Topic-155: Explaining Syllable Timed Languages Syllable timed is a very general term used in phonetics to characterize the pronunciation of languages displaying a particular type of rhythmic pattern. It is opposed to stress-timed languages. In syllable-timed languages, the syllables are said to occur at regular intervals of time, (e.g., in French) this characteristic is sometimes referred to as isosyllabism or isosyllabicity. However, very little work has been done on the accuracy or general applicability of such properties, and the usefulness of the typology has been questioned. So it is important to remember that the division of languages in two categories (i.e., syllable vs. stress timed languages) is not based on strong concepts. Many phoneticians disagree with the basic idea of timing value. They are of the view that there are three dimensions fixed word stress (mainly found in Romance languages, variable word stress (mainly found in languages such as English and German) and fixed phrase stress (phrase as a third possibility as exhibited by Japanese) and they want to categorize languages on the basis of these three patterns.
