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Syllabified English Words

Source Notebook

More than 74,000 English words with syllable breaks

Details

Keys are the words; values are the list {ortho,phon}:
orthothe word as splled in English with "•" at each syllable break
phonthe phonetic representation with "•" at each syllable break
Syllabification follows the Maximal Onset Principle (co•nnect) except where pronunication is strongly influenced by morphology (dis•arm).

The letter "x" in ortho often represents two distinct phonemes in phon that would span a syllable break. In these cases, the orthographic representation is preserved and one phoneme is moved to keep the x sounds together, as in {ex•tra, ˈɛks•trə},

Phonetic transcription follows the style of WordData[w,"PhoneticForm"], in which primary and secondary stress markers ( ˈ and ˌ ) occur immediately before the nucleus of the syllable.
To match the style of WordData[w,"PhoneticForm"], the English r-sound is represented with the[r] symbol, not the IPA standard[ɹ].
The syllable breaks in ortho correspond to the syllable breaks in phon, so each syllable may be compared to its phonetic representation.
In ortho, every word has exactly 1 primary stress except for single-syllable function words that would likely be unstressed in connected speech (e.g., to, the, his).
No two consecutive syllables are marked with the schwa symbol ə.
The phonetics transcribe a General American pronunciation biased toward Southwestern US.

Examples

Basic Examples (3) 

Retrieve a subset of the data:

In[1]:=
ResourceData[\!\(\* TagBox["\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)][[1 ;; 10]]
Out[1]=

Find the length of the data:

In[2]:=
Length[ResourceData[\!\(\* TagBox["\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)]]
Out[2]=

Retrieve one record from the data:

In[3]:=
ResourceData[\!\(\* TagBox["\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)]["connect"]
Out[3]=

Scope & Additional Elements (2) 

Check how many words also belong to WordData:

In[4]:=
Intersection[WordData[], Keys[\!\(\* TagBox[ RowBox[{"ResourceObject", "[", "\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", "]"}], #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)]] // Length
Out[4]=

Count the number of unique syllables regardless of stress:

In[5]:=
StringSplit[StringDelete[#[[2]], "ˈ" | "ˌ"], "\[Bullet]"] & /@ Values[ResourceData[\!\(\* TagBox["\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)]] // Flatten // DeleteDuplicates // Length
Out[5]=

Visualizations (3) 

Visualize the syllable counts of all words in the data:

In[6]:=
sylCts = Length[StringSplit[#[[1]], "\[Bullet]"]] & /@ Values[ResourceData[\!\(\* TagBox["\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)]]; Histogram[sylCts]
Out[7]=

Visualize the phoneme counts of all unique syllables in the data:

In[8]:=
syls = StringSplit[StringDelete[#[[2]], "ˈ" | "ˌ"], "\[Bullet]"] & /@ Values[ResourceData[\!\(\* TagBox["\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)]] // Flatten // DeleteDuplicates; Histogram[StringLength[syls]]
Out[9]=

Visualize how often the re- prefix has various sounds:

In[10]:=
wdPho = Cases[ResourceData[\!\(\* TagBox["\"\<Syllabified English Words\>\"", #& , BoxID -> "ResourceTag-Syllabified English Words-Input", AutoDelete->True]\)], {a_, b_} /; StringStartsQ[a, "re\[Bullet]"] -> b]; cts = Counts[ StringDelete[StringSplit[#, "\[Bullet]"][[1]], "ˌ" | "ˈ"] & /@ wdPho]; PieChart[cts, ChartLabels -> Keys[cts], LabelStyle -> Directive[22, FontFamily -> "Times"], ImageSize -> 240]
Out[12]=

Mark Greenberg, "Syllabified English Words" from the Wolfram Data Repository (2026)  

Data Resource History

  • Date Created:

Source Metadata

  • Creator: Mark Greenberg
  • Citation: Source, reference or citation information

See Also

Publisher Information

  • Prepared for the Wolfram Data Repository By: Mark Greenberg
  • Publisher of Record: Mark Greenberg