Missed the really obvious one, IMO, and the one my brother always cited when telling a teacher that W was sometimes a vowel: owl.
Owl is a two-syllable word, so you then ask what the vowel in the second syllable is, and your choices are the L or the W.
I suspect that this is because W or “double-u” was originally a double U, and so the word was really ouul, and pronounced ou-ul, or “ow-wul”. But I could be wrong about that.
I am not wrong, however, about owl being an incredibly common word where the W is obviously a vowel.
“Owl” is not a two-syllable word in most dialects. (Indeed, if I were an expert dialectician, I could probably make a fair guess at where you live based on the fact that you say that.) And the connection between w and “double u” is much more complicated than that. The usual Middle English spelling of the word is “oule”, pronounced, approximately, “oh-leh”.
ugh, I hate that “sometimes y and w” crap in teaching. W is a diphthong, which is like a ‘helper vowel’. “W” can adjust how we pronounce vowels.
Traditional A E I O U vowels have specific purposes that are set apart from dipthongs. Sometimes -ow can sound like ‘ouch’ and sometimes it can sound like a long o. (Cowl v. crow) But you will never see “w” by itself acting as a “vowel” unless it’s borrowed from another language. It just blends two vowel sounds in the same syllable. I highly doubt people with ‘accents’ pay attention to the IPA.
It confuses children to say that it is a vowel imho. In my day, we just called it phonics. When my son is reading and he comes across something that doesn’t ‘sound’ right, I remind him that we used to pronounce things differently or I remind him of the phonics rule.
Sometimes he uses a very literal phonetic pronunciation of a word he doesn’t know and then says the entire sentence in fake British-like accent or just reads the word before it and figures it out. Then he says English is stupid. He can actually blend consonants and vowels faster in Hebrew than in English and he doesn’t even know what he’s reading.
My son’s teachers don’t even TEACH VOWELS. It frustrates me. They do ending sounds and blending. So he gets lists with endings like:
A dipththong is not a “helper vowel,” amigo. From the *Enyclopedia Britannica:
And yis frequently a vowel (and here I am using vowel to mean "letter representing a monophthongal or diphthongal) sound. Take the fourth word in the previous sentence, for instance. Y is often used to represent the sound of short i, as in *Pennsylvania. *Note that the i in that word is being used to represent the consonantal sound (well, glide) of the y in yes.
I can’t think of any English words in which w is used as a vowel by itself (there may be some in the article but I’m too lazy to click that). Rather is the second half of a digraph representing a dipthong. But the letters we normally think of as vowels can all be used that way as well. Think of the i in rain, the a in boat, the *u *in thousand, the e in piece, or the o in Tao.
Bear in mind also that l, m, and r can all be vocalic. Also bear in mind that the common A E I O U framework you refer to leaves out some of the common monophthongs (the “pure” vowels which have but one articulatory position). American English uses about 9 of those, not five.
I think that in words where “ew” is pronounced /ju:/ (e.g., “ewe” and “few”) the “w” represents a vowel sound, because the /j/ corresponds with the letter “e” and the /u:/ with the letter “w”.
In the words row and bow (whether they’re being pronounced to rhyme with cow or blow), the w serves the same purpose as the a in boat or the u in out: that is, it indicates a diphthongal pronounciation (aʊ and oʊ). I can’t see a good reason consider it any less a vowel in those contexts than the a or u.
I think the confusion arises from the notion (reinforced by A E I O U scheme) that there are 5 “short” vowels, 5 “long” vowels, and no more. But even a moment’s thought will bring up the sounds of toy and thou.
If I make myself pronounce “Owl” with two syllables, the second vowel seems to me to be the L. Just like the vowel in the second syllable of “rhythm” or “chasm” is the M.
You’re being pithily witty, of course, but I feel obliged to point out that the only consonants which follow w in contemporary English pronunciation (without there being a change of syllable) are h and r. The h is silent nowadays (unless you’re Stewie Griffin, while the w is silent when followed by r (as in, obviously, wrong.) So I’m not sure that counts.
It might be noted that w is never pronounced consonantally at the end of a word. What that means I don’t know. Well, actually I came up with what I thought was a devastating argument but then I forgot what it was. Something about the letter h.
I was in six year old language mode. The diphthong is not a diphthong without a traditional vowel.
I also tell my son that double consonants protect the vowel. :o So “little” is not litle.
I don’t disagree. I was just repeating what kids often hear - the ‘sometimes y’ or ‘sometimes y and w’. “Y” says ‘yuh’ or ‘i’ or ‘e’.
