Before we begin to understand what an open and closed syllable is, I would like to immediately warn you - in English, the reading rules have so many exceptions that it is better to just remember reading as many words as possible, and read the rest by analogy.

But at school they teach the rules and give grades ... To correctly apply the rules, first we will deal with syllables.

In English, as well as in Russian, words are divided into syllables. Very often, in order to correctly read a vowel in a syllable, it is necessary to determine the type of syllable - open or closed syllable.

Let's take the usual Russian word " book Let's divide it into syllables: BOOK. Both syllables end in a vowel, so both syllables OPEN.

Let's take the word trap", divide into syllables: TRAP. In this example, both syllables end in a consonant, so both CLOSED.

But determining the syllable of an English syllable is not as easy as in Russian. A typical English word contains 2, maximum 3 syllables, so finding a syllable is not difficult.

If you take a word name, then you might think that it has 2 syllables, but we all know that this is read, that is, there is one syllable. Let's take a closer look at why this is so.

open syllable
1. If there is no consonant in a syllable after a vowel.
For example: go, no, ago, my, hi, be, me.
2. If after the vowel immediately there is an "e" at the end of the word
For example: pie, lie, toe, blue, bye, dye.
3. If there is a consonant, but it is immediately followed by a “mute” vowel “e”, which is not readable.
For example: name, blade, take, these, mine, time, type.
3. After a stressed vowel - consonant + le
For example: table, noble.

Remember!!! In an open syllable, vowels are read same way, as they are called in .

Closed syllable
If a syllable has one or more consonants after a vowel (except for the letter r).
For example: bad, cat, vet, strip, stop, camp, battle, end, center, pink.

But in English there are "tricky" vowels and consonants. They can be read differently depending on how they are placed in the word.

Consider an open and closed syllable in English. As you already understood, reading vowels in English is closely related to this concept.

The main focus here is that vowels can be pronounced differently depending on which syllable they are in. There are two syllables in English: open and closed.

Open syllable in English

What is open syllable? This is the syllable that ends in a vowel (more often it is e, but it is not pronounced by itself). In such a syllable, vowels are read only as they are called in the alphabet (see table No. 1).

🔊 m e [M AND:] "to me" ;
🔊n i ce [N AI C] "pleasant";
🔊sk y [SK AI] "sky";
🔊s o da [CO At DE] "carbonated drink".

Closed syllable in English

Finally, consider the vowels in closed syllable. Here their pronunciation may seem more familiar to you, perhaps with the exception of the letter u, which is pronounced like a sound similar to [A]. A letter a- [E] (see table No. 2).

🔊l i p[L And P] "lip";
🔊 b u t[B BUT T] "but";
🔊p e t [P E T] "pet";
🔊 h o t [X O T] "hot".

Comment: Consonants at the end of words in a closed syllable are not stunned, as in Russian. So, we write "horn", and pronounce [ROK]. There is no such thing in English, otherwise there would be confusion:

🔊ma d [ME D] "crazy" - 🔊ma t [ME T] "mat".

Letter combinations require special attention r(see table number 3):

Examples of words with syllables from the table:

🔊 bar[BA:] "bar";
🔊 her[HYO:] "her"
🔊 fir[FYO:] "spruce";
🔊 for[FO:] "for";
🔊 fur[FYO:] "wool";
🔊 Byrne [BY:N] "Byrn" (proper name).

The letter itself r is not pronounced, and the vowel before it is pronounced for a long time.

Linguists distinguish such a thing as syllables. Language learners need to be able to correctly determine their boundaries in words and distinguish them by type. Consider the most basic types of syllables, as well as the rules for division.

Slogs - what is it?

There are different approaches to the definition of this concept. From a phonetic point of view, a syllable is one sound or a group of sounds accompanied by an expiratory push. There are always exactly as many syllables in a word as there are vowels in it. We can say that a syllable is the minimum pronunciation unit.

Syllabic (or syllable-forming sound) is a vowel. The consonant, respectively, is considered non-syllable.

Types of syllables

Syllables are also classified into open and closed. Closed syllables end in a consonant, while open syllables end in a vowel. In the Russian language, there is a tendency towards the openness of the syllable.

