[net.nlang] seven vowels?

stevesu@bronze.UUCP (10/09/83)

Everybody knows there are five vowels.  No, wait -- six, because
sometimes 'y' is a vowel.  My mom says she heard that there is an
English word in which 'w' is used as a vowel.  Does anyone know
what is is?
                                  Steve Summit
                                  tektronix!tekmdp!bronze!stevesu

CSvax:Pucc-H:aeq@pur-ee.UUCP (10/11/83)

"W" is somewhere between vowel and consonant, actually; but the words in which
I vaguely remember hearing it considered a vowel are words like "flower".

-- Jeff Sargent/pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq

tll@druxu.UUCP (10/11/83)

I was always taught in school that the vowels are a, e, i, o, u and
sometimes y and w.  When I asked for an example of a word where w
is a vowel, I was given such words as "snow".  I was not impressed.
Years later, I learned of two words whose only vowel is w.  Both
are of Welsh origin.  I quote from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate
Dictionary (I assume these words would also appear in better dictionaries):

	cwm \'kum\ n [Welsh, valley]: cirque
	crwth \'kruth\ n [Welsh]: crowd

(The u in the pronunciations is supposed to have an umlaut, but my
keyboard doesn't.  Anyway, the sound is as in "foot".)

			Tom Laidig
			(AT&T Infromation Systems Laboratories, Denver)
			...!ihnp4!druxu!tll

nazgul@apollo.UUCP (Kee Hinckley) (10/12/83)

I remember (a *long* time ago) listening to the "Alphabet Song" (on "Through
Childrens Eyes", by the Limeliters).  In there they said "a,e,i,o,u and sometimes
y and w".  I've never found anyone since that agreed with that!

                                -kee

berry@zehntel.UUCP (10/12/83)

#R:bronze:-82600:zinfandel:9300032:000:339
zinfandel!berry    Oct 11 13:42:00 1983

There are many English words with 'w' as a vowel.  Most if not all of them
come to us from Welsh.  Here are a couple of the more common:

	cwm - a feature of a mountain.  Sort of a dell.
	      common in mountaneering.
	crwd - a Welsh stringed instrument

Berry Kercheval		Zehntel Inc.	(decvax!sytek!zehntel!zinfandel!berry)
(415)932-6900

leichter@yale-com.UUCP (Jerry Leichter) (10/12/83)

w as a vowel:  cwm, pronounced more or less as c-u-umlaut-m; allegedly a
kind of small cave; a Scottish - Celtic? - word.  I heard about this years
ago, but your question finally got me to go check my OED - and it isn't
listed!...hence, the "allegedly".
							-- Jerry
					decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale

tll@druxu.UUCP (10/12/83)

Oops.  I got my eyes crossed when I read the pronunciation key at
the bottom of the page. The words cwm and crwth have their vowels
pronounced as the "oo" in "loot", not "foot".  If I had been paying
enough attention to what I was typing, I would have realized that
the pronunciation wasn't the way I had been taught for those words.

		Tom Laidig
		(AT&T Information Systems Laboratories)
		...!ihnp4!druxu!tll

grw@fortune.UUCP (10/12/83)

	The 'w' in 'snow' is not a vowel -- it is silent.  However,
    the 'w' in 'down' is a vowel, just like the 'u' in 'found' is.

							-Glenn

dce@hammer.UUCP (David Elliott) (10/13/83)

I also learned that y and w were vowels. I realize now (after taking 8
linguistics courses) that the reason that they are called this is that
they are classified as "semivowels". This means that they are both
vowels and consonants.

I can understand why my teachers could say that y is a vowel, since all
English words must contain a vowel. Look at the word "sky". In
this word, y has the sound /i/, so it is a vowel. Also, in
some languages, like Welsh, there are words which contain a w and
some consonants (Like Wm Leler's first name). Therefore, since there
are words spoken by English speakers like 'Wm', w can be considered
a vowel sometimes, just as y can.

The whole problem is that grade school teachers are trying to teach
the language from words. This is very difficult to teach because
of the exceptions in spelling.

English is not the only language with problems like this. In a phonology
class I took last year, we had two Telugu speakers (Telugu is a language
of Southeastern India) who gave us words in the language. They gave
us quite a few words that had a "formal" form and an "informal" form.
While trying to come up with the phonemes for the language, we
encountered a lot of problems, since the "formal" words had the
same meanings as the similar-sounding "informal" words and we
could not find any phoneme pairs in complementary distribution.
We found out later that "formal" words were the written words, and
the "informal" words were the spoken words. This meant that the data
was screwed up and we ended up ditching half of it.

			David

mcewan@uiucdcs.UUCP (mcewan ) (10/15/83)

#R:bronze:-82600:uiucdcs:19000024:000:172
uiucdcs!mcewan    Oct 14 15:07:00 1983

	"...all English words must contain a vowel."

But, since every letter is also a word, this shows that EVERY letter
is a vowel!

				Scott McEwan
				pur-ee!uiucdcs!mcewan

grass@uiuccsb.UUCP (10/15/83)

#R:bronze:-82600:uiuccsb:10500006:000:678
uiuccsb!grass    Oct 14 15:40:00 1983

 I think that there is often confusion between what is written and what is
pronounced.  If looking just at spelling, it looks like English only has
a,e,i,o,u with maybe a couple of "semi-vowels", but if you consider 
pronunciation there are a good deal more than that.  Consider the sonds in
this list:
     bite  bit bet bat boat boot but bait beet   
There you have quite a bit more than 5 vowel sounds.  I'm not sure
that I have all of them here either.  

Note that these are all PHONEMIC as well (eg. enough to distinguish
between otherwise identical sound pairs in meaning).  There
are a good deal MORE ALLOPHONIC differencec (eg. that don't make
meaning differences).