A Syllable in English refers to one unit sound, which means that syllable cannot have more than one sound, thy can have more than ne consonant and vowel but not more than one sound. The syllables are considered as the building blocks of words.
A syllable has the capacity to influence the rhythm of the language, its poetic meter and its stress patterns. A word come into existence when the consonants and vowels join together. Take the example of a syllable, “Long”, it has only one syllable as it has only one sound, next is “Silent”, this has two syllables as it has two sounds. Therefore, likewise we differentiate between one and two sounds in syllables.
An open syllable is a type that ends with a vowel. If that ends with a consonant than it would not be called as open syllable. An open syllable ends with a long vowel sound, that is the crazy thing in an open syllable. For example – able, ago, also, these are quite a few one to understand the difference.
A closed syllable is one that ends with a consonant that means it always ends with a consonant here the consonant plays a very important role. For example – admit, banking, dragon, here are quite a few ones.
Open vs Closed Syllables Examples
There are differences between an open and closed syllable, that the open syllable ends with a vowel and the closed syllable ends with one or two consonants at the end of the word.
We will take the example of open syllables: –
| Open syllable word | Syllabication | Long vowel | Use |
| Able | Able | Long A | Initial |
| Agent | Agent | Long A | Initial |
| Zebra | Ze/bra | Long E | Medial |
| Vibration | Vi/bra/tion | Long I | Medial |
| We | We | Long E | Final |
| Volcano | Vol/ca/no | Long O | Final |
| Zero | Ze/ro | Long O | final |
Here we saw a little more specifically on long vowel sounds and their use and while pronouncing which particular sound is been heard.
Examples of closed syllables: –
| Atom | Canal | Laptop |
| Lemon | Window | Robin |
| Doctor | Publish | Splendid |
| Witness | Winter | kitten |
Difference between Open and Closed syllables
With different ways of sound, end and others how the two are different from one another.
| Open | Closed | |
| End | The word always Ends in a vowel | Here the word always Ends with a consonant |
| Sound | It has a long sound | It has a short sound |
| Order | The vowel is not followed by a consonant | It is followed by a consonant |
| Sound of the letter | It is similar to the name of the vowel. | It may or may not be similar to the name of the vowel. |
Sometimes it at times happens that the vowels are not considered as an open syllable as they do not consider sound of their own.it can be judged by its pronunciation like we can take the example of “me” word in this the sound is pronounced is “e”. so it happens that it can only be judged by the pronunciation itself and not by the vowels alone.
It also happens to the closed syllable as we can take it, as it always ends with a consonant, it can be that a word might contain more than one closed syllable like for example – “dentist”, “rabbit”, “insect”, and many other examples with these types that has more than one closed syllable.
| Open | Closed |
| Hi | Hip |
| She | Hen |
| Flu | Shed |
| Go | Got |
| Me | not |
We can take here certain examples of syllable division: –
- Example for dividing syllable before a suffix.
Teacher – teach/er
- Example for divide a word between two middle consonants.
Cactus – cac/tus
- To divide syllable after prefix.
Refund – re/fund
- To divide the compound words between the two words.
Sunshine – sun/shine
So here on a little we got to know the divisions in syllables. when we learnt how to divide words between with one of them having middle consonant. This can leave the first syllable open which often has a vowel sound present in it as for example are :-
tiger – ti/ger
music – mu/sic
paper – pa/per
as one can see from the example itself that how the syllables are separated. As on the move forward we can see some more examples on open and closed syllables.
| Open syllables | ||
| A | Paper | Pa/per |
| E | Begin | Be/gin |
| I | Tiger | Ti/ger |
| O | Robot | Ro/bot |
| Closed syllables | ||
| A | Camel | Cam/el |
| E | Exit | Ex/it |
| I | Visit | Vis/it |
| O | Robin | Ro/bin |
Here in the tables again we saw the division in words of open and closed syllables. To scratch your head around one syllable word, target considering the word with long one syllable and ends with a vowel sound, that brings you to the open syllable area. Either one can also look to the single vowel at the end of the word, or in other words that the word ends in a long vowel sound.
In the closed ones the sounds are very short of the vowels as already the word ends with a consonant, the word does not sound similar to the name of the letter.to learn about the open and the closed as they are the very easy way to get oneself understood with the basics of syllables. It is the foundation of one to start reading. As when one attains the complete knowledge of syllables than one attains great knowledge for how to read properly with stress on words.
Final Words
On a very interesting note, it needs to be shared that there are majorly two factors that influence the pronunciation of a word and that is an open and a closed syllable. These two features majorly affect the pronunciation of words as that is been decide whether a word is ending with a vowel or a consonant.
If one knows the perfection as to where to give the stress in the word during pronunciation that gives a correct technique to speak. Also, with this one can also very well get to know whether the word is an open or closed syllable.