Syllables are phonological divisions of words that affect writing.
A Greek word derived from the Latin term syllăba and this, into the word syllable . The notion refers to those sounds that, from a certain articulation, make up the same phonic nucleus , located between contiguous depressions of the voice .
It is possible to define a syllable, therefore, as a phonological division of a word . That is to say: words are divided into different units known as syllables. In syllables, in turn, we can distinguish between the syllabic attack , the syllabic nucleus and the syllabic coda .
The syllabic attack or start is the part that precedes the syllabic nucleus (the sector that has the greatest sound intensity). After the syllabic nucleus, there is the syllabic coda. The syllable, therefore, is composed of the following sequence : syllabic attack – syllabic nucleus – syllabic coda .
Syllables and phonemes
One of the concepts that are closely related to the syllable is the phoneme . This is the smallest possible articulation of a vowel or consonant sound in a language. Furthermore, a phoneme is a fundamental theoretical unit that serves to study a language from a phonological-phonological point of view.
In short, a phoneme is the smallest unit into which we can fragment the sounds of a language. In order to determine if we are faced with a phoneme, a distinctive function becomes necessary, sounds of the language that help us differentiate one word from another. In this way, we can say that [b] and [p] are, in effect, phonemes of our language, since there are terms like /bote/ and /pote/, whose meaning is different and their pronunciation only varies with respect to said sounds. .
While the nucleus of the syllable is formed by a diphthong or a vowel, the attack is made up of no more than two phonemes (and, in some, it does not even appear). The coda, for its part, can be composed of one or two phonemes.
Words are classified differently depending on the number of syllables.
Different classifications of words
The division of a word into syllables is very important since it determines how the written words should be “cut” when a line ends. This division is linked to diphthongs and hiatuses .
If a word has only one syllable, it is defined as monosyllable . That is the case of words like pan , sol and cough . Words that have two syllables are disyllable ( duck , frog , climb ); those with three syllables, trisyllables ( panqueque , tierra , pelado ); those with four syllables, tetrasyllables ( telephone , trash can , building ), etc.
Our language has rules for word stress , which take into account the number of syllables or their characteristics. Despite this, one of the most common spelling mistakes is forgetting an accent or using it when it should not.
Syllables and languages
The syllable is one of those concepts that are fundamental in our language and that sometimes lead us to assume that they are also fundamental for the rest. However, just as there are languages without orthographic accents, and others with tonal accents instead of lexical ones, there are also some in which the syllable is not conceived in the same way, either because it has more or less importance, or because it is not There is the possibility of using them to cut a word if it does not fit on a line.
Japanese, for example, is a very different language from ours, and in its case the syllables have a much higher value than ours, since in general they provide their own meaning to the words . Although in Spanish we have prefixes and suffixes, as well as roots from other languages that can often help us understand the origin of certain terms, in Japanese it is not necessary to refer to an etymology dictionary to understand the components of a word. , since these are usually other words, also current.