# Lingua::EN::Syllable - phpMan

## NAME
    [Lingua::EN::Syllable] - count the number of syllables in English words

## SYNOPSIS
      use [Lingua::EN::Syllable];

      $count = syllable('supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'); # 14

## DESCRIPTION
    [Lingua::EN::Syllable::syllable]() estimates the number of syllables in
    the word passed to it.

    Note that it isn't entirely accurate... it fails (by one syllable) for
    about 10-15% of my /usr/dict/words. The only way to get a 100% accurate
    count is to do a dictionary lookup, so this is a small and fast
    alternative where more-or-less accurate results will suffice, such as
    estimating the reading level of a document.

    I welcome pointers to more accurate algorithms, since this one is pretty
    quick-and-dirty. This was designed for English (well, American at least)
    words, but sometimes guesses well for other languages.

## KNOWN LIMITATIONS
    Accuracy for words with non-alpha characters is somewhat undefined. In
    general, punctuation characters, et al, should be trimmed off before
    handing the word to syllable(), and hyphenated compounds should be
    broken into their separate parts.

    Syllables for all-digit words (eg, "1998"; some call them "numbers") are
    often counted as the number of digits. A cooler solution would be
    converting "1998" to "nineteen eighty eight" (or "one thousand nine
    hundred eighty eight", or...), but that is left as an exercise for the
    reader.

    Contractions are not well supported.

    Compound words (like "lifeboat"), where the first word ends in a silent
    'e' are counted with an extra syllable.

## SEE ALSO
    [Lingua::Phonology] - a framework of classes that provide "an object model
    for lingistic phonology and sound change". That includes syllables, and
    it looks like you can use it to get syllables for words, but from a
    quick skim of the doc I can't see exactly how.

    [Text::Info] - a new module (as of late 2015) that provides information
    about text in Germanic languages, including syllable count.

## REPOSITORY
    <<https://github.com/neilb/Lingua-EN-Syllable>>

## COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    This software is copyright (c) 1999 by Greg Fast <<gdf@imsa.edu>>

    This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
    the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

## AUTHOR
    Greg Fast (<gdf@imsa.edu>)