Hector Martin

If your sanity isn't far enough compromised: Accents change syllable count on certain words. "Family" could be "fam-ul-lee" or "fam-lee" depending on where the speaker is from. Have fun with that one.

fa-mih-lee ?

This has always been a pet peeve of mine with English. Their rules for deciding syllable boundaries are completely nonsensical, seeming to be mostly based on morphemes instead of syllables. I'd split "uncomfortable" in the same way as you btw. IPA seems to agree: /ʌnˈkʌmf.tɚ.bəl/

The approaches I've seen are: 1. Do it like hyphenation rules / dictionaries say 2. Just do whatever (for instance, try to follow pronunciation except when it comes to common prefixes like -ing) 3. Try to follow pronunciation always And I don't know if I prefer one of them...

Some especially annoying things with hyphenation rules are: 1. Some necessary splits aren't actually allowed by the rules 2. Sometimes there's a noticeable pause between syllables and then you can clearly hear that the pronunciation doesn't match the rules

Trying to make rules around English is going to be an exercise in identifying every edge case. For instance, I, Oklahoma dialect, don't pronounce uncomfortable that way. More like un-come-for-tubble.

Okay, what I don't get there is "tubble". Surely that's two syllables, right? Five total? In which case that doesn't work in the song so... :-)