Vanishing syllables


In all of these words, the 2nd vowel is skipped:

There are a few other words with skipped syllables that are a bit more unusual:

comfortable – In this word the 2nd vowel is skipped, and the “A” is also skipped, plus the “rt” is reversed and pronounced as “ter”. So this ends up sounding like “comfterble”. There are some native speakers who are careful with this word and articulate the written order of the letters – “comfortable” – but the sound of the 2nd “O” is still lost because it is hidden by the R-vowel.

probably – In this word the 2nd vowel is often skipped, leaving a sequence of two “B” letters, which become a single “B” sound. However, this word is spoken both ways. It tends to be reduced to 2 syllables in more informal situations, but retains 3 syllables in more formal, careful, or emphatic speech.

Wednesday – This is the most unusual of all the words with a skipped syllable. The 2nd vowel is skipped, but the “D” of the 1st syllable is also skipped, so it sounds like “Wensday”. It is very rare to hear a native speaker pronounce it fully like it is spelled – which is usually only done to be humorous.

Is it necessary to skip syllables?



A funny example.
My 4-year old son made a very funny mistake with a word that has a missing syllable: “asteroids”.

The word “asteroids” can be said as 3 syllables [ as ~ ter ~ oids ], but the “E” is hidden by the R-vowel. This easily changes to 2 syllables because the middle syllable “ter” shifts to combine with the last syllable, making [ as ~ troids ].

My son had heard the word “asteroids” in Star Wars but he did not know what it meant. He had also heard the term “Battle Droids” in Star Wars and he could see that this was a kind of warrior. So, one day I heard him playing an imaginary game of “Battle Droids” vs. “Ass Droids”.

You see, when “asteroids” is said as 2 syllables, it really sounds like “ass-droids”. Most adults probably never notice this, but since my young son did not know the meaning of “asteroids” he assumed it was the name of another kind of warrior. It turns out that he did not know the meaning of the word “ass” either!

Syllables: An Introduction

What does syllable mean?
Syllables are the parts or segments of words. For example, the word “baby” is pronounced with 2 parts: [ ba ~ by ].

Some more examples:
“dog” has 1 syllable [ dog ]
“paper” has 2 syllables [ pa ~ per ]
“animal” has 3 syllables [ a ~ ni ~ mal ]
“communicate” has 4 syllables [ com ~ mu ~ ni ~ cate ]
“pronunciation” has 5 syllables [ pro ~ nun ~ ci ~ a ~ tion ]


1. The center or nucleus of each syllable is a vowel, and English syllables can have one or more consonants before or after the vowel nucleus.
Each of these words has one syllable: I / we / an / rap / trap / traps / straps

2. The number of syllables in a word is not related to the number of letters.

a. Some syllables are very small, and can be just a single vowel sound. For example, the word “idea” has 3 different syllables: [ i ~ de ~ a ].

b. Some syllables have rather large combinations of sounds. Each of these words has just ONE syllable: “sounds”, “strengths”, “solved”, “trapped”, “verbs”. All of the letters need to be articulated all together in one syllable. (Putting so many sounds together into the same syllable, is difficult for some students.)

3. The number of spoken syllables does not always match the written form of the word. Most words have the same number of syllables in speaking and writing, but a few are different.

Example 1: The word “prism” must be spoken by pronouncing two syllables, but some dictionaries may show only one syllable, because this word would never be separated into two parts in writing.

Example 2: A few words, such as “business” and “different”, have a missing vowel in the middle. These two words look like they have 3 syllables, but when spoken, we normally hear just 2. The vowel in the middle gets skipped.