Strong and Weak Syllables
“Strong” and “weak” refer to phonetic characteristics of syllables. The vowel in a
weak syllable tends to be shorter, of lower intensity (loudness) and different in
quality.
For example, in the word ‘data’ deıtə the second syllable, which is weak, is shorter
than the first, is less loud and has a vowel that cannot occur in strong syllables.
In a word like ‘bottle’ botl̩ the weak second syllable contains no vowel at all, but
consists entirely of the consonant l. This is a syllabic consonant represented by the
sound symbol and a vertical line underneath the symbol.
The most important thing to note at present is that any strong syllable will not have
as its peak one of the vowel phonemes ə, i, u. If the vowel is one of ı, e, æ, Ʌ, o, u,
then the strong syllable will always have a coda as well. Weak syllables, on the
other hand, as they are defined here, can only have one of a very small number of
possible peaks. At the end of a word, we may have a weak syllable ending with a
vowel (i.e. with no coda):
i) the vowel ə (“schwa”);
ii) a close front unrounded vowel in the general area of i:, ı, symbolised i;
iii) a close back rounded vowel in the general area of u:, ʊ, symbolised u.
Examples would be:
i) ‘better’ betə
ii) ‘happy’ hæpi
iii) ‘thank you’ Ɵæŋk ju
We also find weak syllables in word-final position with a coda if the vowel is ə.
For example:
i) ‘open’ əupən
ii) ‘sharpen’ ʃα:pən
Inside a word, we can find the above vowels acting as peaks without codas in weak
syllables; for example, look at the second syllable in each of these words:
i) ‘photograph’ fəutəgrα:f
ii) ‘radio’ reıdiəu
iii) ‘influence’ ınfluəns
In addition, the vowel ı can act as a peak without a coda if the following
syllable begins with a consonant:
iv) ‘architect’ α:kıtekt
In the rest of this chapter we will look at the different types of weak syllable in
more detail.
The ə vowel (“schwa”)
The most frequently occurring vowel in English is ə, which is always associated
with weak syllables. In quality it is mid (i.e. halfway between close and open)
and central (i.e. halfway between front and back). It is generally described as
lax - that is, not articulated with much energy. Of course, the quality of this
vowel is not always the same, but the variation is not important.
If a weak syllable is to be pronounced as strong, we may consider spelling:
i) Spelt with ‘a’; strong pronunciation would have æ
‘attend’ ætənd ‘character’ kærəktə ‘barracks’ bærəks
Close front and close back vowels
Two other vowels are commonly found in weak syllables, one close front (in
the general region of i:, ı) and the other close back rounded (in the general
region of u:, ʊ). In strong syllables it is comparatively easy to distinguish i:
from ı or u: from ʊ, but in weak syllables the difference is not so clear. For
example, although it is easy enough to decide which vowel one hears in ‘beat’
or ‘bit’, it is much less easy to decide which vowel one hears in the second
syllable of words such as ‘easy’ or ‘busy’. There are accents of English (e.g.
Welsh accents) in which the second syllable sounds most like the i: in the first
syllable of ‘easy’, and others (e.g. Yorkshire accents) in which it sounds more
like the 1 in the first syllable of ‘busy’. In present-day BBC pronunciation,
however, the matter is not so clear
We find i occurring in:
In most other cases of syllables containing a short close front unrounded vowel we
can assign the vowel to the i phoneme, as in the first syllable of ‘resist’ rızıst,
‘inane’ ıneın, ‘enough’ inɅf, the middle syllable of ‘incident’ ınsıdənt, ‘orchestra’
Ͻ:kıstrə, ‘artichoke’ α:tıtʃəuk, and the final syllable of ‘swimming’ swımıŋ, ‘liquid’
lıkwıd, ‘optic’ optık. It can be seen that this vowel is most often represented in
spelling by the letters ‘i’ and ‘e’.
Weak syllables with close back rounded vowels are not so commonly found. We
find u most frequently in the words ‘you’, ‘to’, ‘into’, ‘do’, when they are
unstressed and are not immediately preceding a consonant, and ‘through’, ‘who’ in
all positions when they are unstressed. This vowel is also found before another
vowel within a word, as in ‘evacuation’ ıvækjueiʃn̩, ‘influenza’ ınfluenzə.
