What Are Vowels? Definition and Examples | Grammarly

What Are Vowels? Definition and Examples | Grammarly

Grammarly HomeProductLearnFeaturesProduct DemoTrust & SecurityDownloadDesktopMobileBrowserWorkBy Team SizeEnterpriseTeams & BusinessesIndividualsBy Team FunctionCustomer SupportMarketingITSalesHREducationStudentsInstitutionsPricingResourcesLearnBlogCustomer StoriesBusiness Events & ReportsEducation Events & ReportsSupport CenterToolsAI Writing ToolsGrammar CheckerPlagiarism CheckerParaphrasing ToolContact SalesLog inGet GrammarlyIt's freeGrammarly HomeProductLearnFeaturesProduct DemoTrust & SecurityDownloadDesktopMobileBrowserWorkBy Team SizeEnterpriseTeams & BusinessesIndividualsBy Team FunctionCustomer SupportMarketingITSalesHREducationStudentsInstitutionsPricingResourcesLearnBlogCustomer StoriesBusiness Events & ReportsEducation Events & ReportsSupport CenterToolsAI Writing ToolsGrammar CheckerPlagiarism CheckerParaphrasing ToolGet GrammarlyIt's freeContact SalesLog inGrammarly Blog HomeWritingWriting TipsGrammarStudentsProfessionalsLifestyleProductCompanyGrammarly HomeWritingWriting TipsGrammarStudentsProfessionalsLifestyleProductCompanyGet GrammarlyIt's freeContact SalesLog inWhat Are Vowels? Definition and ExamplesMatt EllisUpdated on November 28, 2022GrammarVowels are letters that represent speech sounds where air leaves the mouth without any blockage by the tongue, lips, or throat. The vowels in the alphabet are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. All other letters in the English alphabet are consonants, which represent speech sounds where air is blocked somehow before leaving the mouth.

Even though they’re only a few letters, vowels are important in spelling, pronunciation, and grammar. Below we explain all the details and rules you need to know, but first let’s take a deeper look at this question: What are vowels?

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What are vowels?

Letters and speech sounds are divided into two categories: sounds where the air is blocked by the lips, tongue, or throat before leaving the mouth and sounds where the air is not blocked. Consonants represent sounds that are blocked; vowels represent sounds that are not blocked.

While consonant sounds are differentiated by how the air is blocked—such as sticking the tongue behind the front teeth for d and t, or closing the lips for b, m, and p—vowel sounds are differentiated by pitch, accent, volume, and duration.

So what are the vowels? The letters a, e, i, o, u—and sometimes y—are vowels. However, some consonants, like h, r, and w, can also make vowel sounds. In grammar, these letters are still considered consonants and don’t follow the vowel rules.

Vowels play a major role in both spelling and grammar. They also have a direct impact on how consonants are used, such as spelling words with double consonants. Consider the difference between hop and hope—which, as present participles, become hopping and hoping. The presence of the silent e at the end changes the rules for how to conjugate certain words.

When do you need a vowel?

Unlike consonants, every word needs at least one vowel. There are a small number of exceptions, which we explain below, but in general, this is the rule. In fact, the shortest words in the English language are one letter, and they’re both vowels: the article a and the pronoun I.

Moreover, every syllable also needs a vowel sound. If a word has more than one syllable, it then needs more than one vowel.

Short vs. long vowels

Even though there are only five (sometimes six) vowels in the alphabet, they can be combined in a variety of ways to change their sounds, which results in more than a dozen distinct vowel sounds in American English. Without getting too confusing, we can divide these vowel sounds into two categories: short vowels and long vowels.

Short vowels are the standard pronunciation of vowels—usually when there is only one vowel in the word—especially in short words.

a as in cat

e as in wet

i as in big

o as in clock

u as in but

Long vowels are a little more complex. Generally, they’re created by combining two vowels, where one is typically silent. Often they’re pronounced like the name of the vowel; for example, the long vowel sound in eat is pronounced like the name of letter e.

a as in cake

e as in street

i as in like

o as in phone

u as in use

These are the basics of vowel pronunciation, but they are also the most common examples. If you can master these vowel sounds, you can master most of the English words you’ll come across, and it will also help your spelling when you write.

Is y a vowel?

