Syllabics
An interesting conversation took place today between Whiskey and me, and I thought I'd open it up to my faithful reader(s). Does the word "power" (and similar words i.e. fire, flower, hour, fuel, spoil, etc.) consist of one syllable or two. I contend that it consists of one. I site for my authority the ear of the poets, Shakespeare, et al. It seems the debate hinges upon whether diphthongs (long A, long I, Oy, Ow) should be considered one syllable or two. For those of you who would consult a dictionary, you will find support for both pronunciations, and indeed, in a vacuum, without context, the words may very well be both. However, in use, especially when that use is most important, i.e. in poetry, the scansion of poems that contain these words consistently pronounce them monosyllabically.
Addendum: Schwas are also a bone of contention: does "preposterous" consist of three syllables or four? If you say four, why then is "preposterous" intelligible when pronounced "prepost'rous" while "fallacious" can never be disyllabically pronouced "F'llacious"? (I consider that initial "a" to be a schwa)
Thoughts?
posted by windmilltilter at 5:06 PM
4 Comments:
Well, I'm always ready to disagree.
Your list of "similar words" only has one thing in common--they all have at least two accepted pronunciations. If the debate really hinged upon "whether diphthongs...should be considered one syllable or two," wouldn't you see "coin," "rain," and "south" on the list, since they have diphthongs. But those words are unquestionably monosyllabic (as are any words with diphthongs, which are by definition monosyllabic). The doubt about "hour," "fire," etc. is whether or not they have diphthongs in them. It arises because there is no general agreement on the subject. So you seem to be making the rather prepost'rous claim that vowel combinations that may or may not be monosyllabic are monosyllabic.
Furthermore, it seems to me that wherever "power" is scanned monosyllabically in Shakespeare, it is spelled "pow'r," indicating that the word was normally pronounced disyllabically, but perhaps this is the work of unscrupulous editors.
For my part, I pronounce "power" sometimes with one syllable, sometimes with two, and would as readily rhyme it with "tower" as with "hour."
11:27 AM
bark!
6:56 PM
Well, Amos said it for me, and did a better job, so I can simply say that it is nice to see you blogging again.
6:41 PM
Why are we so slow to admit that English is chock full of half syllables? I don't often hear "power" pronounced with a full two syllables, but it almost always has more than one!
Living in southern Indiana we get a little of that southern twang. We often put a mini-shwa on the ends of words. These hardly can be called syllables, but they can hardly be ignored either. Recently a woman told me that her name is Ann, and it came out something like "A-yuh-nuh." But that final shwa was much less than a full syllable, yet it was much more than non-existent. In her own mouth Ann had a two-and-one-half syllable name.
Half syllables will not solve your scansion questions. They will only create more quandries. Yet they are the fact of English.
8:41 PM
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