Avowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in thevocal tract.[1] Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being theconsonant. Vowels vary in quality,loudness, andlength. They are usuallyvoiced and are closely involved inprosodic variation such astone,intonation andstress. Thenucleus, or "center", of asyllable typically consists of a vowel sound (though this isnot always the case).
The wordvowel comes from theLatin wordvocalis, meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice).[2] In English, the wordvowel is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them:⟨a⟩,⟨e⟩,⟨i⟩,⟨o⟩,⟨u⟩, and sometimes⟨y⟩, and⟨w⟩.[3]
An idealized schematic of vowel space, based on the formants ofDaniel Jones andJohn Wells pronouncing the cardinal vowels of the IPA. The scale is logarithmic. The grey range is where F2 would be less than F1, which by definition is impossible.[a] is an extra-low central vowel. Phonemically it may be front or back, depending on the language. Rounded vowels that are front in tongue position are front-central in formant space, while unrounded vowels that are back in articulation are back-central in formant space. Thus[yɯ] have perhaps similar F1 and F2 values to the high central vowels[ɨʉ], being distinguished by rounding (F3); similarly[øɤ] vs central[ɘɵ] and[œʌ] vs central[ɜɞ].
There are two complementary definitions of vowel, onephonetic and the otherphonological.
In thephonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as theEnglish "ah"/ɑː/ or "oh"/oʊ/, produced with an openvocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth),frictionless andcontinuant.[4] There is no significant build-up of air pressure at any point above theglottis. This contrasts withconsonants, such as the English "sh"[ʃ], which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract.
In the phonological definition, a vowel is defined assyllabic, the sound that forms thepeak of a syllable.[5] A phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is asemivowel. Inoral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak (nucleus) of many or all syllables, whereasconsonants form theonset and (in languages that have them)coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as thesyllabic (i.e., vocalic)l in the English wordtable[ˈtʰeɪ.bl̩] (when not considered to have a weak vowel sound:[ˈtʰeɪ.bəl]) or the syllabicr in theSerbo-Croatian wordvrt[ʋr̩̂t] "garden".
The phonetic definition of "vowel" (i.e. a sound produced with no constriction in the vocal tract) does not always match the phonological definition (i.e. a sound that forms the peak of a syllable).[6] Theapproximants[j] and[w] illustrate this: both are without much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but they occur at the onset of syllables (e.g. in "yet" and "wet") which suggests that phonologically they are consonants. A similar debate arises over whether a word likebird in arhotic dialect has anr-colored vowel/ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant/ɹ̩/. The American linguistKenneth Pike (1943) suggested the terms "vocoid" for a phonetic vowel and "vowel" for a phonological vowel,[7] so using this terminology,[j] and[w] are classified as vocoids but not vowels. However, Maddieson and Emmory (1985) demonstrated from a range of languages that semivowels are produced with a narrower constriction of the vocal tract than vowels, and so may be considered consonants on that basis.[8] Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic /l/ intable or the syllabic nasals inbutton andrhythm.
X-rays of Daniel Jones'[i,u,a,ɑ]The original vowel quadrilateral, from Jones' articulation. The vowel trapezoid of the modern IPA, and at the top of this article, is a simplified rendition of this diagram. The bullets are the cardinal vowel points. (A parallel diagram covers the front and central rounded and back unrounded vowels.) The cells indicate the ranges of articulation that could reasonably be transcribed with those cardinal vowel letters,[i,e,ɛ,a,ɑ,ɔ,o,u,ɨ], and non-cardinal[ə]. If a language distinguishes fewer than these vowel qualities,[e,ɛ] could be merged to ⟨e⟩,[o,ɔ] to ⟨o⟩,[a,ɑ] to ⟨a⟩, etc. If a language distinguishes more, ⟨ɪ⟩ could be added where the ranges of[i,e,ɨ,ə] intersect, ⟨ʊ⟩ where[u,o,ɨ,ə] intersect, and ⟨ɐ⟩ where[ɛ,ɔ,a,ɑ,ə] intersect.
The traditional view of vowel production, reflected for example in the terminology and presentation of theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, is one ofarticulatory features that determine a vowel'squality as distinguishing it from other vowels.Daniel Jones developed thecardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongueheight (vertical dimension), tonguebackness (horizontal dimension) androundedness (lip articulation). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPAvowel diagram on the right. There are additional features of vowel quality, such as thevelum position (nasality), type ofvocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.
