How to compute number of syllables in a word in javascript?

Question

Is there javascript library for counting number of syllables in a word? How to count?

Thanks

Edit

Thank Sydenam and zozo for useful

Answer 1

You can check this out: AJAX Syllable Calendar

Answer 2

Translated to javascript:

function new_count(word) {
  word = word.toLowerCase();                                     //word.downcase!
  if(word.length <= 3) { return 1; }                             //return 1 if word.length <= 3
    word = word.replace(/(?:[^laeiouy]es|ed|[^laeiouy]e)$/, '');   //word.sub!(/(?:[^laeiouy]es|ed|[^laeiouy]e)$/, '')
    word = word.replace(/^y/, '');                                 //word.sub!(/^y/, '')
    return word.match(/[aeiouy]{1,2}/g).length;                    //word.scan(/[aeiouy]{1,2}/).size
}

console.log(new_count('she'));
console.log(new_count('spain'))
console.log(new_count('softball'))
console.log(new_count('contagion'))

Answer 3

I can see this is an old post but I stumbled across this function and found good use for it.

One thing that I would like to add that will increase the accuracy of the syllable account - (to my knowledge).

I noticed that the string "changes" shows as only being 1 syllable.

I removed es from (?:[^laeiouy]es|ed|[^laeiouy]e)$ so that it's now ?:[^laeiouy]|ed|[^laeiouy]e)$.

This seems to add the extra syllable count for words ending in "es". Also, to simplify things I put the array of matched words into a separate variable, this way you can check if any syllables are counted before giving any output:

var count = function(word) 
{
    word = word.toLowerCase();                                     
    word = word.replace(/(?:[^laeiouy]|ed|[^laeiouy]e)$/, '');   
    word = word.replace(/^y/, '');                                 
    //return word.match(/[aeiouy]{1,2}/g).length;   
    var syl = word.match(/[aeiouy]{1,2}/g);
    console.log(syl);
    if(syl)
    {
        //console.log(syl);
        return syl.length;
    }
}

I found this to be more convenient than necessary. If you have the function running in event listener that might fire before there are any words to check, this would be useful and prevent any errors such as Cannot read property 'length' of null.

I just wanted to share my findings with anyone else who might find this and decide to use it.

Answer 4

Well... you take a grammatical book and start reading the string letter by letter if one of the rules there is matched then you add a +1 to a counter. Since the rules differ from language to language I can't really tell you how to do it. I did it for Romanian... but I doubt it will help you.