Part of a word containing a vowel sound and pronounced as a 'unit.' If you beat out the rhythm of a word, the number of beats will show the number of syllables in that word. For example, 'cat' has one syllable. 'car-pen-ter' has three syllables. As indicated above, in English a syllable normally contains a vowel, however there are three consonants which can act as syllabic consonants: /m/ /n/ and /l/ as in bottom, button and bottle. Some speakers move straight into these sounds without articulating an intervening vowel. Syllabic consonants are transcribed with a dot under the phonetic symbol, so you may see, for example, the word freckle transcribed as /'frekəl/ or /'frekl̩/.