To ascertain the merits of different phonetic syllabification algorithms, their performance was compared and contrasted both against each other, using lexical analysis, and against human syllable boundary placement, using first or second syllable repetition of a bi- syllable non-word. Perception results show that second syllable repetition showed far greater consistency than that of the first suggesting that the former condition is a more accurate measure of boundary placement. Comparison of human and algorithm syllable boundary placement showed high categorial accuracy for the Dell and Laporte algorithms whilst suggesting the use of multiple concurrent algorithms to produce a measure of confidence for each syllable boundary judgement.