2021-03-16 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด V – vowels
2021-03-16
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด V – vowels
แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น
ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค
Dictionary.com
ออกเสียง vowel = ‘VOU-uhl’
Dictionary.com
Are There Any English Words That Have No Vowels?
It’s a question that just about every English learner has asked:
“Are there any English words that have no vowels?”
The answer to this depends what you mean by “vowel” and “word.”
There are two things we mean by the word vowel:
a speech sound made with the vocal tract open,
ora letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel.
Words with no vowels
Cwm and crwth do not contain the letters a, e, i, o, u, or y,
the usual vowels (that is, the usual symbols that stand for vowel sounds) in English.
But in those words, the letter w simplyserves instead,
standing for the same sound that oo stands for in the words
boom and booth. Dr., nth (as in “to the nth degree”),
and TV also do not contain any vowel symbols,
but they, like cwm and crwth, do contain vowel sounds.
Shh, psst,and hmm do not have vowels,
either vowel symbols or vowel sounds.
There is some controversy whether they are in fact “words,” however.
But if a word is “the smallest unit of grammar that can stand alone
asa complete utterance,
separated by spaces in written language
and potentially by pauses in speech,” then those do qualify.
Psst, though, is the only one that appears in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Dictionary.com
Why Are A, E, I, O, U, And Y Called “Vowels”?
In elementary school,
we all learned the vowels of the English language:
A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y.
Or, at least how we write them out, that is.
But what makes a vowel a vowel?
Vowelsand consonants are two different categories of sounds
that linguists use to better understand how speech sounds work.
The study of the sounds that human beings can produce
is called phonetics.It’s a branch of linguistics.
First, where does the word vowel come from?
The word vowel ultimately comes
from the Latin vox, meaning “voice.”
It’s the source of voice and such words as vocal and vociferate.
Consonant literally means “with sound,”
from the Latin con- (“with”) and sonare (“to sound”).
This verb yields, that’s right, the word sound
and many others, like sonic and resonant.
What is the difference between a vowel and a consonant?
How we spell with vowels doesn’t always correspond to
the sound we are actually making.
Consider the words beet and beat,
which feature different spellings for the same sound (homophones).
Then consider bat and bait.
Their spellings are similar, but their vowel sounds are quite different.
To get around the limitations of written systems,
linguists use what is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA),
a set of symbols used to represent the sounds in all the world’s languages regardless of how they are written.
Bat is [ bæt ] and bait is [ beɪt ], for instance.
According to phoneticians,
a vowel is a speech sound that is made without significant constriction
of the flow of air from the lungs.
The tongue can be at various heights in the mouth (e.g., high, mid, or low) and at various positions (front, central, or back).
The lips can be variously rounded (cf. a long O and E). Vowels can vary in pitch and loudness, too.
Here’s the part where you get to act like kid.
Say “ahh,” but then flick your tongue all around your mouth,
wriggle your lips and jaws around, let out the noise at different volumes, but don’t ever fully stop that airflow.
You are vowel-ing!
If you do restrict or close your airflow in a significant way,
you’re in consonant territory.
Where that restriction or closure occurs in your vocal tract
determines what consonants you are making.
B soundsare produced by bringing the lips together,
for instance (bilabials).
K soundsare produced by bringing the back of the tongue up to your soft palate (velars).
Th sounds are made when the tongue goes between the teeth (interdentals).
Now, try to sing just a B sound, K sound, or th sound? You can’t, really.
Properly holding out a B sounds like you’re imitating a trumpet.
Grinding out a K sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
Th, prolonged, has more a pleasant, wind-in-the grass feel.
But, if you’re singing Baah! or Kee! or Thy!,
you’re starting off with a consonant but sustaining it with a vowel—because you need airflow, you need breath, to do so,
and consonants are all about obstructing it in some way.
Does every language have vowels?
Every language has vowels,
but languages vary in the number of vowel sounds they use.
While we learn A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y,
English, depending on speaker and dialect,
is generally considered to have at least 14 vowel sounds.
(Yeah, our spelling is a delightful hot mess.)
Castilian Spanish and Japanese, meanwhile,
are generally considered to have five vowel sounds.
Languages also vary in the number of consonants they have.
English has at least 24 consonant sounds.
Hawaiian, around eight, and Lithuanian 45
—still nothing on some languages in southern Africa!
How vowels and consonants are distributed and patterned together
in a language is called phonology.
Are there any words without vowels?