This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928. Peter Ladefoged has said that "early phoneticians... thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, but they were not. They were actually describing formant frequencies."[9] (See below.) The IPAHandbook concedes that "the vowel quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction and not a direct mapping of tongue position."[10]
Nonetheless, the concept that vowel qualities are determined primarily by tongue position and lip rounding continues to be used in pedagogy, as it provides an intuitive explanation of how vowels are distinguished.
Theoretically, vowel height refers to the vertical position of either the tongue or the jaw (depending on the model) relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of thejaw. In practice, however, it refers to the firstformant (lowest resonance of the voice), abbreviated F1, which is associated with the height of the tongue. There are two terms commonly applied to refer to two degrees of vowel height: inclose vowels, also known ashigh vowels, such as[i] and[u], the first formant is consistent with the tongue being positioned close to the palate, high in the mouth, whereas inopen vowels, also known aslow vowels, such as[a], F1 is consistent with the jaw being open and the tongue being positioned low in the mouth. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value: the higher the frequency of the first formant, the lower (more open) the vowel.[a] InJohn Esling's usage, wherefronted vowels are distinguished in height by the position of the jaw rather than the tongue, only the terms 'open' and 'close' are used, as 'high' and 'low' refer to the position of the tongue.
TheInternational Phonetic Alphabet has letters for six degrees of vowel height for full vowels (plus the reduced mid vowel[ə]), but it is extremely unusual for a language to distinguish this many degrees without other attributes. The IPA letters distinguish (sorted according to height, with the top-most one being the highest and the bottom-most being the lowest):
The letters ⟨e,ø,ɘ,ɵ,ɤ,o⟩ are defined as close-mid but are commonly used for truemid vowels. If more precision is required, true mid vowels may be written with a lowering or raising diacritic: ⟨e̞,ɘ̞,ø̞,ɵ̞,ɤ̞,o̞⟩ or ⟨ɛ̝œ̝ɜ̝ɞ̝ʌ̝ɔ̝⟩.
TheKensiu language, spoken in Malaysia and Thailand, is highly unusual in contrasting true mid vowels with both close-mid and open-mid vowels, without any additional parameters such as length, roundness or ATR. The front vowels,/iɪee̞ɛ/, along with open/a/, make a six-way height distinction; this holds even for the nasal vowels. A few varieties ofGerman have been reported to have five contrastive vowel heights that are independent of length or other parameters. For example, theBavarian dialect ofAmstetten has thirteen long vowels, which have been analyzed as four vowel heights (close, close-mid, mid, open-mid) each among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, along with an open vowel for a fifth height:/ieɛ̝ɛ/,/yøœ̝œ/,/uoɔ̝ɔ/,/a/. Apart from the aforementionedKensiu language, no other language is known to contrast more than four degrees of vowel height.
The parameter of vowel height appears to be the primary cross-linguistic feature of vowels in that allspoken languages that have been researched till now use height as a contrastive feature. No other parameter, even backness or rounding (see below), is used in all languages. Some languages havevertical vowel systems in which at least at a phonemic level, only height is used to distinguish vowels.
Idealistic tongue positions ofcardinal front vowels with highest point indicated
Vowel backness is named for the position of the tongue during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. As with vowel height, however, it isdefined by a formant of the voice, in this case the second, F2, not by the position of the tongue. In front vowels, such as[i], the frequency of F2 is relatively high, which generally corresponds to a position of the tongue forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as[u], F2 is low, consistent with the tongue being positioned towards the back of the mouth.
TheInternational Phonetic Alphabet defines five degrees of vowel backness (sorted according to backness, with the top-most one being the front-most back and the bottom-most being the back-most):
To them may be added front-central and back-central, corresponding to the vertical lines separating central from front and back vowel spaces in several IPA diagrams. However,front-central andback-central may also be used as terms synonymous withnear-front andnear-back. No language is known to contrast more than three degrees of backness nor is there a language that contrasts front with near-front vowels nor back with near-back ones.
Although some English dialects have vowels at five degrees of backness, there is no known language that distinguishes five degrees of backness without additional differences in height or rounding.
