Every word is made up of syllables.

A syllable is a spoken unit—or a “beat” of language—that  has one vowel sound.

There are seven kinds of syllables in English: closed, open, glued, vowel team, working E, vowel-R and consonant LE.

Words that have more than one syllable are called “multisyllable words.” Every syllable will have a vowel sound.

One syllable words can have several phonemes. “Screeched”, a one syllable word, has seven phonemes. Multisyllable words have more than one syllable. One multi-syllable word has 19 syllables: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (pneu-mo-no-ul-tra-mi-cro-scop-ic-sil-i-co-vol-ca-no-co-ni-o-sis), which is a fictitious lung disease caused by fine silica dust.