Slavic languages,
such as Czech, are famous for the long strings of consonants
their languages allow, like this Czech tongue twister:
strčprst skrz krk (“stick a finger down your throat”).
This will twist English-speaking tongues (and heads), but it’s perfectly normal in Slavic languages,
where a certain articulation of R can behave as a syllable all on its own.
This can called be a syllabic consonant, which can fill the vowel slot in a syllable.
English can have them in the final syllables of words like bottle and button, among other environments.
To put it simply, L, R, M, N, and the –ng in sing can have vowel-like properties and be syllabic.
Now, English does have a number of interjections it spells without vowels (and vocalizes without true vowels) that are considered words,
such as: brrr, hmm, shh, tsk, pfft, or psst.
These are considered onomatopoeia,
and imitate sounds we make to perform different actions,
such as indicating we’re cold (brr) or demanding quiet (shh).
Generally, however,
English words are said and written with at least one vowel.
But, play cwm next time in Scrabble for some big-time points.
Dictionary.com
Is It True “W” Can Be Used As A Vowel?
A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y … and W?
Yes, the letter W can behave as a vowel.
It’s time to level up your Scrabble game, people.
And, to all our grade-school peeps out there,
get ready to knock the socks off your spelling teacher.
First, what is a vowel?
A, E, I, O, U, Y,and, as we’ll see, W, are called vowels,
but let’s get technical.
They are symbols (letters) that represent a special type of speech sound called a vowel.
According to phoneticians,
a vowel is a speech sound that is made without significant constriction
of the flow of air from the lungs.
In making vowels,
the tongue can be at various heights in the mouth (e.g., high, mid, or low) and at various positions (front, central, or back).
The lips can be variously rounded (cf. a long O and E).
Vowels can vary in pitch and loudness, too.
If you do restrict or close your airflow in a significant way,
you’re making a consonant.
Where that restriction or closure occurs in your vocal tract
determines what consonants you are making.
B soundsare produced by bringing the lips together, for instance (bilabials).
K sounds are produced by bringing the back of the tongue up to your soft palate (velars).
Why is W sometimes a vowel?
W is a rebel: it defies categories.
To put it simply, it’s a little bit of both, vowel and consonant.
Linguists call it a semivowel or glide,
“a speech sound having the characteristics of both a consonant and vowel,
especially W in wore and Y in your
and, in some analyses, R in road and L in load.”
Nope, this ain’t your spelling teacher’s alphabet, folks.
In English, W can behave this way at the beginning of a syllable,
where it’s followed by a full-fledged vowel (e.g., wonderful).
It can also behave this way as part of a diphthong
(which is a vowel plus a glide), as in How now, brown cow?
Back in Old English,
W was represented by an altogether different symbol: Ƿ/ƿ, called wynn.
It was gradually replaced by the Norman (French) double U,
which was literally two U‘s back to back,
uu, hence its shape … and name, double-u!
What words use W as a vowel?
The Welsh language is a Celtic language still spoken in Wales
—and, fun fact, in a settlement in Argentina.
And, it is perfectly happy using W
(and Y, along with the other usual suspects) as a vowel.
English has borrowed a precious few words
from Welsh that feature W as a vowel.
A cwm,pronounced [koom] or [kuhm],
is “a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain,
sometimes containing a lake; a cirque.”
A crwth,pronounced [krooth] and also spelled crowd,
refers to ancient Celtic musical instrument.
In both words, W stands for the same sound that oo representsin boom or booth.
Cwm and crwth are very rare words in English
—and all the rarer for the way they showcase W as a vowel.
Are there words without any vowels?
Slavic languages, such as Czech,
are famous for the long strings of consonants their languages allow,
like this Czech tongue-twister:
strčprst skrz krk (“stick a finger down your throat”).
In Slavic languages,
a certain articulation of R can behave as a syllable all on its own.
This can called be a syllabic consonant,
which can fill the vowel slot in a syllable.
English can have them in the final syllables of words
like bottle and button, among other environments.
To put it simply, L, R, M, N, and the –ng in sing can have vowel-like properties and be syllabic.
English does have some interjections it spells without vowels
(and vocalizes without true vowels) that are considered words,
such as: brrr, hmm, shh, tsk, pfft, or psst.
These are considered onomatopoeia, and imitate sounds we make to perform different actions, such as indicating we’re cold (brr) or demanding quiet (shh).
Now, we think you’re ready to pronounce the name of this Welsh town: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Dictionary.com
Why Does The Letter Q Almost Always Need The Letter U?
Scrabble players are acutely aware that Q is a tricky letter.