Also, if a syllable begins with a vowel, it is open, and if it starts with a consonant, then it is covered.

There are also syllables according to the acoustic structure:

• ascending, where from a less sonorous (deaf consonant) comes and / or a sonorous consonant, and / or a vowel (pa-pa).
• descending, where, unlike the ascending one, the syllable starts from a vowel, and then already sonorant consonants and / or deaf ones (mind) go.
• ascending-descending, where a kind of "slide" is obtained, in which consonants first go according to the degree of sonority, then the top is a vowel sound, and then - "descent" down, starting with the most sonorous consonants (ping-pong).
• even syllables - one vowel, that is, open and open syllables are even and consist of only one vowel (a).

Stressed and unstressed syllables

A stressed syllable is a syllable whose vowel is stressed, that is, the vowel is in a strong position. Unstressed syllables are not stressed.

And unstressed syllables, in turn, are divided into two types in relation to the stressed syllable: stressed and pre-stressed. It is not difficult to guess that the pre-stressed ones stand before the stressed syllable, the stressed ones, respectively, after. They are also divided into pre-stressed / post-stressed syllables of a different order in relation to the stressed one. The first pre-shock or behind-shock is closest to the one being struck, the second in order is behind the first shock and pre-shock, and so on.

Take for example the word che-re-do-va-ni-e, where all syllables, it is worth noting, are open. The fourth syllable -va- will be stressed, the first prestressed - syllable -do-, the second - -re-, the third - che-. But the first shock will be -ne-, the second - -e.

How to divide a word into syllables?

All words can be divided into syllables. In different languages, division can occur in different ways. But how does the division work in Russian? What are the nuances of the rule?

In general, the division takes place according to general principles:

• How many vowels, so many syllables. If a word has one vowel sound, then this is one syllable, since vowels are syllable-forming. For example, these are the words: cat, whale, that, current, which consist of one syllable.
• A syllable can only be a vowel sound. For example, the word "this" is divided into syllables as e-that.
• Open syllables end in vowels, closed syllables end in consonants. Examples of openness: mo-lo-ko, de-le-ni-e, ko-ro-va. Closed syllables are found, as a rule, at the end of a word or at the junction of consonants (com-pot, mole, give). In the Russian language, as already mentioned, there is a tendency towards openness of the syllable.
• If the word contains the letter "y", then it goes to the previous syllable. For example, mine.
• At the junction of two vowels, there is a division in the middle, because there cannot be two vowels in one syllable. In this case, it turns out that the first syllable is open, and the second is open (ha-os).
• All sonorants (m, n, l, p) at the junction of consonants before the deaf usually "stick" to the sounds preceding them, forming a syllable.

Theories of syllable division

Nevertheless, there is no clear framework for what exactly is a syllable and where its boundaries lie. The main thing is the presence of a vowel, but the definition of boundaries can occur in different ways. There are several main theories of syllable division.

• Sonor theory, which is based on the principle of a syllable sonority wave. It was developed by a scientist from Denmark, Otto Jespersen, and for the Russian language, the idea was continued by R. I. Avanesov. He singled out four degrees of sonority, starting with more sonorant ones and ending with non-sonor ones. At the top are vowels, then sonorants go in the second degree, voiced noisy ones in the third degree, and completely deaf consonants in the fourth place. That is, a syllable is a combination of a vowel with less up to non-sonor ones.
• The expiratory theory (expiratory) implies that a syllable is one expiratory push. How many pushes, so many syllables. However, the minus of this theory lies in the uncertainty of the syllable boundary at the junction of consonants. In this theory, you can use a candle to figure out how many syllables (air pushes) there are in a word.
• The theory of "muscular tension" carries the idea that the syllable combines levels of maximum and minimum muscular tension (ie, tension of the organs of speech). The syllable boundary will be the sounds of minimal muscular tension.

Now that you know the rules for dividing words into syllables, you won't have any problems wrapping words.