When discussing consonants vs. vowels, the letter y causes a lot of confusion. Basically, y can be either a vowel or a consonant, depending on how it’s used.

When y is a consonant, it makes its own distinct sound using the rear of the tongue on the top of the mouth. Think of the pronunciation of words like these:

yellow

boy

gargoyle

However, when y is used as a vowel, it copies either the long or short vowel sound for i or the long vowel sound for e.

my (long i)

shy (long i)

system (short i)

crypt (short i)

lady (long e)

hairy (long e)

Unlike the other consonants, y counts as a vowel; some words only include a y and no other vowels.

Vowel usage

What 5-letter word has the most vowels?

The 5-letter word with the most vowels is Iouea (with a capital i), which uses all the main vowels and no consonants. Iouea is the scientific name for a genus of extinct water sponges.

If you’re asking this question because of Wordle, try adieu, which is an English loan word of 5 letters that contains every vowel except o.

What is assonance?

Assonance is a literary device that uses a series of words with the same vowel sounds. It is the vowel version of consonance, which repeats consonant sounds. Both assonance and consonance are common in works where sound is important, such as poetry, music lyrics, and creative writing. For example, look at this passage from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven”:

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.

Words like silken, uncertain, and curtain use similar vowel sounds, as do the words terrors, never, and before.

Are there words with no vowels?

There are only a handful of words in English without any proper vowels, and they’re mostly loan words from Welsh. They use a rare vowel form of the letter w that is not usually accepted in English.

crwth—a Welsh violin-like instrument

cwtch—a hiding place

cwm—a hollowed-out area in a mountain

None of these words are common in everyday English, so we advise against using them in your own communication or writing (unless it’s directly related to Wales).

Vowel FAQs

What are vowels?

Vowels are letters representing a speech sound where air leaves the mouth without blockage. In English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, and u, although y can sometimes count as a vowel, too. Vowels are contrasted with consonants, which represent sounds where air is obstructed, such as the closing of the lips for b, m, and p.

What’s the difference between short and long vowels?

The same vowel can make different sounds, depending on whether it’s paired with another vowel. When vowels are used alone in a syllable, they make a short vowel sound, such as the i in big. When vowels are combined with another vowel, typically a silent vowel, they can make a long vowel sound that’s usually pronounced like the letter’s name, such as the ea in eat, which sounds like the name of the letter e.

Is y a vowel?

The letter y can be either a vowel or a consonant, depending on how it’s used. When used as a consonant, such as in yellow or boy, it makes a unique sound using the tongue and the top of the mouth. When it’s used as a vowel, such as in my, system, or lady, it can make either a long i, short i, or long e sound.

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Vowel - Wikipedia

Vowel - Wikipedia

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(Top)