Roundedness is named after the rounding of the lips in some vowels. Because lip rounding is easily visible, vowels may be commonly identified as rounded based on the articulation of the lips. Acoustically, rounded vowels are identified chiefly by a decrease in F2, although F1 is also slightly decreased.
In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels rather than a distinctive feature. Usually, the higher a back vowel, the more intense is the rounding. However, in some languages, roundedness is independent from backness, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), mostUralic languages (Estonian has a rounding contrast for/o/ and front vowels),Turkic languages (with a rounding distinction for front vowels and/u/), andVietnamese with back unrounded vowels.
Nonetheless, even in those languages there is usually some phonetic correlation between rounding and backness: front rounded vowels tend to be more front-central than front, and back unrounded vowels tend to be more back-central than back. Thus, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their position in formant space.
Different kinds oflabialization are possible. In mid to high rounded back vowels the lips are generally protruded ("pursed") outward, a phenomenon known asendolabial rounding because the insides of the lips are visible, whereas in mid to high rounded front vowels the lips are generally "compressed" with the margins of the lips pulled in and drawn towards each other, a phenomenon known asexolabial rounding. However, not all languages follow that pattern.Japanese/u/, for example, is an exolabial (compressed) back vowel, and sounds quite different from an English endolabial/u/.Swedish andNorwegian are the only two known languages in which the feature is contrastive; they have both exo- and endo-labialclose front vowels andclose central vowels, respectively. In many phonetic treatments, both are considered types of rounding, but some phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of a single phenomenon and posit instead three independent features ofrounded (endolabial),compressed (exolabial), and unrounded. The lip position of unrounded vowels may also be classified separately asspread andneutral (neither rounded nor spread).[12] Others distinguish compressed rounded vowels, in which the corners of the mouth are drawn together, from compressed unrounded vowels, in which the lips are compressed but the corners remain apart as in spread vowels.
Front, raised and retracted are the three articulatory dimensions of vowel space. Open and close refer to the jaw, not the tongue.
The conception of the tongue moving in two directions, high–low and front–back, is not supported by articulatory evidence and does not clarify how articulation affects vowel quality. Vowels may instead be characterized by the three directions of movement of the tongue from its neutral position: front (forward), raised (upward and back), and retracted (downward and back). Front vowels ([i,e,ɛ] and, to a lesser extent[ɨ,ɘ,ɜ,æ], etc.), can be secondarily qualified as close or open, as in the traditional conception, but this refers to jaw rather than tongue position. In addition, rather than there being a unitary category of back vowels, the regrouping positsraised vowels, where the body of the tongue approaches the velum ([u,o,ɨ], etc.), andretracted vowels, where the root of the tongue approaches the pharynx ([ɑ,ɔ], etc.):
Nasalization occurs when air escapes through the nose. Vowels are often nasalised under the influence of neighbouring nasal consonants, as inEnglishhand[hæ̃nd].Nasalised vowels, however, should not be confused withnasal vowels. The latter refers to vowels that are distinct from their oral counterparts, as inFrench/ɑ/ vs./ɑ̃/.[14]
Innasal vowels, thevelum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth.Polish andPortuguese also contrast nasal and oral vowels.
Voicing describes whether thevocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages have only voiced vowels, but severalNative American languages, such asCheyenne andTotonac, have both voiced and devoiced vowels in complementary distribution. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. In Japanese and inQuebec French, vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced.Keres is disputed to have phonemic voiceless vowels but no language is confirmed to have them phonemically.
Modal voice,creaky voice, andbreathy voice (murmured vowels) arephonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, they co-occur withtone or stress distinctions; in theMon language, vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In such cases, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used forphonemic contrast. The combination of phonetic cues (phonation, tone, stress) is known asregister orregister complex.
Tenseness is used to describe the opposition oftense vowels vs.lax vowels. This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this.[citation needed]
Unlike the other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainlyGermanic languages, e.g.German), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g.Spanish) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way.[citation needed]
One may distinguish the English tense vs. lax vowels roughly, with its spelling. Tense vowels usually occur in words with the finalsilent⟨e⟩, as inmate. Lax vowels occur in words without the silent⟨e⟩, such asmat. InAmerican English, lax vowels[ɪ,ʊ,ɛ,ʌ,æ] do not appear in stressed open syllables.[15]
In traditional grammar,long vowels vs.short vowels are more commonly used, compared totense andlax. The two sets of terms are used interchangeably by some because the features are concomitant in some varieties of English.[clarification needed] In mostGermanic languages, lax vowels can only occur inclosed syllables. Therefore, they are also known aschecked vowels, whereas the tense vowels are calledfree vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable.[citation needed]
Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa, thePacific Northwest, and scattered other languages such as ModernMongolian.[16] The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles the tense-lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. Those vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract.
