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!stevesuCSvax: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!
-keeberry@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.
-Glenndce@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).