1Definition

2Articulation

Toggle Articulation subsection

2.1Height

2.2Backness

2.3Roundedness

2.4Front, raised and retracted

2.5Nasalization

2.6Phonation

2.7Tenseness

2.8Tongue root position

2.9Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract

2.9.1Rhotic vowels

2.10Reduced vowels

3Acoustics

4Prosody and intonation

5Monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs

6Written vowels

Toggle Written vowels subsection

6.1Shifts

7Audio samples

8Systems

Toggle Systems subsection

8.1Words without vowels

8.2Words consisting of only vowels

9See also

10Notes

11References

12Bibliography

13External links

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Vowel

129 languages

AfrikaansAlemannischالعربيةAragonésArmãneashtiArpetanAsturianuАварAzərbaycancaবাংলাBân-lâm-gúБеларускаяБеларуская (тарашкевіца)भोजपुरीBikol CentralБългарскиBoarischབོད་ཡིགBosanskiBrezhonegCatalàЧӑвашлаČeštinaChiShonaCymraegDanskDavvisámegiellaDeutschEestiΕλληνικάEspañolEsperantoEstremeñuEuskaraفارسیFrançaisFryskGàidhligGalego한국어Հայերենहिन्दीHrvatskiIdoBahasa IndonesiaIñupiatunÍslenskaItalianoעבריתJawaKapampanganქართულიҚазақшаKernowekKiswahiliKreyòl ayisyenKurdîКыргызчаLatinaLatviešuLëtzebuergeschLietuviųLigureLimburgsLingálaLingua Franca NovaLugandaLombardMagyarमैथिलीМакедонскиMalagasyമലയാളംमराठीBahasa MelayuМонголမြန်မာဘာသာNederlandsनेपाली日本語ߒߞߏNordfriiskNorsk bokmålNorsk nynorskOccitanOʻzbekcha / ўзбекчаਪੰਜਾਬੀپنجابیپښتوPolskiPortuguêsRomânăRuna SimiРусиньскыйРусскийᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤShqipSicilianuසිංහලSimple EnglishسنڌيSlovenčinaSlovenščinaکوردیСрпски / srpskiSrpskohrvatski / српскохрватскиSundaSuomiSvenskaTagalogதமிழ்TaclḥitไทยТоҷикӣTürkçeTyapУкраїнськаاردوئۇيغۇرچە / UyghurcheVènetoTiếng ViệtVõroWalon文言Winaray吴语ייִדיש粵語中文

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sound in spoken language, articulated with an open vocal tract

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

IPA: Vowels

Front

Central

Back

Close

i

y

ɨ

ʉ

ɯ

u

Near-close

ɪ

ʏ

ʊ

Close-mid

e

ø

ɘ

ɵ

ɤ

o

Mid

e̞

ø̞

ə

ɤ̞

o̞

Open-mid

ɛ

œ

ɜ

ɞ

ʌ

ɔ

Near-open

æ

ɐ

Open

a

ɶ

ä

ɑ

ɒ

IPA help

 audio

full chart

template

Legend: unrounded • rounded

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract.[1] Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.

The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice).[2]

In English, the word vowel is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩, and sometimes ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩).[3]

Definition[edit]

There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological.

In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English "ah" /ɑː/ or "oh" /oʊ/, produced with an open vocal 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 and continuant.[4] There is no significant build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, 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 as syllabic, the sound that forms the peak of a syllable.[5] A phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel. In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak (nucleus) of many or all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages that have them) coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic (i.e., vocalic) l in the English word table [ˈtʰeɪ.bl̩] (when not considered to have a weak vowel sound: [ˈtʰeɪ.bəl]) or the syllabic r in the Serbo-Croatian word vrt [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] The approximants [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 like bird in a rhotic dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/. The American linguist Kenneth 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/ in table or the syllabic nasals in button and rhythm.

Articulation[edit]

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 the International Phonetic Alphabet, is one of articulatory features that determine a vowel's quality as distinguishing it from other vowels. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height (vertical dimension), tongue backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip articulation). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right. There are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal 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 IPA Handbook 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.

Height[edit]

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 the jaw. In practice, however, it refers to the first formant (lowest resonance of the voice), abbreviated F1, which is associated with the height of the tongue. In close vowels, also known as high 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 in open vowels, also known as low 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] In John Esling's usage, where fronted 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.

The International 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:

close (a.k.a. high): i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u

near-close (a.k.a. near-high): ɪ ʏ ʊ

close-mid (a.k.a. high-mid): e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o

mid: (the reduced vowel [ə])

open-mid (a.k.a. low-mid): ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ

near-open (a.k.a. near-low): æ (plus the reduced vowel [ɐ])

open (a.k.a. low): a ɶ ɑ ɒ

The letters ⟨e, ø, ɘ, ɵ, ɤ, o⟩ are defined as close-mid but are commonly used for true mid 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 ⟨ɛ̝ œ̝ ɜ̝ ɞ̝ ʌ̝ ɔ̝⟩.

The Kensiu 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, /i ɪ e e̞ ɛ/, along with open /a/, make a six-way height distinction; this holds even for the nasal vowels. A few varieties of German have been reported to have five contrastive vowel heights that are independent of length or other parameters. For example, the Bavarian dialect of Amstetten 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: /i e ɛ̝ ɛ/, /y ø œ̝ œ/, /u o ɔ̝ ɔ/, /a/. Apart from the aforementioned Kensiu 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 all spoken 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 have vertical vowel systems in which at least at a phonemic level, only height is used to distinguish vowels.

Backness[edit]

Idealistic tongue positions of cardinal 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 is defined 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.

