hi everyone and welcome back to the english danny channel i'm teacher john and i'm here to
help you become great at learning english today's topic is syllables okay or units of pronunciation
in english and this topic it can be a little bit difficult okay so if you're having trouble
with understanding the syllables in english it's okay if you need to watch this video again to to
really understand uh the more complicated parts of learning syllables in english first let's answer
the question what is a syllable well a syllable is one unit of pronunciation all right or one sound
and this unit must contain one vowel sound and can contain up to two other consonant sounds
so examples of this okay a very simple syllable would be just one vowel sound like for example
the letter o makes an o or a sound or you could have one consonant sound and one vowel sound
and together they would make bo okay but also you can also have two consonant sounds okay
and one one vowel sound for example both here the consonant sounds are in the beginning and the
end of the syllable so it's also important to note that the consonant sounds can come before
or after the vowel sounds an example of uh the consonant sound coming before the vowel is d d e
okay d e is one consonant and vowel sound together or one syllable in the words definitely or depend
and an example of the consonant sound coming after the vowel sounds would be
eat eat or in the word seat so english syllables they usually use this type of
structure for syllables one consonant set plus a vowel set and then sometimes also there will
be another consonant set after the vowel set so it goes consonant vowel consonant it is possible
to only have a vowel or only a vowel and a consonant but very often there's all three
consonant vowel consonant let's go ahead and let's look at some examples of this a consonant
and a vowel such as b plus e would make the word b okay and that would be one syllable
a consonant plus a vowel plus another consonant for example b plus e plus d
makes the word bed and this is also one syllable
so we can also have a consonant set okay which means there's more than one
letter okay so consonant set plus vowel set plus another consonant set for example br
plus e a plus d s makes the word breads and breads is also one syllable what i call consonant sets
are often called clusters or blends and there are 26 possible two consonant clusters in english
here is a chart of all of the different clusters that we can use
there are also six possible three consonant clusters in english but we usually only use
five of them and here's a here's a table with the different three consonant clusters in english
so let's try guessing how many syllables each word has
all right our first word is cat
this word uses a consonant a vowel and then a consonant which is one syllable
our next word is mountain
mountain this word uses a consonant set plus a vowel and then a consonant okay twice two times so
you can see here it's i separated it for you mound ten okay consonant vowel or vowel set
and then a consonant is one syllable and that's that's here two times so mountain is two syllables
chat this uses a consonant set plus a vowel plus one consonant so it is one syllable
chant this uses a consonant set plus a vowel plus a consonant set so it is also one syllable
and here we have a long word communication
communication all right you can see here that i separated all of the different syllables
okay so let me use my pen here you can see here starts with consonant vowel consonant
then consonant vowel consonant okay then we have just one vowel but that's okay of just
a vowel it's possible in english that can be a syllable then we have a consonant
and a vowel that's also okay okay that's one syllable and here we have
consonant then a vowel set and a consonant so that is also a syllable so this word has five syllables
if we look at this word maybe you are thinking hmm
where should i separate the sounds okay well actually is not very
important okay so here i have two different uh pronunciations of the word communication
and there number one okay you can see here i put i is it's a separate syllable okay commune
okay that's one syllable but here i separated them differently
okay in in the second example here i have com that's the same
communication all right this is also okay all right it doesn't matter because uh both
uh both separate separate the sounds using the consonant vowel consonant
model so it is okay english speaking rhythm a little bit all right so if you want to have a
good rhythm when you speak english it's very important to clearly pronounce each syllable okay
so how can we practice using the syllables to achieve a good rhythm when we are speaking
well we can use this we can use tongue twisters to practice an example of a tongue twister is this
peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
all right maybe that's a little bit difficult for you to say or to read especially quickly
so first we must separate the syllables okay so let's go ahead let's do that all right so
here i separated the syllables for you okay and now you must try to read each syllable clearly
so let's read it together slowly but clearly peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
you can also combine the word a or a with a consonant sound that comes before it okay
so here you can see that's exactly what i did with these words here picked uh we can combine
uh the syllables okay so let's read it one more time but now let's combine the syllables peter
piper picked a peck of pickled peppers alright everyone that's our video for today thank you so
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