Syllable-timed language

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In every language, speech emission is based on a sequence of elementary sound units; some of them play a specific part: through their isochronic recurrence, they produce the rhythm of the sentences. In a syllable-timed language, these rhythm units are syllables.

However, such a classification should be used carefully, a spoken language being less settled than a written language ; thus the way the rhythm is produced may vary from one region to another, or with time.

Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French and Catalan are examples of syllable-timed languages. Romance languages are generally syllable-timed. All Indian languages, such as Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Punjabi, etc are also syllable-timed languages. Korean and Chinese are also syllable-timed languages.

[edit] See also

• Timing (linguistics)
• Stress-timed language
• Mora-timed language

[edit] External links

• Étude sur la discrimination des langues par la prosodie (pdf document) (French)
• Languages’ rhythm and language acquisition (pdf document)
• Supra-segmental Phonology (rhythm, intonation and stress-timing)