The International Phonetic Alphabet defines five degrees of vowel backness:

front

near-front

central

near-back

back

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 and back-central may also be used as terms synonymous with near-front and near-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[edit]

Main article: Roundedness

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), most Uralic languages (Estonian has a rounding contrast for /o/ and front vowels), Turkic languages (with a rounding distinction for front vowels and /u/), and Vietnamese 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 of labialization are possible. In mid to high rounded back vowels the lips are generally protruded ("pursed") outward, a phenomenon known as endolabial 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 as exolabial 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 and Norwegian are the only two known languages in which the feature is contrastive; they have both exo- and endo-labial close front vowels and close 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 of rounded (endolabial), compressed (exolabial), and unrounded. The lip position of unrounded vowels may also be classified separately as spread and neutral (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[edit]

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 posits raised vowels, where the body of the tongue approaches the velum ([u, o, ɨ], etc.), and retracted vowels, where the root of the tongue approaches the pharynx ([ɑ, ɔ], etc.):

front

raised

retracted

Membership in these categories is scalar, with the mid-central vowels being marginal to any category.[13]

Nasalization[edit]

Main articles: Nasal vowel and Nasalization

Nasalization occurs when air escapes through the nose. Vowels are often nasalised under the influence of neighbouring nasal consonants, as in English hand [hæ̃nd]. Nasalised vowels, however, should not be confused with nasal vowels. The latter refers to vowels that are distinct from their oral counterparts, as in French /ɑ/ vs. /ɑ̃/.[14]

In nasal vowels, the velum 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 and Portuguese also contrast nasal and oral vowels.

Phonation[edit]

Main article: Phonation

Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages have only voiced vowels, but several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and devoiced vowels. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. In Japanese and in Quebec French, vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced.

Modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, they co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon 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 for phonemic contrast. The combination of phonetic cues (phonation, tone, stress) is known as register or register complex.

Tenseness[edit]

Main articles: Tenseness and Checked and free vowels

Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of tense 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 (mainly Germanic languages, e.g. English), 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 final silent ⟨e⟩, as in mate. Lax vowels occur in words without the silent ⟨e⟩, such as mat. In American 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 to tense and lax. The two sets of terms are used interchangeably by some because the features are concomitant in some varieties of English.[clarification needed] In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables. Therefore, they are also known as checked vowels, whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable.[citation needed]

Tongue root position[edit]

Main articles: Advanced and retracted tongue root and Vowel harmony

Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa, the Pacific Northwest, and scattered other languages such as Modern Mongolian.[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.

Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract[edit]

Main article: Pharyngealization

Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages like Sedang and the Tungusic languages. Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root but is acoustically distinct.

A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occurs in the Northeast Caucasian languages and the Khoisan languages. They might be called epiglottalized since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis.

The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords.

The terms pharyngealized, epiglottalized, strident, and sphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably.

Rhotic vowels[edit]

Main article: R-colored vowel

Rhotic vowels are the "R-colored vowels" of American English and a few other languages.

Reduced vowels[edit]

Main article: Vowel reduction

Common reduced vowels(IPA provides only ⟨ə⟩ and ⟨ɐ⟩)

Near-front

Central

Near-back

Near-close

ᵻ

ᵿ

Mid

ə

Near-open

ɐ

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.)

Acoustics[edit]

Related article: Phonetics

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 of Daniel Jones and John 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 [y ɯ] have perhaps similar F1 and F2 values to the high central vowels [ɨ ʉ], being distinguished by rounding (F3); similarly [ø ɤ] vs central [ɘ ɵ] and [œ ʌ] vs central [ɜ ɞ].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 [æ ɐ ɑ] 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 the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant 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, while close 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, while front 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 the difference 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]

R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values.

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.

Prosody and intonation[edit]

Main articles: Prosody, Intonation, and Vowel length

In addition to variation in vowel quality as described above, vowels vary as a result of differences in prosody. The most important prosodic variables are pitch (fundamental frequency), loudness (intensity) and length (duration). However, the features of prosody are usually considered to apply not to the vowel itself, but to the syllable in which the vowel occurs. In other words, the domain 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 only voiced 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 are sonorant and all will participate in any pitch variation.

