# Common words where W is a vowel **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [April 28, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052 "2011-04-28T16:41:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/21 "2011-04-28T21:18:20Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > 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.” Of course. But kids learn to associate sounds with symbols. That’s what I meant by “learn sounds”. You know, the typical “A is for apple.” I think the A E I O U concept is good when teaching reading. I think. That’s how I learned…and that’s how my son figured it out. Did you guys do something like [this](http://www.readinghorizons.com/images/5-phonetic-skills.png) or was I outdated in the 80s? ☹ I think ai is a diphthong…ght is a diphthong. god, whatever happened to the ‘a says its name and i is silent’ in ‘rain’? I can see how teaching vowel combinations (ai) is useful since kids will have to learn how to spell. But how is that different than ‘bane’? ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/22 "2011-04-28T21:24:30Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Of course. But kids learn to associate sounds with symbols. That’s what I meant by “learn sounds”. You know, the typical “A is for apple.” > > I think the A E I O U concept is good when teaching reading. I think. That’s how I learned…and that’s how my son figured it out. Did you guys do something like [this](http://www.readinghorizons.com/images/5-phonetic-skills.png) or was I outdated in the 80s? ☹ > > I think ai is a diphthong…ght is a diphthong. > > god, whatever happened to the ‘a says its name and i is silent’ in ‘rain’? I can see how teaching vowel combinations (ai) is useful since kids will have to learn how to spell. But how is that different than ‘bane’? _Ght_ is not a diphthong. Again: The term _diphthong_ refers to _sounds_. It’s a gliding monosyllable sound that beings at the articulatory position of one vowel (properly, one _monophthong) and ends at the articulatory postition of another. The sound of long i, as in **I** _ am Skald the Rh_y_mer\*\*, is a dipththong. So are the sounds at the ends of _toy_, _bee_, _thou_, and _day_. _Ght_ is never used to represent the long i by itself, but only after an i. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/23 "2011-04-28T21:25:32Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > 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! I’m sure by the end of this post… > [@](#): > > Long \*o \*is a diphthong. The sound at the end of _mow_ is the same as _hoe_, _dough_, _so_, _sew_, and _beau_. What?!? My lips purse a bit when I say “mow”. Like mow a lawn. :eek: And I say all of those words a little differently. > [@](#): > > 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_. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack: Glad I already know how to read and this isn’t my area. > [@](#): > > 😕 > > 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. I don’t say ‘incorrect’. I just say ‘accent’. I’m from the [midwest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:General_American.png). People on TV sound like me. (: ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/24 "2011-04-28T21:26:41Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > _Ght_ is not a diphthong. > > Again: The term _diphthong_ refers to _sounds_. It’s a gliding monosyllable sound that beings at the articulatory position of one vowel (properly, one _monophthong) and ends at the articulatory postition of another. The sound of long i, as in **I** _ am Skald the Rh_y_mer\*\*, is a dipththong. So are the sounds at the ends of _toy_, _bee_, _thou_, and _day_. > > _Ght_ is never used to represent the long i by itself, but only after an i. -ight, sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/25 "2011-04-28T22:06:59Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > -ight, sorry. _ight_ isn’t a diphthong either. A diphthong is not a collection of letters; it is a sort of sound. _I_ and _eye_ are pronounced the same; that sound is a diphthong. So are the sounds at the end of _say, see, so, sue_ and _soy_. You are, I think, confusing the idea of diphthongs with that of _digraphs_. I was going to go on a long boring explanation of the difference between the two terms, but I got irritated with myself and had to kick my own ass. :: limps off, wimpering :: ETA: And so we’re clear, I wasn’t calling you an asshole above. I don’t do stealthy insults. Against the Rhymer code. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/26 "2011-04-28T22:11:52Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > god, whatever happened to the ‘a says its name and i is silent’ in ‘rain’? Personally, I feel that “rules” like that can be helpful for native speakers in becoming literate (because they already know the language and its sounds). But the problem for those learning a language is that descriptions like that seem to suggest that writing drives the language–that the writing systems pre-exists the speaking. Such descriptions lead to incorrect notions of the vowel system of English in particular, which is large, complex and has many subtleties, the mastery of which competency depends upon. One common example is to describe the vowels as being either "long’ or “short,” in a binary way (I.e., “long A, short A, long E, short E,” etc.) as though English had only 10 vowels. This can help native speaking children decode the written language when they get stuck at times, but if they actually assimilated this concept in earnestness, they’d go crazy, because it can’t be used to describe the four vowel sounds in as found in these four words: \*father cat hate a \* > [@CitizenPained](#): > > I can see how teaching vowel combinations (ai) is useful since kids will have to learn how to spell. But how is that different than ‘bane’? If you portray the vowel in a word like “pain” as a “combination,” you can end up with mispronunciation by those who don’t have a native familiarity with the word, because it’s really one sound (albeit a diphthong), not a “combination” of two distinct sounds, (even though we use two symbols to represent that one sound). I feel that these kinds of “rules” for native speakers are indeed useful, as a kind of very short-term “crutch” or bridge, when the basic vocabulary that they already know is still largely unfamiliar as represented in print. I also feel, however, it is precisely that native familiarity which limits the usefulness of such rules, because once a child gains a certain basic level of reading competency, sheer exposure (by pleasurable, free-time reading), ingrains those kinds of orthographic “rules” subconsciously anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/27 "2011-04-28T22:14:18Z")
NM ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/28 "2011-04-28T22:36:05Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > NM Nope, there’s no vowel there. Maybe nwm might work, like cwm. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/29 "2011-04-28T23:41:59Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > _ight_ isn’t a diphthong either. A diphthong is not a collection of letters; it is a sort of sound. _I_ and _eye_ are pronounced the same; that sound is a diphthong. So are the sounds at the end of _say, see, so, sue_ and _soy_. > > You are, I think, confusing the idea of diphthongs with that of _digraphs_. I was going to go on a long boring explanation of the difference between the two terms, but I got irritated with myself and had to kick my own ass. > > :: limps off, wimpering :: > > ETA: And so we’re clear, I wasn’t calling you an asshole above. I don’t do stealthy insults. Against the Rhymer code. igh ? I say “I” and “eye” differently. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/30 "2011-04-28T23:58:12Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Personally, I feel that “rules” like that can be helpful for native speakers in becoming literate (because they already know the language and its sounds). But the problem for those learning a language is that descriptions like that seem to suggest that writing drives the language–that the writing systems pre-exists the speaking. Such descriptions lead to incorrect notions of the vowel system of English in particular, which is large, complex and has many subtleties, the mastery of which competency depends upon. > > One common example is to describe the vowels as being either "long’ or “short,” in a binary way (I.e., “long A, short A, long E, short E,” etc.) as though English had only 10 vowels. This can help native speaking children decode the written language when they get stuck at times, but if they actually assimilated this concept in earnestness, they’d go crazy, because it can’t be used to describe the four vowel sounds in as found in these four words: > > \*father > cat > hate > a > \* > > If you portray the vowel in a word like “pain” as a “combination,” you can end up with mispronunciation by those who don’t have a native familiarity with the word, because it’s really one sound (albeit a diphthong), not a “combination” of two distinct sounds, (even though we use two symbols to represent that one sound). Combination of vowels: I guess I thought A and I were two different vowels. I get what you’re saying. Sounds. And yet somehow I didn’t know that _eye_ and _I_ were the same thing. I suppose it’s the same sound…my mouth moves differently, though. I’m so exhausted (sorry, It’s been 30+ hours without sleep) that I’m probably not making any sense. > [@](#): > > **I feel that these kinds of “rules” for native speakers are indeed useful, as a kind of very short-term “crutch” or bridge, when the basic vocabulary that they already know is still largely unfamiliar as represented in print. I also feel, however, it is precisely that native familiarity which limits the usefulness of such rules, because once a child gains a certain basic level of reading competency, sheer exposure (by pleasurable, free-time reading), ingrains those kinds of orthographic “rules” subconsciously anyway.** Agreed…but I’ve seen reading systems where they do group sounds. So you’d have: “ai” vain bain rain lain “ould” should would could “og” bog fog dog hog “ar” car bar star I learned it with the photo I showed - symbols telling me what was a short a versus a long a and what was silent. We learned the rules at the same time. The phonics - er, digraphs- like ph, sh, ch, ck, etc., would be underlined. (We called those sounds phonics…it stuck in my head.) After awhile, it just became obvious. I was reading C.S. Lewis by first grade with ease. I keep using typical teacher/educator/parent language in here. _Short vowels_ and\* long vowels.\* :smack: Sorry. 26 years of habit. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/31 "2011-04-29T00:11:07Z")
I dislike the A E I O U thing they teach kids. It was obvious to me in kindergarten that it doesn’t accurately describe how English works, but I didn’t know any better at the time. I wonder how much training elementary school teachers get in basic linguistics. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/32 "2011-04-29T00:12:14Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > igh ? > > I say “I” and “eye” differently. 😕 I 'ave something in my eiiieeyeeeie! ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/33 "2011-04-29T00:47:03Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > Nope, there’s no vowel there. Maybe nwm might work, like cwm. Can I just say: I’ve known about the existence of “cwm” (def: a half-open steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside, formed by glacial erosion) for many years, but assumed I’d never see it used in print except 1) in reference to a word that uses ‘w’ as a vowel, or 2) in pangrams like “Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz.” However, just the other day, I was reading an excerpt from Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, and encountered this word in _actual context_. I got really excited and showed my SO, who was not nearly as impressed. To the OP: yes, “owl” contains a diphthong, usually considered to be one syllable in most dialects. But are you ready to have your mind blown? The phoneme “r” when not rolled (“rrrruffles have rrrridges”) is a vowel. Is your mind blown? ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/34 "2011-04-29T00:50:43Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > 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). “Cwm”, although basically a Welsh word, is listed in English dictionaries, signifying that, like “bonjour”, “pianissimo”, “ersatz”, “toreador”, or “aloha”, it at least has a green card. (The editors of the original Oxford English Dictionary tried to popularize the word “denizen” for such cases.) ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/35 "2011-04-29T01:09:53Z")