A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occurs in theNortheast Caucasian languages and theKhoisan languages. They might be calledepiglottalized since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis.
The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in thestrident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where thelarynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or thearytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords.
The termspharyngealized,epiglottalized,strident, andsphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably.
Some languages, such as English and Russian, have what are called 'reduced', 'weak' or 'obscure' vowels in some unstressed positions. These do not correspond one-to-one with the vowel sounds that occur in stressed position (so-called 'full' vowels), and they tend to be mid-centralized in comparison, as well as having reduced rounding or spreading. The IPA has long provided two letters for obscure vowels, mid ⟨ə⟩ and lower ⟨ɐ⟩, neither of which are defined for rounding. Dialects of English may have up to four phonemic reduced vowels:/ɐ/,/ə/, and higher unrounded/ᵻ/ and rounded/ᵿ/. (The non-IPA letters ⟨ᵻ⟩ and ⟨ᵿ⟩ may be used for the latter to avoid confusion with the clearly defined values of IPA letters like ⟨ɨ⟩ and ⟨ɵ⟩, which are also seen, since the IPA only provides for two reduced vowels.)
Spectrogram of vowels[i,u,ɑ].[ɑ] is a low vowel, so its F1 value is higher than that of[i] and[u], which are high vowels.[i] is a front vowel, so its F2 is substantially higher than that of[u] and[ɑ], which are back vowels.
An idealized schematic of vowel space, based on the formants ofDaniel Jones andJohn Wells pronouncing the cardinal vowels of the IPA. The scale is logarithmic. The grey range is where F2 would be less than F1, which by definition is impossible.[a] is an extra-low central vowel. Phonemically it may be front or back, depending on the language. Rounded vowels that are front in tongue position are front-central in formant space, while unrounded vowels that are back in articulation are back-central in formant space. Thus[yɯ] have perhaps similar F1 and F2 values to the high central vowels[ɨʉ], being distinguished by rounding (F3); similarly[øɤ] vs central[ɘɵ] and[œʌ] vs central[ɜɞ].
The same chart, with a few intermediate vowels. Low front[æ] is intermediate between[a] and[ɛ], while[ɒ] is intermediate between[ɑ] and[ɔ]. The back vowels change gradually in rounding, from unrounded[ɑ] and slightly rounded[ɒ] to tightly rounded[u]; similarly slightly rounded[œ] to tightly rounded[y]. With[a] seen as an (extra-)low central vowel, the vowels[æɐɑ] can be redefined as front, central and back (near-)low vowels.
The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of theformants, acousticresonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on aspectrogram. The vocal tract acts as aresonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time.
The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height).Open vowels have high F1 frequencies, whileclose vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen in the accompanying spectrogram: The[i] and[u] have similar low first formants, whereas[ɑ] has a higher formant.
The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness.Back vowels have low F2 frequencies, whilefront vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear in the spectrogram, where the front vowel[i] has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels, the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so an alternative measure of frontness is thedifference between the first and second formants. For this reason, some people prefer to plot as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.)
In the third edition of his textbook,Peter Ladefoged recommended using plots of F1 against F2 – F1 to represent vowel quality.[17] However, in the fourth edition, he changed to adopt a simple plot of F1 against F2,[18] and this simple plot of F1 against F2 was maintained for the fifth (and final) edition of the book.[19] Katrina Hayward compares the two types of plots and concludes that plotting of F1 against F2 – F1 "is not very satisfactory because of its effect on the placing of the central vowels",[20] so she also recommends use of a simple plot of F1 against F2. In fact, this kind of plot of F1 against F2 has been used by analysts to show the quality of the vowels in a wide range of languages, including RP,[21][22] the Queen's English,[23] American English,[24] Singapore English,[25] Brunei English,[26] North Frisian,[27] Turkish Kabardian,[28] and various indigenous Australian languages.[29]
Rounding is generally realized by a decrease of F2 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.