Loudness: this variable has been traditionally associated with linguistic stress, 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 of vowel length. One is the phonological difference in length exhibited by some languages. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Arabic and Latin have a two-way phonemic contrast between short and long vowels. The Mixe 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.

Monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs[edit]

Main articles: Monophthong, Diphthong, Triphthong, and Semivowel

A vowel sound whose quality does not change throughout the vowel is called a monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides successively through three qualities is a triphthong.

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 in hit is a monophthong /ɪ/, the vowel sound in boy is in most dialects a diphthong /ɔɪ/, and the vowel sounds of flower, /aʊər/, form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on the dialect.

In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into distinct phonemes. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower (/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 terms diphthong and triphthong only in this phonemic sense.

Written vowels[edit]

Main article: Writing system

The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols that represent vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In writing systems based on the Latin 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 represent approximant 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 ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ü⟩, ⟨å⟩, ⟨æ⟩, and ⟨ø⟩.

The phonetic values vary considerably by language, and some languages use ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩ for the consonant [j], e.g., initial ⟨i⟩ in Italian or Romanian 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 Modern Welsh, ⟨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 some diphthongs (as in "cow") and to represent a monophthong in the borrowed words "cwm" and "crwth" (sometimes cruth).

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⟩ in Swedish, or add diacritical marks, like umlauts, 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 the Scandinavian languages. The International 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 the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels, since they are frequently unnecessary in identifying a word.[citation needed] Technically, these are called abjads 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; consider dd, which could be any of dad, dada, dado, dead, deed, did, died, diode, dodo, dud, dude, odd, add, and aided. (Abjads generally express some word-internal vowels and all word-initial and word-final vowels, whereby the ambiguity will be much reduced.) The Masoretes devised a vowel notation system for Hebrew Jewish scripture that is still widely used, as well as the trope symbols used for its cantillation; both are part of oral tradition and still the basis for many bible translations—Jewish and Christian.

Shifts[edit]

The differences in pronunciation of vowel letters between English and its related languages can be accounted for by the Great 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).

Audio samples[edit]

IPA: Vowels

Front

Central

Back

Close

iⓘ

yⓘ

ɨⓘ

ʉⓘ

ɯⓘ

uⓘ

Near-close

ɪⓘ

ʏⓘ

ʊⓘ

Close-mid

eⓘ

øⓘ

ɘⓘ

ɵⓘ

ɤⓘ

oⓘ

Mid

e̞ⓘ

ø̞ⓘ

əⓘ

ɤ̞ⓘ

o̞ⓘ

Open-mid

ɛⓘ

œⓘ

ɜⓘ

ɞⓘ

ʌⓘ

ɔⓘ

Near-open

æⓘ

ɐⓘ

Open

aⓘ

ɶⓘ

äⓘ

ɑⓘ

ɒⓘ

IPA help

audio help

full chart

template

Legend: unrounded • rounded

Systems[edit]

The importance of vowels in distinguishing one word from another varies from language to language. Nearly all languages have at least three phonemic vowels, usually /i/, /a/, /u/ as in Classical Arabic and Inuktitut, though Adyghe and many Sepik languages have a vertical vowel system of /ɨ/, /ə/, /a/. Very few languages have fewer, though some Arrernte, Circassian, and Ndu languages have been argued to have just two, /ə/ and /a/, with [ɨ] being epenthetic.

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 various phonations 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. The Germanic 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 the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian 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 and French are two closely related Romance 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/. The Mon–Khmer languages of Southeast Asia also have some large inventories, such as the eleven vowels of Vietnamese: /i, e, ɛ, ɐ, a, ə, ɔ, ɤ, o, ɯ, u/. Wu dialects have the largest inventories of Chinese; the Jinhui 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]. Some Tagalog and Cebuano speakers have [ɐ] rather than [a], and Dhangu Yolngu is described as having /ɪ ɐ ʊ/, without any peripheral vowels. [i] is also extremely common, though Tehuelche has just the vowels /e a o/ 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 and Navajo are examples.

In most languages, vowels serve mainly to distinguish separate lexemes, rather than different inflectional forms of the same lexeme as they commonly do in the Semitic languages. For example, while English man becomes men in the plural, moon is a completely different word.