To use a Q in the game, a player must nearly always find an available U.
(We’ll overlook the coveted two-letter word qi
that any respectable Scrabble player will know.)
The fact that Q is the second most rarely-used letter
in the alphabet certainly doesn’t make using Q any easier.
Let’s quest toward resolving the questions of quarrelsome Q,
the 17th letter in the alphabet.
How do Q and U work together?
In English, QU is always used as a digraph
(a pair of letters representing a single speech sound)
for the sound /kw/ (a voiceless labiovelar stop).
Q’spairing with U is a Latin invention that has its origin in Greek.
The letter Koppa, which Q is based on,
would appear before a rounded vowel
where otherwise a sound like /k/ or /g/ would be used.
But, a few other letters,
like C,also designated the same sound
but in different letter combinations.
As C gradually came to represent more and more of these instances,
Q became primarily dependent on U to express any sound at all.
This is quite a quibble for a full-fledged member of the Latin (now English) alphabet.
(On a related note, why is W called “double-U”
when it is in fact represented visually by two Vs?)
Q without U is used to represent sounds not often found in English
but typical in Semitic languages.
Loan words such as Qur’an and Iraq are examples of Q’s guttural /k/ sound.
How did Q get its shape?
Q’s shapemay have its origin in the Egyptian hieroglyph
for a cord of wool, pronounced “qaw.”
The symbol of a circle with a descending line was used in the Greek Koppa and is similar to the shape of the basic modern Latin character you see on your keyboard.
Speaking of keyboards, QWERTY is one of the few English words that does not have a U directly following the Q. That’s your fun fact for the day.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Vowel - noun
Usage Notes
The Truth About 'Y': It's Mostly a Vowel
We need 'y' to be a consonant, but it acts more like a vowel.
By first grade, we were taught that the letters a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y are vowels.
Most of us probably accepted what we were told
(it was just another "rule" we had to follow),
and never questioned why that last part was true
(there were other things to wonder about, like snack time).
Additionally, we unconditionally accepted that the other 20 letters in the English alphabet were strictly consonants.
To most, those vowels and consonants were just letters,
but to that first grader who aspired to be a linguist,
they were more than merely lines on a page.
Technically, the terms vowel and consonant
(from Latin vocalis, meaning "vocal,"
and Latin consonare, "to sound together")
refer to particular speech sounds:
a vowel is one made with your mouth open and your tongue in the middle of your mouth not touching your teeth, lips, etc.
(in other words, there's minimal manipulation of air flow while expelling a vowel sound);
a consonant, on the other hand, is one (such as \p\, \d\, or \s\)
that is made by partly or completely stopping the flow of air
breathed out from the mouth with the tongue, teeth, lips, etc.
What is special about the letter y is that
it can represent both kinds of speech sounds
—depending on its position and the letters surrounding it in a word.
Y is considered to be a vowel if…
The word has no other vowel: gym, my.
The letter is at the end of a word or syllable: candy, deny, bicycle, acrylic.
The letter is in the middle of a syllable: system, borborygmus.
In such cases, the letter y is pronounced as
either the long vowel e or short or long i
(usually as a long i when ending a word)
—and, for all intents and purposes, it is a vowel.
When y forms a diphthong
—two vowel sounds joined in one syllable to form one speech sound,
such as the "oy" in toy, "ay" in day, and "ey" in monkey
—it is also regarded as a vowel.
Typically, y represents a consonant when it starts off a word or syllable,
as in yard, lawyer, or beyond.
Technically, this sound of \y\ is considered a semivowel or glide,
which is a less prominent vowel speech sound that occurs in the articulation of two consecutive vowel sounds unequal in prominence.
For example,
there's a very brief long e sound when articulating \y\ in yes.
Air flow is not impeded in sounding \y\ (if it was y would be a true consonant);
however, the mouth is not opened as fully as in articulating the vowel \y\ in early. The result is a vowel-like consonant.
Linguistically,
the "sometimes" part of the grade-school lesson doesn't make sense,
since the letter y is more commonly pronounced as a vowel.
But its consonant sound is unique,
and that seems to be why y is more often considered to be a consonant and only "sometimes" a vowel.
In other words, we need y more as a consonant in the English language than a vowel.
The A-Z of correct English Usage
Five letters of the alphabet are always vowels: a e i o u
The letter y is sometimes a vowel and sometimes a consonant.
It is a vowel when it sounds like e or i:
pretty, busy sly, pylon
Y is a consonant at the beginning of syllablesand words
and has a different sound:
yellow, beyond
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