> [@Randy\_Seltzer](#): > > Can I just say: I’ve known about the existence of “cwm” (def: a half-open steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside, formed by glacial erosion) for many years, but assumed I’d never see it used in print except 1) in reference to a word that uses ‘w’ as a vowel, or 2) in pangrams like “Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz.” > > However, just the other day, I was reading an excerpt from Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, and encountered this word in _actual context_. I got really excited and showed my SO, who was not nearly as impressed. > To the OP: yes, “owl” contains a diphthong, usually considered to be one syllable in most dialects. But are you ready to have your mind blown? The phoneme “r” when not rolled (“rrrruffles have rrrridges”) is a vowel. > > Is your mind blown? I’ve avoided reading that book up until now, but if it has that word in it, in context, I may reconsider. For what it’s worth, I suspect my spouse would have been quite stoked, but we’ve been known to have long discussions about the semicolon, so it’s not too amazing. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/36 "2011-04-29T01:19:26Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > I dislike the A E I O U thing they teach kids. It was obvious to me in kindergarten that it doesn’t accurately describe how English works, but I didn’t know any better at the time. I wonder how much training elementary school teachers get in basic linguistics. None. And kids know it doesn’t work every time. How would you teach children to read? ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/37 "2011-04-29T01:23:37Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > I 'ave something in my eiiieeyeeeie! :dubious: I - jaw drop down, more like, eye-yih, but quickly if at the beginning of a sentence eye - mouth open in a sort of horizontal fashion (feel free to tell me the technical lingo), like _aye_ No wonder people dislike me at first meeting. : ( ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/38 "2011-04-29T02:09:10Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > 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. I may be the only person in the English-speaking world who views it this way\*, but the fact that it has the _wuh_ sound is what makes “w” primarily a vowel. _“Wuh”_ is nothing more than a drawn-out _“oo.”_ Just as _“yuh”_ is a drawn-out _“ee”_, making “y” primarily a vowel as well. This occurred to me some twenty years ago when I was teaching the speech synthesizer board on my wife’s computer how to pronounce some words that were missing from the software’s built-in dictionary. \*My position is that a consonant is a sound particle that cannot be fully voiced without being paired with a sound particle that _is_ fully voiced (and I say “sound particle” because “phoneme” feels stilted and possibly incorrectly used when I use it in this argument). ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/39 "2011-04-29T02:11:26Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Agreed…but I’ve seen reading systems where they do group sounds. > > So you’d have: > > “ai” > vain > bain > rain > lain > > “ould” > > should > would > could > bog > fog > dog > hog And these are effective, I believe, because really the two letters in the first two groups are cognitively processed as one symbol, to create a repertoire of “sight words” for the beginning reader. They aren’t analyzed as two distinct things. (I think it’s important that the vowel (sounds) represented by such lists are pure (stressed), and not part of multi-syllabic words like “captain” etc., and also that they use the same coda for each item–they’re using rime) Once the developing reader has a large enough basic repertoire, s/he then only very occasionally draws upon these patterns to comprehend words in terms of rime. This above list, for example, isn’t what helps the reader decode something like “sh **ould** er” or “y **og** urt.” A list which previously presented to the learner _ **ould** _ and _ **og** _ as letters which somehow intrinsically “make sounds” doesn’t trip up the learning reader because higher level cognitive processing is engaged using whole language and native familiarity. Otherwise, we’d never learn to read competently. Even though just about all teachers present letters to kids as things that “make sounds,” they’re too intelligent to let that prevent them from learning how to read correctly. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/40 "2011-04-29T02:17:02Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > god, whatever happened to the ‘a says its name and i is silent’ in ‘rain’? I can see how teaching vowel combinations (ai) is useful since kids will have to learn how to spell. But how is that different than ‘bane’? Oh, that’s easy. The “a” is the little kid vowel who lives in the house. The “n” is the back door of the house. When Mrs. “e” comes to visit, she knocks at the back door (because it’s the fifties, and people were informal about those kinds of things) and the “a” kid says his name. Or, there’s the Tom Lehrer approach: _Who can turn a man into a mane? Who can turn a ban into a bane?_ 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052.md?page=3)