countSyllables

Count Number of Syllables in s interpreted in language lang.

The Algorithm:

- If number of letters <= 3 : return 1. Incorrect for Ira, weapon:usi.

- If doesn’t end with “ted” or “tes” or “ses” or “ied” or “ies”, discard “es” and “ed” at the end. If it has only 1 vowel or 1 set of consecutive vowels, discard. (like “speed”, “fled” etc.)

- Discard trailing “e”, except where ending is “le” and isn’t in the le_except array

- Check if consecutive vowels exists, triplets or pairs, count them as one.

- Count remaining vowels in the word.

- Add one if begins with “mc”

- Add one if ends with “y” but is not surrouned by vowel. (ex. “mickey”)

- Add one if “y” is surrounded by non-vowels and is not in the last word. (ex. “python”)

- If begins with “tri-” or “bi-” and is followed by a vowel, add one. (so that “ia” at “triangle” won’t be mistreated by step 4)

- If ends with “-ian”, should be counted as two syllables, except for “-tian” and “-cian”. (ex. “indian” and “politician” should be handled differently and shouldn’t be mistreated by step 4)

- If begins with “co-” and is followed by a vowel, check if it exists in the double syllable dictionary, if not, check if in single dictionary and act accordingly. (co_one and co_two dictionaries handle it. Ex. “coach” and “coapt” shouldn’t be treated equally by step 4)

- If starts with “pre-” and is followed by a vowel, check if exists in the double syllable dictionary, if not, check if in single dictionary and act accordingly. (similar to step 11, but very weak dictionary for the moment)

- Check for “-n’t” and cross match with dictionary to add syllable. (ex. “doesn’t”, “couldn’t”)

- Handling the exceptional words. (ex. “serious”, “fortunately”)

Like I said earlier, this isn’t perfect, so there are some steps to add or modify, but it works just “fine”. Some exceptions should be added such as “evacuate”, “ambulances”, “shuttled”, “anyone” etc… Also it can’t handle some compund words like “facebook”. Counting only “face” would result correctly “1″, and “book” would also come out correct, but due to the “e” letter not being detected as a “silent e”, “facebook” will return “3 syllables.”

uint
countSyllables
(
S
)
(
S s
,)
if (
isSomeString!S
)

See Also

http://eayd.in/?p=232

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/ovzcetxbrdblpmyizdjr@forum.dlang.org#post-ovzcetxbrdblpmyizdjr:40forum.dlang.org

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