Syllable Counter
Count syllables, see stress patterns, IPA transcription, and detect poetic meter. Powered by the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary.
Counts syllables, stress, IPA, and poetic meter.
| Word | Syllables | Breakdown | Stress | IPA | Source |
|---|
How syllable counting works
A syllable is a unit of pronunciation built around a single vowel sound (the nucleus), optionally preceded by a consonant or cluster (the onset) and optionally followed by another consonant or cluster (the coda). English words can have one syllable (strength) or many (antidisestablishmentarianism, twelve), and where the syllables fall determines stress, rhythm, and rhyme.
This tool counts syllables in two ways. For words in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary
(about 134,000 entries), it looks up the actual phoneme sequence, finds each vowel nucleus, and uses the
Maximal Onset Principle — give the consonant cluster between two vowels to the following syllable
whenever pronunciation permits — to draw syllable boundaries. For words not in the dictionary it falls back
to a phonological heuristic that counts vowel groups, adjusts for silent e, treats final -ed
as a non-syllable except after t or d, and tracks consonantal -le endings.
Each syllable also carries a stress level: primary, secondary, or unstressed. The CMU dictionary marks these
with 1, 2, and 0 respectively; this page converts them to IPA stress diacritics
(ˈ and ˌ). The full sequence of stresses across a line of poetry forms a metrical foot
pattern (iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, spondaic), which is what the meter detector at the top of the results identifies.
Worked examples
CMU phones: K AH0 M · P Y UW1 T · ER0. Three vowel nuclei: AH, UW, ER. The primary stress falls on UW: com·pu·ter. The m between AH and UW belongs to the first syllable (its coda); the p+y belong to the second (its onset).
A single vowel nucleus (EH) flanked by an unusually large onset (str) and coda (ŋkθ). One of the rare English words with a four-consonant coda.
Secondary stress on pho- (ˌ), primary stress on -gra- (ˈ). This kind of alternating pattern (secondary, weak, primary, weak) is typical of multi-syllabic English words and is what drives the iambic-pentameter feel of much English poetry.
Past-tense -ed attaches to a stem ending in a voiceless non-coronal consonant (k), so it surfaces as /t/ — no extra syllable. Compare wanted (/ˈwɑntɪd/, 2 syllables), where the stem ends in t and forces an epenthetic ɪ.
"Fire" sits on the boundary: a careful speaker pronounces it as two syllables (fi·er) while in fast speech it collapses to one. The CMU dictionary lists it as one, but poetry that scans it as two (Shakespeare's "the fire of love") is also widespread.
Edge cases to watch for
Compound words. Closed compounds like blueberry are usually treated as a single word but the syllable count is just the sum of the parts (blue + ber + ry = 3). Open compounds (ice cream) are two words and the counter treats them that way.
Silent letters. A trailing silent e (cake, line) doesn't add a syllable — the heuristic strips it before counting. Silent k in knight or silent p in psychology doesn't matter for counting either, because they don't contribute a vowel.
Diphthongs and triphthongs. A diphthong (boy = /ɔɪ/, house = /aʊ/) is two sounds gliding together but counts as one syllable nucleus. A triphthong (fire, flower) is three glide positions but speakers vary on whether they pronounce it as one or two syllables — see the worked example above.
Syllabic consonants. Words like button (/ˈbʌtn̩/) and bottle (/ˈbɑtl̩/) have a consonant acting as a syllable nucleus — no vowel needed. The CMU dictionary handles these correctly; the heuristic detects them via the -le/-on ending rules.
Loan words. Words like café, résumé, or naïve use accented vowels that English orthography normally doesn't. The heuristic counts each accented vowel as its own syllable nucleus (since hiatus is preserved in loan words from French).
Frequently Asked Questions
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Why does the meter detector sometimes show low confidence?
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