Have you heard of the concept of mathematical laws, which are principles that govern the behavior of numbers and operations in mathematics?
Just as mathematical laws dictate the rules and principles of numbers and operations, we also have spelling laws that govern the structure and formation of words in a language, and here is one of them.
Every syllable needs a vowel or syllabic consonant.
You might be thinking, wait, what? I thought every syllable only needed a vowel!
Well, yes, but more precisely, every syllable needs to contain a grapheme that spells a syllabic phoneme. This grapheme, which spells a syllabic phoneme, is called a syllabic consonant.
A syllabic consonant and phoneme? What are they, you ask?
It’s not as complex as it sounds. Let’s simplify it.
Syllabic consonants spell phonemes that add a syllable.
All vowels are capable of adding a syllable.
single vowels can add a syllable
- foxes
- capable
Sometimes, a final single < e > adds a syllable
- simile
- catastrophe
- recipe
- epitome
- sesame
vowel digraphs can add a syllable
- afraid
- leaving
- around
- play
syllabic consonants can add a syllable
- prism
- rhythm
- naturalism
- table
- capable
- bottle
- button
- bitten
- beaten
Fun fact: Syllables are spoken, not written!
Syllabic consonants are spoken, and written words do not signal them, so we first have to know what the word is before we can study the grapheme-phoneme correspondence. Some programs instruct children to “flex the vowel” in order to guess the word’s pronunciation, but < a > has six possibilities! Guess and check doesn’t work well for any learner. It doesn’t work at all for struggling learners who can’t memorize all of the phonemes a grapheme can spell.
After we know what a word is and can use it in our oral language, we can analyze the meaning and structure of the spelling and discuss grapheme-phoneme correspondence, including syllabic consonants. Studying grapheme-phoneme correspondence in isolation does not lead to reading or spelling for dyslexic students; the context that meaning and structure provide matters. Furthermore, some may pronounce words containing syllabic consonants differently than others or think they pronounce them differently. It can be challenging to feel! It’s a good thing that we don’t need to rely on the different ways we pronounce words to learn to read and spell.
