Lots more vowels than one might normally expect to find, too.
Yeah even the less lengthy ones are short on vowels in welsh.
Cwm for instance. Great in scrabble though.
“Cwm” has a vowel—w. Even as late as when my mother was going to school, the vowel list ended “…and sometimes y and w.”
Even as late as when I was going to school, too.
Nope, they’re glides or semi-vowels, but not vowels.
In Welsh, “w” is most certainly a vowel.
And y is a vowel in “by”, “rhythm”, “happy” and “myrrh” but not in “yellow”. So 4 out of the 5 sounds represented by the letter y in English are vowels.
I don’t think the two posters above went to school in Wales.
Y and w do occasionally work as vowels, hence them being semi-vowels.
Y represents a semi-vowel [j] in “yellow” but a vowel * in “happy”.
In the case of y (but not w), occasional is an understatement. The vast majority of ys represent vowel sounds; its use to represent [j], despite being the canonical “y” sound, is less common.
And w is a vowel in cwm, and cwm is to be found in English dictionaries.
I can’t believe you people are arguing about vowel language in a family-friendly forum. :eek:
Note to Self
*Must find a way to work this one into a post. Perhaps in response to a certain prolific poster in the *Elections forum…
(bolding added)
:eek:
Some rather disturbing imagery there…
SS
When I was in school, w was never mentioned in the list of vowels. Sometimes y was where the list ended. So I sit corrected that it was once included commonly in the list. But I only know of two words (cwm and crwth, both borrowed words) are the only ones I know about that use w as a vowel in English.
I should correct this – that have no other vowels but “sometimes w.” My understanding that cow and saw each had one vowel and two consonants. But there are a lot of words that incorporate w as a vowel sound, combined with another vowel. Such as cow, or saw- ow and aw are actually single sounds. So… do they have two vowels each?
Hence the semi-vowel designation of w and y, I suppose.
“Semivowel” has nothing to do with orthography or with putting letters into classificatory boxes. It refers to the merely phonetic fact that y and w, even when they are being employed as consonants, have a fundamentally vowel-ish nature. “Wish” is essentially “oo-ish” spoken quickly and “you” is essentially “ee-oo”.
Wish is actually oo-ish? It doesn’t look oo-ish.
Yup!
The fundamentally vowelish nature, heh, is that for vowels you can make the sound without doing much with your tongue (it might go down at the back a bit but that’s often a natural consequence of the mouth position) and you can make the sound with just one mouth position. For y you have to move your tongue and for w you have to move your mouth twice so they’re not really vowels.
Neither obstruct the flow of air in any way, though, so they’re not really consonants either. Semi-vowel or glide is the most appropriate term but in English it’s just not necessary to know that level of detail most of the time; it’s OK for teachers to simplify things that students would be confused by, in no very useful way, at their level of understanding. In this thread we can explain in more detail than in a class of kids.
The classification does actually sort of make a difference when it comes to learning languages or replicating sounds that you find difficult if, say, you have a speech impediment. Vowels are easier for everyone than semi-vowels/glides, and consonants have varying levels of difficulty.
This is all for monopthongs - vowels that are just one vowel, like in cot (which, whether long or short, is one vowel). Dipthongs and tripthongs are two/three vowels put together; really, y and w are dipthongs, but they’re used so often in so many languages in a very, very abbreviated form that they have their own term.
Very good.