In addition to variation in vowel quality as described above, vowels vary as a result of differences inprosody. The most important prosodic variables arepitch (fundamental frequency),loudness (intensity) andlength (duration). However, the features of prosody are usually considered to apply not to the vowel itself, but to thesyllable in which the vowel occurs. In other words, thedomain of prosody is the syllable, not the segment (vowel or consonant).[30] We can list briefly the effect of prosody on the vowel component of a syllable.
Pitch: in the case of a syllable such as 'cat', the onlyvoiced portion of the syllable is the vowel, so the vowel carries the pitch information. This may relate to the syllable in which it occurs, or to a larger stretch of speech to which an intonation contour belongs. In a word such as 'man', all the segments in the syllable aresonorant and all will participate in any pitch variation.
Loudness: this variable has been traditionally associated with linguisticstress, though other factors are usually involved in this. Lehiste (ibid) argues that stress, or loudness, could not be associated with a single segment in a syllable independently of the rest of the syllable (p. 147). This means that vowel loudness is a concomitant of the loudness of the syllable in which it occurs.
Length: it is important to distinguish two aspects ofvowel length. One is thephonological difference in length exhibited by some languages.Japanese,Finnish,Hungarian,Arabic andLatin have a two-way phonemic contrast betweenshort and long vowels. TheMixe language has a three-way contrast among short, half-long, and long vowels.[31] The other type of length variation in vowels is non-distinctive, and is the result of prosodic variation in speech: vowels tend to be lengthened when in a stressed syllable, or when utterance rate is slow.
A vowel sound whose quality does not change throughout the vowel is called amonophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called adiphthong, and a vowel sound that glides successively through three qualities is atriphthong.
All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound inhit is a monophthong/ɪ/, the vowel sound inboy is in most dialects a diphthong/ɔɪ/, and the vowel sounds offlower,/aʊər/, form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on the dialect.
Inphonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into distinctphonemes. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the wordflower (/ˈflaʊər/) phonetically form a disyllabic triphthong but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represented by the letters⟨ow⟩) and a monophthong (represented by the letters⟨er⟩). Some linguists use the termsdiphthong andtriphthong only in this phonemic sense.
The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols that represent vowel sounds in a language'swriting system, particularly if the language uses analphabet. In writing systems based on theLatin alphabet, the letters⟨a⟩,⟨e⟩,⟨i⟩,⟨o⟩,⟨u⟩,⟨y⟩,⟨w⟩ and sometimes others can all be used to represent vowels. However, not all of these letters represent the vowels in all languages that use this writing, or even consistently within one language. Some of them, especially⟨w⟩ and⟨y⟩, are also used to representapproximant consonants. Moreover, a vowel might be represented by a letter usually reserved for consonants, or a combination of letters, particularly where one letter represents several sounds at once, or vice versa; examples from English include⟨igh⟩ in "thigh" and⟨x⟩ in "x-ray". In addition, extensions of the Latin alphabet have such independent vowel letters as⟨ą⟩,⟨ę⟩,⟨į⟩,⟨ǫ⟩, and⟨ų⟩.
The phonetic values vary considerably by language, and some languages use⟨i⟩ and⟨y⟩ for the consonant[j], e.g., initial⟨i⟩ inItalian orRomanian and initial⟨y⟩ in English. In the original Latin alphabet, there was no written distinction between⟨v⟩ and⟨u⟩, and the letter represented the approximant[w] and the vowels[u] and[ʊ]. In ModernWelsh,⟨w⟩ represents these same sounds. There is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters⟨a⟩⟨e⟩⟨i⟩⟨o⟩ and⟨u⟩ can represent a variety of vowel sounds, while the letter⟨y⟩ frequently represents vowels (as in e.g., "gym", "happy", or the diphthongs in "cry", "thyme");[32]⟨w⟩ is used in representing somediphthongs (as in "cow") and to represent amonophthong in the borrowed words "cwm" and "crwth" (sometimescruth).
Other languages cope with the limitation in the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages make extensive use of combinations of letters to represent various sounds. Other languages use vowel letters with modifications, such as⟨ä⟩ inSwedish, or adddiacritical marks, likeogoneks, to vowels to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also constructed additional vowel letters by modifying the standard Latin vowels in other ways, such as⟨æ⟩ or⟨ø⟩ that are found in some of theScandinavian languages. TheInternational Phonetic Alphabet has a set of 28 symbols representing the range of essential vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic vowel.
