I'm staying in a hotel in Philadelphia, and I asked the receptionist where the restaurant was. She said, "Do you meant rest-AU-rant?" I had said it with 2 syllables, and she clearly was correcting me.

Question:
How do you say "restaurant?"

Choices:
I am American and say it with 3 syllables.
I am non-American and say it with 2 syllables.
I am American and say it with 2 syllables.
I am non-American and say it with 3 syllables.

 

In fact, I probably say it with two and a half syllables, with the middle syllable just hinted at.

The middle vowel is definitely not /oʊ/, but a very short schwa /ə/. Personally, I think she was engaged in leg pulling or nose tweaking. Anybody who's worked in a hotel in Philly should've been exposed to the majority pronunciation of restaurant for some time.

Many years ago, a friend got a job at Providence's largest (at the time) hotel as an elevator operator. One night a woman got on from an upper floor and said, "Is Providence a large city?"
My friend answered it was.
"Well, it didn't seem very big to me," she haughtily replied. "Just how many people does the city have?"
As she said this, the elevator reached the lobby. My friend said, "I don't really know. Let's see," opening the door. "One, two, three, four...."

That job didn't either suit him or last long.

It's two and a half syllybulls for me.

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Personally, I think she was engaged in leg pulling or nose tweaking.

Well, if so, it wasn't obvious.

There doesn't seem to be agreement, either in the U.S. or outside, on how to pronounce it if you look at the poll. I suppose when I am not in a hurry I could possibly say it with 2 1/2 syllables, but I don't think I'd say it with 3.

I usually pronounce it BURGER KING.

So I guess it's three syls.

I suppose when I am not in a hurry I could possibly say it with 2 1/2 syllables

For me it's three syllables in careful speech and two in quick. I'm not really sure what a half syllable is. If we're talking about duration, maybe I do. What is your definition of syllable?

This has echoes of a discussion I had a long time ago at OEDILF where I argued that the concept of syllables counting to get the stresses right in a limerick is flawed because it doesn't take duration into account.
Restaurant is a fine example. It can be two syllables for some people, three for others and anything in between depending how long you make that noise in the middle.

Anyway th original post (and the many pages of argument it generated) can be found here.

Incidentally I admit that I may have been overstating it a bit when I insisted that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SYLLABLE, although I was trying to make a point.

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What is your definition of syllable?

I absolutely think this is the point. If you recall, we have discussed the number of syllables in fire. Bob insisted he only said it with one syllable. Then I visited him and asked him to say it. He said it just like I do, but I had considered "fire" as having 2 syllables. After discussing pronunciations for a few more years now, I'd probably say it has 1 syllable. But my pronunciation of it hasn't changed.

To a degree it depends on whether you consider a diphthong to have one or two syllables. "Fire" has the "i-er" diphthong in UK English and I believe that most of us would consider a diphthong to be a single syllable and thus the word to also be monosyllabic.

In some accents "fire" is clearly bi-syllabic its diphthong having been converted to two syllables. I notice this most often when watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon and hear him say, "Where's the FI-YER, mac?" Two definite syllables.

"Fire" has the "i-er" diphthong in UK English and I believe that most of us would consider a diphthong to be a single syllable and thus the word to also be monosyllabic.

The i in fire is a diphthong /aɪ/ (see the Wikipedia article on English phonology, scroll down a bit to see the table of diphthongs). The sound at the end of the word fire is a schwa /ə/ in RP (non-rhotic British English) and a r-colored schwa /ɚ/ in General American English (a rhotic dialect). So, I guess one can argue that this is a triphthong /aɪ̯ə/ - /aɪ̯ɚ/, but many analyze a triphthong as being two syllables, a diphthong plus a monothong. Again, it depends on your definition of syllable, which nobody has given. I expect goofy can give his opinion on this when he gets here.

Since I don't have the linguistics background to know the terms, I stated "2 2/2 sylables" for your preceding explanation. Thanks for the above, Z. Now I know (almost) what I'm talking about!

According to Ladefoged, there is no agreed phonetic definition of a syllable. And while there is no doubt about the number of syllables in the majority of words, people differ in how many syllables they think are in words like "hour", "fire", "meal", "wheel".

According to Ladefoged, there is no agreed phonetic definition of a syllable.

That's pretty much what I remember from my phonology class, which was taught by one of Ladefoged's students, John Ohala. It's something about the sonorants l and r. If you replace them with a stop at the end of the word, it seems to be less problematic to see a triphthong as occurring at the boundary of two syllables. Cf. right /'raɪt/ and riot /'raɪ̯ət/, height /'haɪt/ and Hyatt /'haɪ̯ət/. One, one and a half, or two syllables?

So, with my "there's no such thing as a syllable", I've intuitively come rather close to the conventional thinking on the matter.

There's something called the sonority hierarchy, and one theory is that peaks of syllabicity coincide with peaks of sonority. A problem with this theory is that the /s/ of "spa" is a sonority peak, so "spa" should have two syllables. Also, the theory predicts that "table" should have two syllables - which is true in English, but not in French.

"there's no such thing as a syllable"

Yes, but don't tell the bunch over at Oedilf or they'll have conniption fits.

One can pronounce spa as a two syllable word, and that without an epenthetic schwa.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

When I've heard it in French I hear what sounds like a very slight plosive ending. Am I hearing it wrong? Maybe not a syllable, but a break in the "tab" sound.

Am I hearing it wrong?

Used to be, in careful speech, French table had two syllables. You can hear it when somebody is singing some times or declaiming poetry (link).

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So, with my "there's no such thing as a syllable", I've intuitively come rather close to the conventional thinking on the matter.

How do you know what to stress in poetry and limericks then?

This is a very interesting conversation. It made me realize how good Wikipedia can be. That site z linked to was excellent.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
How do you know what to stress in poetry and limericks then?

That's the question, isn't it? It's why there are so many disagreements and discussions over there.

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You can hear it when somebody is singing some times or declaiming poetry

The children's song Alouette (The Skylark) has the final "e" pronounced in alouette, making a four-syllable word, whereas in normal speech the "e" would be silent.

How do you know what to stress in poetry and limericks then?

It's a good question. It is good to remember though that not all poetic meter is based on stress. Most English poetry is, but Greek and Roman meter was based on the the number and duration of syllables; French meter was usually based on the number of syllables alone. I have noticed that once one discovers the meter of a poem, e.g., in limericks, one begins to force the line into the meter whether it fits or not. One of the books I recently read on English prosody suggested that instead of dividing syllables into the stressed and unstressed, that there was something more like four different kinds of stress: primary stress, secondary stress, unstressed and one I cannot remember. (I'll have a look an update this posting later today.) Rhyme also has this effect. When most people read Blake's The Tyger they try to make lines three and four of the first stanza rhyme:

quote:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?