Diphthongs and "ends in R": dialect-related? syllable count

[Fiery Diamond]

So I was playing around on howmanysyllables.com and I noticed something that prompted me to go off to wikipedia, which prompted me to come here. Simply put, neither place acknowledges that putting an R after certain diphthongs changes the number of syllables. However, I can't even effectually pronounce certain words with one syllable, even though the first site claims they are, and unless I'm overlooking something, wikipedia doesn't even note a difference between, say, lie and fire in terms of diphthong or syllables.

Examples:

Flower vs. Flour: I pronounce these identically, but howmanysyllables insists that the first is 2 and the second is 1.

Tower vs. Hour: Again, in my speech, both of these are 2 syllables.

Find vs. fire: Both of these supposedly possess the same diphthong, and howmanysyllables insists they are both 1 syllable, but I pronounce the first with 1 and the second with 2.

My username: "Fiery Diamond"
-I pronounce this FIE-er-ee DIE-mund, though I have heard people pronounce the first word "FIE-ree"



Funny note about that website: their audio pronunciation doesn't actually necessarily obey the rules the text does. For instance: seer vs. sear. There are essentially two ways to pronounce seer: as 1 syllable or as 2, and presumably dialect makes the difference. If you pronounce is with 1, it's identical to sear. The text of the website claims it is 2, but the audio pronounces it identically to sear, just with a different pitch.

[Jormengand]

I pronounce all of them with the number of syllables given, though I'm not surprised that you split the ones into twos.

[BannedInSchool]

You could look up syllabic consonants too. Diphthongs are funny. I wouldn't think most people would think of them as two separate vowel sounds smushed together, especially considering we consider some of them as one "vowel" sound or even involving a consonant as written. We ("we" is also a single diphthong) get practice saying and hearing them as one sound. Throw in something that could be a syllabic consonant and maybe even technically a vowel and I'm not surprised it's chaos and mayhem. If you can think of and pronounce two vowel sounds as just one, why not three or four as one? Just keep making them shorter. :smallsmile:

[goto124]

How does howmanysyllables work? Is it like a database and/or dictionary, collecting the pronounciations of every word? Or are the pronouncistions automatically generated by the website?

[enderlord99]

That's not the only problem inherent with that site's premise. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vg_PiNit1o)

[lurkmeister]

You could look up syllabic consonants too. Diphthongs are funny. I wouldn't think most people would think of them as two separate vowel sounds smushed together, especially considering we consider some of them as one "vowel" sound or even involving a consonant as written. We ("we" is also a single diphthong) get practice saying and hearing them as one sound. Throw in something that could be a syllabic consonant and maybe even technically a vowel and I'm not surprised it's chaos and mayhem. If you can think of and pronounce two vowel sounds as just one, why not three or four as one? Just keep making them shorter. :smallsmile:
Hmm...

Rolling this around in my mouth I notice ⟨ɹ⟩ (let's just use [r]) definitely becomes syllabic after diphthongs. So for example "flower" = "flour" = /flaʊṛ/, and "fire" = /faɪṛ/ (where the dot below the letter indicates a syllabic consonant). This is most consistent on [r], but does also occur on [l-ɬ] (let's just write [l]) e.g. "file" /faɪḷ/. However note that "flair" = "flare" = /fleɪṛ/ BUT "flail" = /fleɪl/. This means that liquids do not always become syllabic after diphthongs; in fact, it's a tossup whether or not [l] becomes syllabic: "ail" = "ale" = /eɪl/ and its rhymes, for example, do not, yet "(a)isle" = /aɪḷ/ does.

So [r] pretty much always becomes syllabic in syllable codas following diphthongs. This is only occasionally true of the other liquid, [l]. I'll also observe this discussion only holds true for rhotic dialects; in non-rhotic dialects, words like "fire" are best rendered /faɪə/ (that is, there is no R to affect (effect?) an allophone on).

We like the idea that syllables are cut-and-dry things, but the reality is that there are plenty of things out there that remain difficult to reconcile with phonotactics (i.e. syllable architecture). Some languages seem to defy syllabization!