The writing systems used for some languages, such as theHebrew alphabet and theArabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels, since they are frequently unnecessary in identifying a word.[citation needed] Technically, these are calledabjads rather than alphabets. Although it is possible to construct English sentences that can be understood without written vowels (cn y rd ths?), single words in English lacking written vowels can be indistinguishable; considerdd, which could be any ofdad, dada, dado, dead, deed, did, died, diode, dodo, dud, dude, odd, add, andaided. (Abjads generally express some word-internal vowels and all word-initial and word-final vowels, whereby the ambiguity will be much reduced.) TheMasoretes devised avowel notation system for HebrewJewish scripture that is still widely used, as well as thetrope symbols used for itscantillation; both are part oforal tradition and still the basis for many bible translations—Jewish and Christian.
The differences in pronunciation of vowel letters between English and its related languages can be accounted for by theGreat Vowel Shift. After printing was introduced to England, and therefore after spelling was more or less standardized, a series of dramatic changes in the pronunciation of the vowel phonemes occurred, and continued into recent centuries, but were not reflected in the spelling system. This has led to numerous inconsistencies in the spelling of English vowel sounds and the pronunciation of English vowel letters (and to the mispronunciation of foreign words and names by speakers of English).
It is not straightforward to say which language has the most vowels, since that depends on how they are counted. For example, long vowels, nasal vowels, and variousphonations may or may not be counted separately; indeed, it may sometimes be unclear if phonation belongs to the vowels or the consonants of a language. If such things are ignored and only vowels with dedicated IPA letters ('vowel qualities') are considered, then very few languages have more than ten. TheGermanic languages have some of the largest inventories:Standard Danish has 11 to 13 short vowels (/(a),ɑ,(ɐ),e,ə,ɛ,i,o,ɔ,u,ø,œ,y/), while theAmstetten dialect ofBavarian has been reported to have thirteen long vowels:/i,y,e,ø,ɛ,œ,æ,ɶ,a,ɒ,ɔ,o,u/.[citation needed] The situation can be quite disparate within a same family language:Spanish andFrench are two closely relatedRomance languages but Spanish has only five pure vowel qualities,/a,e,i,o,u/, while classical French has eleven:/a,ɑ,e,ɛ,i,o,ɔ,u,y,œ,ø/ and four nasal vowels/ɑ̃/,/ɛ̃/,/ɔ̃/and/œ̃/. TheMon–Khmer languages of Southeast Asia also have some large inventories, such as the ten vowels ofKhmer:/i,ɨ,e,ɛ,a,ɑ,ɔ,o,u,ə/.Wu dialects have the largest inventories of Chinese; theJinhui dialect of Wu has also been reported to have eleven vowels: ten basic vowels,/i,y,e,ø,ɛ,ɑ,ɔ,o,u,ɯ/, plus restricted/ɨ/; this does not count the seven nasal vowels.[33]
One of the most common vowels is[a̠]; it is nearly universal for a language to have at least one open vowel, though most dialects of English have an[æ] and a[ɑ]—and often an[ɒ], all open vowels—but no central[a]. SomeTagalog andCebuano speakers have[ɐ] rather than[a], andDhangu Yolngu is described as having/ɪɐʊ/, without any peripheral vowels.[i] is also extremely common, thoughTehuelche has just the vowels/eao/ with no close vowels. The third vowel of the Arabic-type three-vowel system,/u/, is considerably less common. A large fraction of the languages of North America happen to have a four-vowel system without/u/:/i,e,a,o/;Nahuatl andNavajo are examples.
In most languages, vowels serve mainly to distinguish separatelexemes, rather than different inflectional forms of the same lexeme as they commonly do in the Semitic languages. For example, while Englishman becomesmen in the plural,moon is a completely different word.
In rhotic dialects of English, as in Canada and the United States, there are many words such asbird, learn, girl, church, worst, worm,myrrh that some phoneticians analyze as having no vowels, only a syllabic consonant/ɹ̩/. However, others analyze these words instead as having arhotic vowel,/ɝː/. The difference may be partially one of dialect.