Consider teaching methods. Is that how you learned how to read?
Kids start like this: Learn alphabet. Learn the sounds. Blend sounds. C-A-T. Then it’s C-A-T-E. Then it’s C-A-I-N. Then it’s plurals, phonics (er, diphthongs).
I understand the concept of vowels, pronunciation, and open mouthed sounds and such. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to distinguish between traditional vowels and…the rest of youz.
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I don’t know what you’re trying to lecture me about. I just gave a presentation to ESL teachers on the different sounds a plural verb form has. (ez, es, ess, iz, etc). I get what you’re saying re: vowels.
I’m talking about A E I O U as a starting point for 5 year olds. Most of the nuances you describe they’ll pick up without having been taught. Anyway, Cecil could’ve done a better job of explaining that to someone who wasn’t a linguistics or English major…or super nerd.
edit: Now I keep thinking about thong underwear.
I won’t scowl at you, even though you’re downright wrong–I mean hey, join the crowd!
(If I’m missing your point, sorry!)
And here’s an honest non-snarky question: my mouth is the same shape at the beginning and end of the word “Wow!” Is the initial w a consonant and the terminal w a vowel? Because that seems weird to me.
I’m not lecturing. Lecturing requires emotional involvement in the subject, which requires empathy, which I only have for Memphians, which you are not.
You wrote
That’s not right. It’s hugely wrong. It’s like saying The United States is a democratic republic, which means it is illegal not to vote in this country. So far from the mark that it renders everything else you wrote suspect.
I’m not claiming to be a phoneticist or an expert. I’m sure that I’ve written remarks far stupider than that on this board at one time or another.
If you mean that I should have included s in my list, you are correct; I realized that as I was typing this response. But I can think of no other times when w is followed by any other consonant except when it is acting as a vowel (i.e., as the second letter in a digraph representing a vowel sound). If you can, please tell me; I’m always pleased to learn something.
Get a mirror. Say wow. Say ow (as in the sound indicating pain). Say wowed. Say thou.
Then get back to me. Remember, incidentally, that the lips are not the only parts of the vocal system involved in making sounds.
Yep. I could’ve been clearer, though, so don’t slap yourself. I also should have noted that when w is followed by s, as in cows, it’s being used as as vowel. And then I should have said something about l. Honestly, that post was made of fail.
Do you mean that ‘w’ is never just ‘w’ at the end of the word? it’s always -ow, -aw, -iw or some such? Still, it has the *wuh *sound, so this is why I hate teaching kids that W is a vowel because they will start to confuse it with A E I O U. Better to teach groups, like:
-ow
-ar
-ew
etc.
How about “mow”? “O” has the long sound but “w” is still pretty pronounced.
I’m starting to wonder if I have an accent. When I look at the IPA pronunciations in the dictionary, I’m like, huh?It’s said that way? IPA gives me a headache, anyway, since I have a hard time distinguishing between nuances. (I’m deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other.)
Humans learn to speak long before they recognize letters.
The problem with this whole discussion is the conflation of written symbols (“W” etc.) with the sounds English speakers make. It’s meaningless to say that “W” is a “vowel” until you make the distinction clear that it is a symbol that may or may not represent vowel production in some way.
Calling a letter a “vowel” is just a convention of convenience for teaching spelling (to native speakers, mostly).
To say that “W is vowel” SIMPLY because we sometimes use it to represent a diphthong is meaningless. You might as well say that “G” and “H” are vowels, too, because we use them to represent the vowel sound in the word “straight.”
In those cases the w is silent; it’s the h being pronounced. Anyway, I was joking. Fully 27% of my posts contain an intentional absurdity. (56% contain unintentional ones.) That’s why 98% of the board hates me. Give it time and you will too!
Long *o *is a diphthong. The sound at the end of mow is the same as hoe, dough, so, sew, and beau. And that is not a consonant. That sound begins with the articulatory position of the schwa and flows to the articulatory position of the u in pull. (I think. Too lazy to check.) It’s a single sound nonetheless, but it is no more a consonant than the long a of day, the long e of key, or the long i of thigh.
Everyone has an accent. There are people who claim that one English accent is correct and all the others are incorrect; the techncial term for them is assholes.
When my son is reading and he comes across something that doesn’t ‘sound’ right, I remind him that we used to pronounce things differently or I remind him of the phonics rule.
I was in six year old language mode. The diphthong is not a diphthong without a traditional vowel.
