How to separate and count syllables in a word.

countingSyllables.java

// Regex function that return a list of items split by the pattern.
public List<String> getTokens(String pattern)
	{
		ArrayList<String> tokens = new ArrayList<String>();
		Pattern tokSplitter = Pattern.compile(pattern);
		Matcher m = tokSplitter.matcher(text);
		
		while (m.find()) {
			tokens.add(m.group());
		}
		
		return tokens;
	}

// Helper function to count syllables
public int countSyllables(String word)
	{
		int numSyllables = 0;
		boolean newSyllable = true;
		String vowels = "aeiouy";
		char[] cArray = word.toCharArray();
		
		for (int i = 0; i < cArray.length; i++) {
			
			// dealing with lone 'e's and 'e's in the end of the word.
			if (i == cArray.length-1 && Character.toLowerCase(cArray[i]) == 'e' && 
		       newSyllable && numSyllables > 0) {
				numSyllables--;
			}
			// if the syllable's character is a vowel. Then it stops and count as a syllable.
			if (newSyllable && vowels.indexOf(Character.toLowerCase(cArray[i])) >= 0) {
				newSyllable = false;
				numSyllables++;
			}
			// if the current character is NOT a vowel, starts the new syllable. 
			else if (vowels.indexOf(Character.toLowerCase(cArray[i])) < 0) {
				newSyllable = true;
			}
		}
	    return numSyllables;
	}

public int getNumSyllables()
	{		
		// get a list of words. 
		List<String> tokens = getTokens("[a-zA-Z]+");
		int totalSyllables = 0;
		for (String word : tokens) {
			totalSyllables += countSyllables(word);
		}
        return totalSyllables;
	}