There are a few such words that are disyllabic, likecursor,curtain, andturtle:[ˈkɹ̩sɹ̩],[ˈkɹ̩tn̩] and[ˈtɹ̩tl̩] (or[ˈkɝːsɚ],[ˈkɝːtən], and[ˈtɝːtəl]), and even a few that are trisyllabic, at least in some accents, such aspurpler[ˈpɹ̩.pl̩.ɹ̩],hurdler[ˈhɹ̩.dl̩.ɹ̩],gurgler[ˈɡɹ̩.ɡl̩.ɹ̩], andcertainer[ˈsɹ̩.tn̩.ɹ̩].
The wordand frequently contracts to a simplenasal’n, as inlock 'n key[ˌlɒkŋˈkiː]. Words such aswill, have, andis regularly contract to’ll[l],’ve[v], and 's[z]. However, none of them are pronounced alone without vowels, so they are not phonological words.Onomatopoeic words that can be pronounced alone, and that have no vowels or ars, includehmm, pst!, shh!,tsk!, andzzz. As in other languages, onomatopoeiae stand outside the normal phonotactics of English.
There are other languages that form lexical words without vowel sounds. InSerbo-Croatian, for example, the consonants[r] and[rː] (the difference is not written) can act as asyllable nucleus and carry rising or fallingtone; examples include the tongue-twisterna vrh brda vrba mrda and geographic names such asKrk. InCzech andSlovak, either[l] or[r] can stand in for vowels:vlk[vl̩k] "wolf",krk[kr̩k] "neck". A particularly long word without vowels isčtvrthrst, meaning "quarter-handful", with two syllables (one for each R), orscvrnkls, a verb form meaning "you flipped (sth) down" (eg a marble). Whole sentences (usually tongue-twisters) can be made from such words, such asStrč prst skrz krk, meaning "stick a finger through your neck" (pronounced[str̩tʃpr̩stskr̩skr̩k]ⓘ), andSmrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh, which means "A morel full of spots wetted from fogs". (Herezvlhl has two syllables based on L; and theprepositionz consists of a single consonant. Only prepositions do this in Czech, and they normally link phonetically to the following word, so not really behave as vowelless words.) In Russian, there are also prepositions that consist of a single consonant letter, likek, 'to',v, 'in', ands, 'with'. However, these forms are actually contractions ofko,vo, andso respectively, and these forms are still used in modern Russian before words with certain consonant clusters for ease of pronunciation.
InKazakh and certain otherTurkic languages, words without vowel sounds may occur due to reduction of weak vowels. A common example is the Kazakh word for one:bir, pronounced[br]. Among careful speakers, however, the original vowel may be preserved, and the vowels are always preserved in the orthography.
In Southernvarieties of Chinese, such asCantonese andMinnan, some monosyllabic words are made of exclusivelynasals, such as Cantonese[m̩˨˩] "no" and[ŋ̩˩˧] "five". Minnan also has words consisting of a consonant followed by a syllabic nasal, such aspn̄g "cooked rice".
So far, all of these syllabic consonants, at least in thelexical words, have beensonorants, such as[r],[l],[m], and[n], which have avoiced quality similar to vowels. (They can carry tone, for example.) However, there are languages with lexical words that not only contain no vowels, but contain no sonorants at all, like (non-lexical)shh! in English. These include someBerber languages, some languages of the AmericanPacific Northwest, such asNuxalk, and someNorthwest Caucasian languages, such asAbaza language. An example from Nuxalk isscs "seal fat" (pronounced[sxs], as spelled), and a longer one isclhp'xwlhtlhplhhskwts' (pronounced[xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]) "he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant". (Follow the Nuxalk link for other examples.) Berber examples include/tkkststt/ "you took it off" and/tfktstt/ "you gave it". Some words may contain one or two consonants only:/ɡ/ "be",/ks/ "feed on".[34]
Abaza language often drops word-final /ə/ when forming compounds, making combinations such as хъкӏхвбкъвылкӏ /qʰkʼχʷbqʷʼəlkʼ/ "five vats of sour cream" possible. Therefore, even though the dictionary forms хъкӏы /qʰkʼə/ "sour cream" and хвпа /χʷpʰa/ "five" have aschwa at the end, the consonant cluster /qʰkʼ/ and the sole consonant /χʷ/ (-pa is acounting suffix) can be analysed as the full word, with final vowels probably being a result of obligatorynucleus (such as in the first example, where the word бкъвыл /bqʷʼəl/ "vat" is a closed syllable, preventing the vowel deletion, unless /l/ is analysed as asyllabic consonant, which would still make it a nucleus but would make the word vowelless).
