And if you actually want to use a (completely supererogatory) List::Util::sum() function:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"use List::Util qw(sum);
 ;;
 my @t = qw/aA bB cC dD eE fF/;
 my $x = sum map length, @t[0 .. 1];
 print $x;
"
4
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