A friend recently asked me, “Why does the word rhythm have two syllables, but only one vowel? And the vowel y is only a sometimes vowel, so barely a vowel?” I paused, during which time my friend laughed and said, “It defies logic and rules and I dare you to try to say it in one syllable.”

I couldn’t do it. I tried. She tried. It just didn’t work. Rhythm is, against all rules and regulations, a two-syllable word. So, does it really matter? And what is this anomaly?

My answer? Well, it could be clumped into the category of those boogey-words that defy the multiple rules of the good old English language. And there are a lot of them. That’s why English is such a difficult language to learn as a second language. But, in fact, it’s actually what’s known as a syllabic consonant or a vocalic consonant. Or, in other words, a word that uses a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like m, n, l, r, and ng.

Arguably, some examples do contain vowels, but the vowels themselves are silent, allowing the consonant to become the nucleus of the syllable. For example:

- rhythm, prism – both words have two syllables with only one vowel, the final m becoming a syllable on its own.

- bottle, cattle, saddle, poodle – the e is a silent vowel, so the l becomes its own syllable

- cotton, button – both contain the vowel o, which is technically a silent vowel, so the concluding n becomes its own syllable

- listen, broken, fasten, fatten, hidden, mittens, happen – similarly to cotton and button, have a silent vowel, this time e making the concluding n its own syllable

- ticker, sticker – the e is a silent vowel, so the r becomes its own syllable

Other unusual syllabic consonants include the ing suffix at the end of a verb. For example:

- listening – one doesn’t usually pronounce the e, making the vowel silent and ing becomes its own syllable

- going – has a missing consonant, as one pronounces the word with a w sound in the middle, creating a two-consonant word.

The list goes on. The English language is a quagmire of rules and exceptions to the rules. For the writer, who doesn’t weigh in heavily on the phonetics of the words, it’s merely a persistent anomaly, an interesting attribute of the language. Every language has its irregularities.

So, you ask, what is the value of this trivial knowledge? Well, perhaps it’s not essential for a novelist to take particular notice of variant syllabic rules and irregularities. However, poets, particularly rhyming poets, or haiku poets, lean heavily on the value and importance of consonants. And you never know when you might want to incorporate this trivia into your plot. Perhaps you’ll be writing about a logophile (a logomaniac or a word-nerd) and this topic will come up in the conversation. Who knows where trivia might come in handy? Remember, a little bit of trivia never hurt anyone, right? Even writers!