French Syllable Counter
Count syllables in French words. Handles silent e, nasal vowels, and diphthongs using phonological heuristics.
Counts French syllables with silent-e and nasal vowel rules.
| Word | Syllables | Breakdown |
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French syllabification rules
French syllables are organized around vowel nuclei. The five basic vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and the accented variants (à, â, é, è, ê, î, ô, û) plus y each form potential syllable centers. Adjacent vowel letters often combine into single sounds — common digraphs like ai, ei, ou, oi, au, eau, eu count as one nucleus, and the triphthong eau also counts as one.
The single most important French rule is the silent final e: in table we hear ta-ble (2 syllables, the final e is dropped), but in liée (with an accent) it remains. The heuristic drops a word-final e when preceded by a consonant and not accented elsewhere.
Nasal vowel sequences (an, en, in, on, un, ain, ein, oin, ien) where the n or m ends the syllable count as a single nasal nucleus, not as vowel + consonant. The counter collapses these sequences before tallying syllables, which gives correct results for bonjour (2: bon-jour), information (4: in-for-ma-tion), and maintenant (3: main-te-nant).