If we are going to discuss things, at least attempt to keep it civil, as I am not a man to fight and argue. Thanks for reading all the way down here. I know I went off on a tangent a bit, but I hope this comment can help.

[@Xidnaf]

ArchmageNydia Hello, ArchmageNydia.I'd like you to know that I hear you, and I am concerned that you find the pony references distracting, but the fact is I'm not sure I could stop even if I tried. The way I make the illustrations for my videos, I basically try to demonstrate what's going on in my head when I think about these things, and I often try to include references to stuff I'm into to make it more memorable to anyone else who might get the reference. I've referenced XKCD, Sandra and Woo, Game of Thrones, CGPGrey and PBS Idea Channel at various points in my videos. I happen to reference My Little Pony more than everything else simply because My Little Pony is the most important piece of media/fandom in my life. I open and close all of my videos with pony songs because pony songs are almost all I listen to. In the video on the pronunciation of my name, I wanted to spoof PBS Idea Channel, and to do that I needed a bunch of album covers to put in the background, but again, all the music I listen to is pony music. I used "Scootaloo" in this video simply because I wanted a word with multiple long "oo" sounds, and "Scootaloo" was all I could think of. The stuff I like and the media I consume will inevitably find its way into my work, and MLP occupies a central, all-permeating place in my life. I have to wonder, why do you find it so distracting? I'm not into Star Trek or Star Wars, but when people make references to those things it doesn't make the video any worse for me. And although there's usually at least one reference in each video, if only the music at the beginning and end, most of my content is pony-free. Like this video, the only references I made were the "Scootaloo" you noticed and one part where I have the middle few letters of "Twilight Sparkle" up on the screen for a few seconds. And when I do include ponies, I try to make it subtle precisely so that non-bronies won't notice it and therefor won't be distracted. I really appreciate the feedback, and I want to make my videos as good as I can for as broad an audience as I can, but when I consider the fact that either the person watching is a brony, in which case they will probably approve of the reference, or not a brony, in which case they probably won't even notice it, I don't understand how consciously trying to remove ponies from my videos would have a net positive impact.

[@ArchmageNydia]

Xidnaf Thanks for the reply. I believe that the pony related content is more distracting simply because it's more of a taboo area for everyday internet folk. I wouldn't just go up to a guy I'm trying to get to know and say "SO HOW BOUT DEM PONIES EH?" Also, I approve of your method of drawing and such, and it indeed helps me as much as it may help you. If it works for you, don't let me or anyone tell you different. It's simply that if ponies come up that much in your head, you may want to consider something else. I fucking love Earthbound, but not everything I do has to include references to Ness or the Mr. Saturns. Anyways, that's a different conversation which I don't want to get into because it would start flamewars everyfuckingwhere. Again, thanks for the reply; I admire your dedication to your fans as well as improving your videos based on comments like many youtubers don't. Also, if it seems like something so close to your heart that you can't change, again don't let me change it. Do whatever's good for you. I'm simply suggesting recommendations on my and the community's behalf.

[@omp199]

Xidnaf Needs more ponies.

[@orlandomiotto7545]

For me a syllable is formed by a vowel or a diphtong and the consonants that form the syllable with them. For exemple, in the word simple the syllables are "sim" and "ple", because it's pronounced something like sim pow. For me, as a portuguese speaker it's quite simple because in portuguese you can pretty much say the words just like you write them

[@OmnipresentPotato]

Syllables are the smallest, indivisible unit of spoken speech, that has to at least consist of at least one vowel sound. You can't divide one syllable into two different syllables, for example the syllable "di" in "divide", cannot be divided into different syllables.

[@themobiusfunction]

SYLLABIC CONSONANTS

[@OmnipresentPotato]

@@themobiusfunction I meant that it consists of at least one vowel sound, not necessarily a vowel in its written form.

[@coppersalts]

In English: The number of syllables in a word is the same as the number of vowels, with the surrounding consonants belonging to the nearest vowels syllable.

[@themobiusfunction]

No, SYLLABIC CONSONANTS

[@Puzzler363]

This video was a nice setup for the fork handles sketch.

[@franciscopaez1490]

in spanish if a word ends whit a vocal and the next one starts whit any vocal, the sylable usually continue. its call "sinalefa" for examople: "Si, Ella me ama" "Si--E--lla--me_a--ma"

[@juniorfilmscanada]

From what i know, syllables consist of multiple letters that make up one sound they can consist of just one letter. That definition still doesn't make the boundaries clearer for syllables but it makes it easier to tell.

[@ElZenom]

Glad to see you back. Hope college didn't butcher you too hard.

[@Daruqe]

The "helmet" example is weird, given that it comes from "helm" + "-et" (diminutive suffix).

[@owen429]

It’s wasting, not waisting. I don’t usually correct grammar, but the comment section of a linguistic video seems like the best place to start

[@Smiles5s5s]

I love the animations that go along with your videos!

[@notafraid605]

Actually, eg. in Czech, we have syllables that start in a different word than where they end. Although that is only the case in one-word prepositions, like "k" (to), "s" (with) and "v" (in). So, "s ním" (with him) would still be one syllable. However, languages like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Greek have that even with two words (the first of which ends with a vowel and the second word begins with one), like this: "Me gusta el dinero" (I like money). "gusta el" is pronounced as one syllable as if it was one word because the "a" and "e" kind of merge with each other in the pronunciation. The same thing can happen with three words, if the one in the middle consists of just one vowel but I can't think of an example right now.

[@DecoAoreste]

I think this is true in all Slavic languages (although there may be exceptions, I'm not equally familiar with all of them)

[@FaliusAren]

In Poland a syllable is just a group of sounds containing one vowel. It's usually two sounds, but sometimes, like in the word "what", that rule is broken because, as you said, the sound at the end of the word ends a syllable.

[@franticranter]

i like to think about syllables being centred around vowel sounds. so for the word "create" it "cre-ate" because we've changed vowel sound from e to a. in xidnaf it's "xid-naf" because the d and the n and seperated the i and the a. and in the "fish" it's one syllable because there it is centred around one vowel sound. and in the word "nana" it's the same vowel sound, but pronounced twice and seperated by the consonant n to make 2 syllables it's maybe (probably) more complicated than that. but in my experience, that's how i've always understand it

[@octavefelix8278]

In French, it's even harder because we have syllables that begin at the end of a word ending with a consonnant and end at the beginning of the following one if it begins with a vowel, the "liaisons" ! (They're very tricky because sometimes you even pronounce silent letters). Like : "une étude" [ynetyd], you wouldn't stop or make a pause beetwen "une" and "étude", they're pronounced like if there was only one word.

[@dokabenmonth]

Yay, next video! This was very entertaining. Please keep up the good work!

[@VoidUnderTheSun]

1) Aw yeah for Wednesday. Winning a vote feels good. 2) YAAAAAAAAAAS another Xidnaf video! 3) This isn't to do with the video's subject but I loved the bits you drew to show sounds bleeding into each other. :)

[@catocall7323]

"You'll never have a syllable that starts in one word and ends in a nother" French: Vou(s etes) un fou!