Syllable Word: A one syllable word is never divided. It has one or more letters but one vowel sound, and is produced by a single voice impulse.

VCV: When a single consonant comes between two vowels in a word, the word is usually divided before the consonant and the first vowel is long.

VCV: When a single consonant comes between two vowels in a word, the word is usually divided after the consonant and the first vowel is short.

Division Process: Cross off silent e (if there is one at the end). Mark the vowels V. Mark the consonants between the vowels C. Determine correct syllable pattern. Divide. Identify syllable types/vowel condition. Pronounce each syllable and blend the word. Have you divided correctly? Are there other possibilities? If yes, start over.

Prefix/Suffix: When a word has a prefix and/or suffix, the word is divided between the affix and the root.

Simple Ten Syllable Rules:
The top ten syllable rules will help students improve reading, pronunciation, and spelling accuracy. Applying these syllabication rules will also help readers identify prefixes, roots and affixes, which improves word identification.

Intonation Patterns in English:

When we speak to each other, our voices tend to rise or fall in pitch over a part of an utterance. This rise or fall in pitch is known as intonation. Intonation is used mainly to indicate the speaker's attitude towards the listener or towards the topic.

1. Syllable Stress
   
   The emphasis that is given (through greater breath force) to any particular syllable in a word is known as stress. In all polysyllabic words, one of the syllables receives greater stress than the others. The syllable in a word which receives stress is called the stressed syllable. All other syllables are known as unstressed syllables. The stressed syllable is shown in many dictionaries, by a short vertical mark which is placed above and just ahead of the first letter or the first IPA symbol.
2. Stress Shift
   
   The migration or movement of the stress from one syllable to another in related words is known as stress shift.
3. Stress Variation
   
   Certain pairs of words like 'conduct', 'desert', 'object', 'present', 'rebel', etc have the same spelling but belong to different grammatical classes. Such words can be used as noun or verbs. However, there is a shift in stress in these words. When they are used as nouns, the stress is on the first syllable and when used as verbs, they are stressed on the second syllable.
4. Stress Patterns in Compound Words
   
   In compound nouns, the stress is on the first part. (blackbird, greenhouse)
   In compound adjectives, the stress is on the second part. (good-natured, old-fashioned)
   In compound verbs, the stress is on the second part. (understand, overflow)
5. Stress Pattern in Sentences (Sentence Rhythm)
   
   Sentences, like words, have stressed as well as unstressed syllables. Stress is put on words which give us the main information, while the words which are not important for meaning are left unstressed. This pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in sentences gives English speech its typical rhythm.
   
   English words can be divided into two categories: content words and structure words.
   
   Content words are usually stressed, while structure words are usually unstressed and reduced.
   
   Content words:
   - Nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs
   - Demonstrative pronouns
   - Question words in a question
   
   Structure words:
   - Pronouns, prepositions, articles auxiliary verbs and determiners.
6. Stress-timed and Syllable-timed languages
   
   When the stressed syllables are close to each other, the rate of speaking slows down, but when the stressed syllables are far apart, the rate of speaking becomes faster.
   
   English is called a stress-timed language because the time taken to speak a sentence depends on the number of stressed syllables and not on the total number of syllables.
   
   Languages such as Hindi, Oriya, etc., on the other hand are called syllable-timed languages, because the time taken to go from one syllable to the next, whether stressed or unstressed, is always the same. The time taken to speak a sentence depends on the total number of syllables and not on the number of stressed syllables, as in English.
   
   English, therefore, has a very different rhythm from Indian languages. To an English ear, Indian languages have a sing-song rhythm (like the sound of chanting mantras), while to the Indian ear, English has a staccato rhythm (like the sound of a machine gun).
7. Contrastive Stress in Sentences
   
   Stress is not always pre-determined, and can be moved from the normal position in a sentence. When stress is placed on other syllables, which do not normally take stress, special meanings can be created (mostly depicting the emotional state and intention of the  speaker).

A syllable is a cluster of sounds which forms either a complete word having a meaning
(example - red),or a part of it (example - the syllable 'ab', which forms part of the word 'absent').

Normally, each syllable contains only one vowel. Typically, this word is preceded as well as followed by a consonant - as in words such as 'red', 'cat', 'sad', etc. Here the vowel comes in the middle of the syllable.

