Oppenheimer syllables

[Jorge Junior]

Hi!
I was looking up for the word Oppenheimer, as in Julius Robert Oppenheimer, and I found this:
Longman Dictionary - Op.pen.hei.mer
Oxford Dictionary - Op·pen·heim·er
Does it mean there's more than one possible syllable division?

 

[Rover_KE]

Welcome to the forum, @Jorge Junior.

There are four syllables whichever way you look at it.

 

[jutfrank]

The syllable divisions shown in dictionaries are not solely phonological. They're also recommendations for hyphenation across line breaks if the word should be written.

 

[Skrej]

I personally disagree with the 2nd option.

Since that third syllable contains a long vowel, it should be an open syllable, which moves the consonant /m/ to the fourth syllable.

 

[jutfrank]

I personally disagree with the 2nd option.

I think the advantage of the second option is morphological clarity. Even though Oppenheimer is a name, the '-er' part is a suffix, and so looks neater separated from the previous morpheme.

 

[5jj]

The question of syllabification in English is controversial: different phoneticians have very different views about it.
[...]
LPD assumes that there is a syllable boundary wherever there is a boundary between the elements of a compound ...
Wells, J C, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2007.

No completely satisfactory scheme of syllable division can be produced ...
[...]... words in compounds should not be re-divided syllabically in a way that does not agree with perceived word boundaries.

Roach, Peter et al, English Pronouncing Dictionary, 16th edition, 2003.

Both these dictionaries give the syllable division as Opp.en.heim.er.

 

[jutfrank]

Both these dictionaries give the syllable division as Opp.en.heim.er.

Though I'd imagine that any computational phonological analysis would have 'mer' as the final syllable, counting the /m/ as the syllable onset of the vowel nucleus. I'm just guessing. I don't know this subject.

In any case, as a teacher teaching the phonology of this, I would absolutely treat this word as: Opp/en/hei/mer