A word consists of syllables - from one or more. In Russian, as you know, a syllable is formed by a vowel. In English, the syllable is formed not only by vowels, but also by some sonorant consonants(in which the voice received during the vibration of the vocal cords prevails over the noise that occurs when the obstruction is overcome by exhaled air), namely, consonants [m], [n], [l]. They can form a syllable when they are preceded by a consonant and not followed by a vowel. Thus, such consonants are called syllabic.
An example is the word table ["teɪbl], which has two syllables, in which the second syllable is formed by the consonant "l": ta-ble (I foresee a possible question - what about the final "e"? And the final "e" is not pronounced here and serves only to ensure that the first syllable is open and the stressed vowel "a" in it is read alphabetically, which will be discussed in more detail below.) In the example of sudden ["sʌdn], a word also consisting of two syllables: sud-den, the second syllable is formed by the consonant "n", due to the fact that the preceding "e" is unreadable (in the English suffix "en" in general, "e" is often not readable).

If there are more than one syllables in a word, then one of them (and in a polysyllabic word there may be two) is pronounced stronger, more distinctly, louder, more intensely - such a syllable is called shock. The rest of the syllables are therefore unstressed. In English, stress, which is never placed directly in writing, but only when a word is spelled transcription, for example, in a dictionary, is always stressed, above (main stress) and below (secondary stress, if any):

To learn how to read correctly in English, it is necessary not only to know the correspondence of letters and sounds, both vowels and consonants, but also rules for division into graphic syllables, which directly determine reading rules in english.

So, the rules for dividing into graphic syllables are as follows:

1. If there is one consonant between two vowels in a word (but NOT the letter r), then when divided into syllables, it goes to the second unstressed syllable, that is, the stressed syllable turns out to be open and the vowel in it is read according to the I type of syllable (as in the alphabet): lo-tos ["ləʊtəs], o-bey [ə" beɪ]. If the consonant "r" is behind the stressed vowel of a two-syllable word, this vowel is read according to the IV type of syllable, for example, during ["djʊərɪŋ], Mary ["mɛərɪ].
   Exception: in English there are a number of two-syllable words in which the stressed vowel in an open syllable is read briefly, for example: city ["sɪtɪ], pity ["pɪtɪ], copy ["kɔpɪ], very ["verɪ], etc.
2. If there are two or three consonants between two vowels in a word (including the doubled letter r), then one of them (sometimes two) remains in the first syllable (closing the stressed syllable). The vowel in this case is read according to the type II syllable (briefly), and the second (sometimes the second and third) consonant goes to the second syllable: ten-der ["tendə], trans-la-te. An exception to this rule will be discussed in the following paragraph 2.
3. If in a word between two vowels there are two consonants, of which the second conveys a sound that is syllabic ([m], [n], [l]), then when divided into syllables, both consonants go to the second syllable, leaving the first (stressed ) open syllable: no-ble ["nəʊbl], Bi-ble ["baɪbl].
4. Doubled consonants convey one sound, although they are written and broken into syllables. In this case, the syllable boundary passes inside this sound: let-ter ["letə], sor-ry ["sɔrɪ].
5. If there are three consonants between two vowels in a word, one of which conveys a syllable-forming sound, then when divided into syllables, the first consonant goes to the first syllable, and the other two to the second: twid-dle ["twɪdl].

Types of syllable in English

English has the following types of graphic syllables.

1. open syllable ending in a vowel: be, me, he;
2. Closed syllable ending in one or more consonants: met, nest;
3. Conditionally open syllable, takes place when a word has two vowels separated by one consonant. Such a word has two graphic syllables: ta-ke, li-ke. In the second syllable, the vowel "e" is not readable (hence its name). "mute "e""). The first syllable ends in a vowel, i.e. is open. Thus, in such words only one vowel is read, that is, phonetically (in pronunciation) it has one syllable, since the second vowel is not read.

In preparing the article, materials were used

1. Ed. Arakina V.D.; Selyanina L.I., Gintovt K.P., Sokolova M.A. etc. Practical course of the English language. 1 course: Proc. for pedagogical universities on special "Foreign language". - 5th ed., Rev. - M.: Humanit. ed. center "Vlados", 1998. (pp. 42-43)
2. Belkina, G.A.; Levina, L.V. Corrective course on the phonetics of the English language. Publisher: M.: In-Yaz, 1971 (p. 8)