A syllable in which there is a consonant in front of it as well as after it is represented by the formula CVC (where 'C' represents Consonant and 'V' represents Vowel).

However, a syllable can also have the structure CV or VC. It is also possible for a syllable to have the structure CCV or VCC.

It is possible to form new words from given words by adding extra syllables.

Words such as 'red', 'rod', 'bad', etc are said to be monosyllabic words, containing only one syllable.

The words that we have looked so far were monosyllabic words. But words can have two, three, four or even more syllables. Such words are called polysyllabic words.

Syllable Division:

Referring to an English dictionary, we can find all the polysyllabic words along with their meanings. They are split up into the syllables they contain. The syllable boundaries are usually shown by dots.

The terms consonant, vowel and diphthong were used in referring to IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols. These terms describe different kinds of sound which are found in all languages.

1. Consonants
   
   When we speak, a stream of air is forced out of the lungs, travels upwards through the throat and then passes out through the mouth and nose.
   
   Any sound that is produced by blocking the air stream from flowing out easily through the mouth is called a consonant.
   
2. Vowels
   
   But when certain other sounds are produced such that there is no blocking of air stream in the mouth. The air stream passes out freely through the mouth and nose, such sounds are called vowels.
   
3. Diphthongs
   
   In the pronunciation of some words, two vowels  combine together to form a single sound, which is called as a diphthong.

Indian English has many a times been un-intelligible by the British listeners or the native Englishmen. The question is why? Indians have progressed a long way to achieve a long line of successes, then why not in English?

The pronunciation of a language varies every six miles because of geographical and cultural reasons. The speakers of one and the same language will vary in the standard of pronunciation on the basis of their standards of literacy and living. For example, a villager may speak a different variety from a man from the city.

Pronunciation of English also varies from one geographical entity to the other, from one country to another. There are marked and distinct phonetic features associated with English spoken in the English-speaking nations such as the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada and Australia. Even within the U.K., there are variations between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

" Great prestige is still attached to this implicitly accepted social standard pronunciation ". It is often called "Received Pronunciation" to indicate that it is the result of social judgement and wide acceptance because of its use by the BBC announcers. It is basically 'Educated Southern British English'  and is the form of pronunciation generally described in books on the phonetics of British English and the one generally taught to foreigners.

RP (received pronunciation) today is no longer the exclusive property of a particular social class in England and is generally equated with the correct pronunciation of English. Regional forms of pronunciation continue to exist. Some young people, however, have begun to reject RP as they wish to challenge traditional authority in every form.

Some forms of regional pronunciation are firmly established in Britain. Some of them, particularly Scottish, are accepted throughout the country, while others - popular London speech, for instance are less acceptable. American pronunciation is now completely accepted in Britain. Speakers of RP now realize that their type of pronunciation is used by only a very small minority in the English speaking world..

The credit of making the East-Midland dialect standard English goes to Chaucer, the father of English poetry. While a standard form of written English has existed for hundreds of years, there has been even within England a great diversity in the pronunciation of people belonging to different regions and different sections of the community. One particular regional accent, however, has over the last five hundred years, acquired social prestige. It was the pronunciation of the southeast of England, particularly of the London region, to which this prestige was attached. It gradually lost some of the local characteristics of London speech and became the speech of the ruling class through the influence of the public schools in the nineteenth century. It thus got established as a 'class' of pronunciation throughout England and was recognized as characteristic of a social class rather than a regional pronunciation. Those who wanted social advancement had therefore to modify their speech to bring it neaeer the social standard.

The main reasons of the un-intelligibility of Indian English to foreigners are:

1. faulty pronunciation of the sounds of English
2. replacements of English sounds by their Indian equivalents
3. wrong accentual pattern
4. leaving important words unaccented in connected speech
5. faulty rhythmic patterns
6. faulty division of a long utterance into a tone group
7. wrong location of the nucleus or the tonic syllable in a tone group

From our childhood days we are taught about the English alphabet consisting of the vowels and consonants. Despite of this many people are unable to properly pronounce the English vowels. So we center our discussion around the ' Vowel Sounds in English' .

Now, the first question is, what is a vowel ? In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language which is pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build up of air pressure at any point above the glottis.