Syllabification in Latin

[Bruce Grant <bgrant@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> A few questions to which I don't have the answers are:
> how many different syllables are there in Latin or English. And how
> does their number grow with increasing text size. Is there an agreed
> manner of splitting Latin words into syllables?

There seems to be a standard way of breaking Latin words into syllables.

As described in Bennett's _New Latin Grammar_ the rules are:

1.    There is one syllable per vowel or diphthong {ae, oe, ei, ou).
2.    Single consonants go with the following syllable: vo-lat.
3.    Double consonants are always separated:  mis-sus.
4.    Other clusters of consonants are split with the first going to the
preceding syllable: mon-strum.
        Exception: if the cluster consists of a mute (p, t, c, k, q, b,
d, g, ph, ch, th) followed by l or r,
        both go with the following syllable: pa-tris.
        Exception to exception:  if this occurs because of a prefix
added to a word (ad + latus) the
        division is as ad-latus, not a-dlatus.
5.    X (pronounced k+s) goes with the previous syllable (ax-is) since
it can't be divided.

Bruce