From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Avowel is a particular kind ofspeech sound made by changing the shape of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above thetongue. A vowel letter is aletter of analphabet that represents a vowel sound.
In English, five letters in the alphabet are usually called the vowel letters. The sounds of American English are written with letters in the English alphabet, as either vowels orconsonants. All English words are written with vowel letters in them.
It is said that Y is "sometimes" a vowel because it can either be spoken with a vowel or consonant sound, depending on the word. In the wordscry,sky,fly,my andwhy, the letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. In words likemyth andsynchronize, it represents the vowel sound /ɪ/. In words likeonly,quickly, andfolly, it represents the vowel sound /i/.
The letter Y can also be a consonant sound called aglide as in the beginning of these words:yellow,yacht,yam,yesterday. Y is a consonant about 2.5% of the time, and a vowel about 97.5% of the time.[2]
The letter W can sometimes be the second part of a vowel sound, as in words such ascow,bow, orhow. In these words, the vowel has the sound of /aʊ/. The letter W can be used as a consonant sound at the beginning of in the wordswhen,where,wet. In some languages, likeWelsh, the letter W represents the vowel sound /ʊ/, like in the wordcwm (a kind ofvalley; pronounced “coom"). A few of these words may be borrowed in English, with the W representing its vowel sound.
In written English, the vowel letters are used to represent the 13-15 vowelsounds (depending on the variety) in English.[3] This means there are many more vowel sounds than letters in the English alphabet, and the English spelling system does not always show readers which sound a vowel letter represents in a word. This can cause confusion for people learning the English language.
The rest of the letters of the alphabet areconsonants:
Simple vowels are calledmonophthongs. The letters, like /ɪ/, are theIPA letters for each vowelsound in English. (The IPA is theInternational Phonetic Alphabet). In the IPA, each symbol represents a different sound, so using the IPA is helpful in pronouncing words.
Common monophthongs in English (these are for General American English) include:
/i/ as inpolice,feet,eat, andsilly
/ɪ/ as init,sit,kick,myth andbitter
/ɛ/ as inend,bet,less, andletter
/æ/ as inat,apple,fat, andmatter
/u/ as incool,tune,soup, andkungfu,
/ʊ/ as incook,should,pudding,foot, and rook
/ʌ/ as inbus,blood,come, andup
/ə/ as inkingdom,photography,philosophy,ketchup, andhundred
/ɚ/ as inbutter,collar,flavor,firm, andburst
/ɔ/ as inall,fought,hot, andbot
/ɑ/ as infather,walk,arm,heart,wasp,lager,envelope andaardvark
Diphthongs are a combination of two different vowel sounds, one vowel sounds turns into another sound as you say them. If you pronounce the words below slowly, you can hear the two vowel sounds of the diphthongs.
Common diphthongs in English include:
/eɪ/ as inate,reign,vain,flavor,slay, andconvey
/oʊ/ as intoe,row,go,boat,mode, andchateau
/aɪ/ as ineye,I,pie,cry,cypher,climb,lime,light,kayak,Thai, andheight
/aʊ/ as inloud,house,cow,about,Daoism, andMacau
/oɪ/ as inboy,moist, andFreud
Like other languages, there are many dialects of English, and different dialects often use different vowel sounds. But the IPA symbols can tell us which vowel sound a dialects uses. For example, some American English speakers differentiate between the vowels in the wordscot andcaught, while in other dialects these words arehomophones. People who study the differences between the dialects of English often study the different way vowel sounds are pronounced.
The difference between the way English is spelled and the way the words are pronounced came about because all languages change, so spoken English changes, but the spelling system does not.