InMandarin Chinese, words and syllables such assī andzhī are sometimes described as being syllabic fricatives and affricates phonemically,/ś/ and/tʂ́/, but these do have a voiced segment that carries the tone.
In theJaponic languageMiyako, there are words with no voiced sounds, such asss 'dust',kss 'breast/milk',pss 'day',ff 'a comb',kff 'to make',fks 'to build',ksks 'month',sks 'to cut',psks 'to pull'.
Some analyses ofWandala is reported to have no phonemic vowels.[35]
It is not uncommon for short grammatical words to consist of only vowels, such asa andI in English. Lexical words are somewhat rarer in English and are generally restricted to a single syllable:eye, awe, owe, and in non-rhotic accentsair, ore, err. Vowel-only words of more than one syllable are generally foreign loans, such asai (two syllables:/ˈɑːi/) for themaned sloth, or proper names, such asIowa (in some accents:/ˈaɪ.oʊ.ə/).
However, vowel sequences inhiatus are more freely allowed in some other languages, most famously perhaps inBantu andPolynesian languages, but also inJapanese andFinnic languages. In such languages there tends to be a larger variety of vowel-only words. InSwahili (Bantu), for example, there isaua 'to survey' andeua 'to purify' (both three syllables); in Japanese,aoi 青い 'blue/green' andoioi 追々 'gradually' (three and fourmorae); and in Finnish,aie 'intention' andauo 'open!' (both two syllables), although some dialects pronounce them asaije andauvo. InUrdu, āye/aaieآئیے or āynآئیں 'come' is used.Hawaiian, and the Polynesian languages generally, have unusually large numbers of such words, such asaeāea (a small green fish), which is three syllables:ae.āe.a. Most long words involvereduplication, which is quiteproductive in Polynesian:ioio 'grooves',eaea 'breath',uaua 'tough' (all four syllables),auēuē 'crying' (five syllables, fromuē (uwē) 'to weep'),uoa oruouoa 'false mullet' (sp. fish, three or five syllables).[citation needed]
^According toPeter Ladefoged, traditional articulatory descriptions such as height and backness "are not entirely satisfactory", and when phoneticians describe a vowel as high or low, they are in fact describing an acoustic quality rather than the actual position of the tongue.[11]
^Ladefoged, Peter (1993)A Course in Phonetics (Third Edition), Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 197.
^Ladefoged, Peter (2001)A Course in Phonetics (Fourth Edition), Fort Worth: Harcourt, p. 177.
^Ladefoged, Peter (2006)A Course in Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 189.
^Hayward, Katrina (2000)Experimental Phonetics, Harlow, UK: Pearson, p. 160.
^Deterding, David (1997). "The formants of monophthong vowels in Standard Southern British English Pronunciation".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.27 (1–2):47–55.doi:10.1017/S0025100300005417.S2CID146157247.
^Hawkins, Sarah and Jonathan Midgley (2005). "Formant frequencies of RP monophthongs in four age groups of speakers".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.35 (2):183–199.doi:10.1017/S0025100305002124.S2CID53532910.
^Harrington, Jonathan, Sallyanne Palethorpe and Catherine Watson (2005) Deepening or lessening the divide between diphthongs: an analysis of the Queen's annual Christmas broadcasts. In William J. Hardcastle and Janet Mackenzie Beck (eds.) A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 227-261.
^Deterding, David (2003). "An instrumental study of the monophthong vowels of Singapore English".English World-Wide.24:1–16.doi:10.1075/eww.24.1.02det.
^Salbrina, Sharbawi (2006). "The vowels of Brunei English: an acoustic investigation".English World-Wide.27 (3):247–264.doi:10.1075/eww.27.3.03sha.
^Fletcher, Janet (2006) Exploring the phonetics of spoken narratives in Australian indigenous languages. In William J. Hardcastle and Janet Mackenzie Beck (eds.) A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 201–226.
^Lehiste, Ilse,Suprasegmentals, M.I.T 1970, pp. 42, 84, 147
^Ladefoged, P. and Maddieson, I.The Sounds of the World's Languages, Blackwell (1996), p 320
^Inwyrm andmyrrh, there is neither a vowel letter nor, in rhotic dialects, a vowel sound.
.svg)
