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I'm working on a set of modifications to Hangul which would allow it to completely express USAmerican English. The project has been going delightfully smooth so far, and I'm writing some stress-test sentences to find the most difficult-to-represent words/syllables (for example, "strengths" is written below. Calligraphic writing, a single block of 7 Jamo (and Jamo-like) letters: ㅅ, ㅊ, a backwards ㄹ, ㅓ, ㅇ, a backwards ㄷ, and ㅅ)

In order to make sure that this half-conscript works well, I want to stress-test it by making sure all difficult syllables are well-representable. And to do that, I'm looking for English syllables with the most phonemes, which Google & Bing are unfortunately not bringing to me.

Could y'all help me out?

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    Note that "strengths" is arguably 8 for many speakers: / s t r e ŋ k θ s /
    – Araucaria - him
    Commented Sep 27 at 11:44
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    Great observation, @Araucaria-him! This reminds me that I initially thought that the Hangugeo pronunciation of "ㄱ" as either g or k wouldn't be useful when using it to write English. Then We noticed that English does this sometimes in words like "example", and now thanks to you We have "strengths" as yet another place this happens!
    – Ky -
    Commented Oct 3 at 4:03
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    The /k/ in strengths, when it's there, is epenthetic for most speakers but will be part of the actual representation for some The /g/ is slightly different because it's part of the phonemic representation in some regional dialects, but not in Southern Standard British English or Genera; American.
    – Araucaria - him
    Commented Oct 3 at 10:27

1 Answer 1

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A quick search through the WebCELEX English corpus turned up 20 syllables with 7 phonemes in them, and none with more than that. In CELEX's "DISC" notation, they are:

  • skVlpts (sculpts)
  • prQmpts (prompts)
  • str{kts ([di]stracts)
  • sprInts (sprints)
  • skrImps (scrimps)
  • skrImpt (scrimped)
  • skwInts (squints)
  • strIkts (stricts)
  • skrVnJt (scrunched)
  • twElfTs (twelfths)
  • skr6n_d (scrounged)
  • strVkts (structs)
  • strENTs (strengths)
  • str1nts ([re]straints)
  • skrIpts (scripts)
  • glImpst (glimpsed)
  • str{ndz (strands)
  • skwElJt (squelched)
  • str1n_d ([e]stranged)
  • splInts (splints)

Of course, it will somewhat depend on what you consider a phoneme in English (is dʒ one phoneme or two? what about aʊ?), and where you draw your syllable boundaries.

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  • Thank you! This is very useful 💖
    – Ky -
    Commented Jun 25 at 18:47
  • A friend also brought to me "strengths"
    – Ky -
    Commented Jun 27 at 16:40
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    @Ky- Thirteenth on the list!
    – Draconis ♦
    Commented Jun 27 at 16:46
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    I think that "scrounged", "[re]straints" and "[e]stranged" have the longer syllable with 8 phonemes.
    – Arfrever
    Commented Jun 28 at 1:07
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    @Arfrever Yeah, that's what the last paragraph's intended for; CELEX considers aʊ to be a single phoneme, for example, but you could also make a fine argument that it's two.
    – Draconis ♦
    Commented Jun 28 at 1:28

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