Dictionary use and Pronunciation

[Clark1]

When looking at a dictionary for pronunciation help, why is it for some words there is a difference between the number of written syllables and the number of spoken syllables? I.e. for the word vegetable, the dictionary shows there are 4 written syllables (veg.e.ta.ble) and 3 spoken syllables (/vɛdʒ tə bəl/).

 

[PHenry1026]

In this dictionary veg.e.ta.ble represents an imitative pronunciation (which is an inexact way of representing the pronunciation of a word but may be very intuitive for most people). The main point of the syllabification here is to give the reader a feel for how the word should be pronounced.

/ˈvɛdʒ. tə. bəl/ is an IPA representation of the pronunciation. This is an exact pronunciation of vegetable. Here the syllabification is not so important because you only needed to know that only the first vowel (ɛ) is stressed.


;-) Percy