A syllable is a unit of pronunciation that usually contains a vowel sound and/or one or more consonant sounds. It can be thought of as the "beat" in a word. To count syllables in a word, you can listen to the number of vowel sounds or "beats" you hear. For example, the word "blanket" has two syllables: "blan" and "ket".

There are different methods to count syllables, such as clapping hands, tapping, or noticing how many times your jaw drops when saying the word. English has six types of syllables which help in recognizing and counting them for pronunciation, reading, and spelling.