From: Phlip <phlip_cpp@...>
Date: 2002-08-05T11:58:18+09:00
Subject: Regex to count syllables

Rubies:

Just a tricky one. I need a function that counts syllables in English words 
with, say, 99.5% accuracy for common words. The deal is a "syllable" seems 
to be "a group of one to three vowels, always including Y"; the exceptions 
seen so far are "a trailing 'ing' is always a syllable", and "silent E on 
the end not preceded by L is not a syllable."

We'l think of other rules, but I'm just curious how to fold my brute-force 
reckoning into a single regex. Right now I use a regex and a couple of 'if' 
statements.

Note the function needn't accurately locate the syllables, it only needs to 
find them:

Tokenizer = /([aeiouy]{1,3})/

def syllableCounter word
    len = 0
   
    if word[-3..-1] == 'ing' then
        len += 1 
        word = word[0...-3]
    end
    
    got = word.scan(Tokenizer)
    len += got.size()
    
  #  the next exception to the regex is the
  #  trailing silent 'e' (which used to be a syllable)
  #  and the exception to the exception is 'le'.
    
    if got.size() > 1 and got[-1] == ['e'] and 
                  word[-1].chr() == 'e' and
                  word[-2].chr() != 'l' then
        len -= 1 
    end
    
    return len
end

                assert 1 == syllableCounter('a')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('aa')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('aaa')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('aaay')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('rat')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('elf')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('emu')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('elven')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('queuing')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('kozmic')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('throughout')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('vicious')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('aenid')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('way')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('parking')
                assert 3 == syllableCounter('sylabus')
                assert 4 == syllableCounter('invigorate')
                assert 4 == syllableCounter('kleptomania')
                assert 3 == syllableCounter('diastrophism')
                assert 3 == syllableCounter('elegy')
                assert 4 == syllableCounter('nymphomaniac')
                assert 5 == syllableCounter('hippopotamus')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('filthy')
                assert 3 == syllableCounter('venison')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('frog')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('fly')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('eagle')
                assert 4 == syllableCounter('Liberiencis')
                assert 3 == syllableCounter('behemoth')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('river')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('zeekoe')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('yarrow')
                assert 1 == syllableCounter('yeah')
                assert 2 == syllableCounter('being')
                assert 0 == syllableCounter('')

So how do I merge those exceptions into the main regex?

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  Phlip
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