TABmom Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 Hi. Can someone explain to me the syllabication of “telephone”. I mean, it has to be tel-e-phone. But how does it get around the ‘open syllables have a long vowel sound’ rule? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 15 minutes ago, TABmom said: Hi. Can someone explain to me the syllabication of “telephone”. I mean, it has to be tel-e-phone. But how does it get around the ‘open syllables have a long vowel sound’ rule? Thanks. I would say that because the middle 'e' is by itself, it takes on the short vowel sound it would have at the beginning of a word (elephant, ember, enjoy). It doesn't follow an open-door syllable rule because it doesn't have a consonant in front of it in the syllable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El... Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 Well... you're right about the syllables, and you're right about the rule in general, but there are a lot of exceptions in English. Would it help to consider telephone as a combination of two Greek roots, tele (far, at a distance) and phone (voice, sound)? When words break standard rules, there's usually a reason from the word's background. It's nuts out there. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScoutTN Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 Open syllable exception. More commonly an i or a u, but not uncommon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirstenhill Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 In multi-syllable words, and unaccented syllable can always have a schwa sound (usually "uh" or a short i). The six syllable types model doesn't explicitly account for this. As you analyze more complex words with prefixes, suffixes, and connectives, you see more cases where the six syllable types don't fully model what we see - think about "active", "literate" and "infinite" - by the six syllable model you would expect vce, but since they are suffixes, the vowel isn't long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
***** Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 As kirstenhill says, it has to do with the UNACCENTED syllable. Barton teaches that in a 3 syllable word or longer, an open i or open e in the middle of the word, when that syllable is not accented, will have its short sound. And usually that syllable is not accented. Of course this only applies to American English words, so if you come across a word that differs from this, it may come from a different language. This rule is taught separately from the schwa sound which usually says 'uh'. Good question for sure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TABmom Posted October 13, 2022 Author Share Posted October 13, 2022 Thanks everyone. I think my brain hurts now. 😂 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
***** Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 The key takeaway is: oh yeah, its the unaccented syllable... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clarita Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 English is not a purely phonetic language, the spelling can also denote meaning. 5 hours ago, El... said: Well... you're right about the syllables, and you're right about the rule in general, but there are a lot of exceptions in English. Would it help to consider telephone as a combination of two Greek roots, tele (far, at a distance) and phone (voice, sound)? When words break standard rules, there's usually a reason from the word's background. It's nuts out there. The above would be the explanation I would use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElizabethB Posted October 14, 2022 Share Posted October 14, 2022 I would do the overview lesson of my syllables program. It's from Greek, then a schwa, English has a lot of higher level words that schwa unaccented syllables. It explains this and more. http://thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malam Posted October 15, 2022 Share Posted October 15, 2022 when the middle e isn't pronounced as a schwa, but as short e, could the syllabication be te-le-phone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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