Forum Discussion
Delete cells with exactly three syllables
I'm not sure if this is too specific a command to use in Excel, but I have a column in which I want to delete all cells in that column with exactly 3 syllables in them. Is this even possible?
2 Replies
This is what it would take to solve in Excel.
- Pull together a list of the most common syllables found in English.
- Pull together a list of the most common words (or words most relevant to your data)
- Create all possible permutations (with repeats) from the list.
- Discard words which do not match words in your dictionary
- Discard words with precisely 3 syllables.
My advice is to use the best version of Copilot at: https://copilot.microsoft.com/
You can fit about 12,000 characters in a single chat post.
Forget about whether it's possible in Excel. Let me answer with a question about words: my question is whether it is possible to have a universally valid definition of what a syllable is, and how we would infallibly recognize one just based on looking at the word?
There are, after all, so many combinations of consonants and vowels that make up our words, along with multiple ways to pronounce them; I'm certainly aware that hyphenation in automated texts doesn't always follow a reliable algorithm. Yet that's what you seem to be expecting.
I had a PhD friend who acknowledged he'd pronounced "epitome" as a three syllable word--"e pi tome"--that last section rhyming with "home"
He was very embarrassed to learn it was properly "e pi to me"
How would you propose that Excel would recognize whether it was three syllables or four, absent a database containing a complete dictionary?
