Comment by thaumasiotes

> Well I know what you mean, it's phonetic in the same way that a silent "ent" and "p" in "comptent" are "phonetic" in French

No, that's not what I said at all. Stipulating that the -ent and the -p- are silent in the French word comptent, there is also a French word comte of identical pronunciation, which limits the amount of phonetic information that the silent -ent and -p- could be carrying. (In fact, I believe the verb ending may be realized in certain cases, as the "silent N" ending the English indefinite article is often realized.)

The doubling of the "f" in truffle is nothing like that. The hypothetical word trufle would be pronounced differently. That difference wouldn't have anything to do with the F, but nevertheless it is indicated by the spelling; the spelling is conveying phonetic information.

This is also the case for the spelling -le. It represents an English sound. It is the spelling you would expect a trained speaker to produce for a novel word featuring that sound. You can't get any more phonetic than that.

> Wiktionary (not a definitive source I know, but there is no definitive source whatsoever about anything regarding the English language) does that say "truffle" rymes with /-ʌfəl/ with a schwa right there between the f and the l.

I'll return to this in a moment.

> The pronunciation of the word itself in Wiktionary is indicated with a syllable break rather than a schwa,

Just to be clear, the "syllable break" is the period between the f and the syllabic l. The symbol that tells you the l constitutes a syllable in itself is the small mark underneath it.

> which I would absolutely dispute

Why? That's how the word is pronounced.

> and indeed it looks like Cambridge dictionary puts a schwa there in addition to the syllable break.

We're back to the first point!

First, let's observe that there is absolutely no dispute over the idea that "truffle" is two syllables long. The presence of a syllable break is universally agreed.

Second, the reason wiktionary gives a more accurate rendition of the pronunciation is that it's mostly maintained by enthusiasts.

The convention of dictionaries is cited by wikipedia:

> Many dialects of English may use syllabic consonants in words such as sudden [ˈsʌd.n̩], awful [ˈɔːfɫ̩] and rhythm [ˈɹɪðm̩], which English dictionaries' respelling systems usually treat as realizations of underlying sequences of schwa and a consonant (for example, /ˈsʌd.ən/).

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant )

This is a convention, no less than the spelling "-le" is. It is advantageous in dictionaries, where you'd like each syllable to be more or less pronounceable on its own; the grapheme "-le" can't occur in isolation. The phonetic analysis is what I already told you it is, and what wikipedia repeats in that quote.

(In the case of sudden, the difference is crystal clear - if you pronounce it without detaching your tongue from the roof of your mouth between the /d/ and the /n/, you can only be producing a syllabic n. You can also do this test with subtle, but not with truffle, since /f/ doesn't share the same articulatory properties that /d/, /t/, and /l/ do.)