Words without vowels[edit]

See also: English words without vowels

In rhotic dialects of English, as in Canada and the United States, there are many words such as bird, learn, girl, church, worst, wyrm, myrrh that some phoneticians analyze as having no vowels, only a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/. However, others analyze these words instead as having a rhotic vowel, /ɝː/. The difference may be partially one of dialect.

There are a few such words that are disyllabic, like cursor, curtain, and turtle: [ˈkɹ̩sɹ̩], [ˈkɹ̩tn̩] and [ˈtɹ̩tl̩] (or [ˈkɝːsɚ], [ˈkɝːtən], and [ˈtɝːtəl]), and even a few that are trisyllabic, at least in some accents, such as purpler [ˈpɹ̩.pl̩.ɹ̩], hurdler [ˈhɹ̩.dl̩.ɹ̩], gurgler [ˈɡɹ̩.ɡl̩.ɹ̩], and certainer [ˈsɹ̩.tn̩.ɹ̩].

The word and frequently contracts to a simple nasal ’n, as in lock 'n key [ˌlɒk ŋ ˈkiː]. Words such as will, have, and is 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, include hmm, pst!, shh!, tsk!, and zzz. As in other languages, onomatopoeiae stand outside the normal phonotactics of English.

There are other languages that form lexical words without vowel sounds. In Serbo-Croatian, for example, the consonants [r] and [rː] (the difference is not written) can act as a syllable nucleus and carry rising or falling tone; examples include the tongue-twister na vrh brda vrba mrda and geographic names such as Krk. In Czech and Slovak, either [l] or [r] can stand in for vowels: vlk [vl̩k] "wolf", krk [kr̩k] "neck". A particularly long word without vowels is čtvrthrst, meaning "quarter-handful", with two syllables (one for each R), or scvrnkls, a verb form meaning "you flipped (sth) down" (eg a marble). Whole sentences (usually tongue-twisters) can be made from such words, such as Strč prst skrz krk, meaning "stick a finger through your neck" (pronounced [str̩tʃ pr̩st skr̩s kr̩k] ⓘ), and Smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh. (Here zvlhl has two syllables based on L; and the preposition z 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, like k, 'to', v, 'in', and s, 'with'. However, these forms are actually contractions of ko, vo, and so respectively, and these forms are still used in modern Russian before words with certain consonant clusters for ease of pronunciation.

In Kazakh and certain other Turkic 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 Southern varieties of Chinese, such as Cantonese and Minnan, some monosyllabic words are made of exclusively nasals, such as Cantonese [m̩˨˩] "no" and [ŋ̩˩˧] "five". Minnan also has words consisting of a consonant followed by a syllabic nasal, such as pn̄g "cooked rice".

So far, all of these syllabic consonants, at least in the lexical words, have been sonorants, such as [r], [l], [m], and [n], which have a voiced 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 some Berber languages and some languages of the American Pacific Northwest, such as Nuxalk. An example from the latter is scs "seal fat" (pronounced [sxs], as spelled), and a longer one is clhp'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] (In Mandarin Chinese, words and syllables such as sī and zhī 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 the Japonic language Miyako, there are words with no voiced sounds, such as ss '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 of Wandala is reported to have no phonemic vowels.[35]

Words consisting of only vowels[edit]

It is not uncommon for short grammatical words to consist of only vowels, such as a and I in English. Lexical words are somewhat rarer in English and are generally restricted to a single syllable: eye, awe, owe, and in non-rhotic accents air, ore, err. Vowel-only words of more than one syllable are generally foreign loans, such as ai (two syllables: /ˈɑːi/) for the maned sloth, or proper names, such as Iowa (in some accents: /ˈaɪ.oʊ.ə/).

However, vowel sequences in hiatus are more freely allowed in some other languages, most famously perhaps in Bantu and Polynesian languages, but also in Japanese and Finnic languages. In such languages there tends to be a larger variety of vowel-only words. In Swahili (Bantu), for example, there is aua 'to survey' and eua 'to purify' (both three syllables); in Japanese, aoi 青い 'blue/green' and oioi 追々 'gradually' (three and four morae); and in Finnish, aie 'intention' and auo 'open!' (both two syllables), although some dialects pronounce them as aije and auvo. In Urdu, āye/aaie آئیے or āyn آئیں 'come' is used. Hawaiian, and the Polynesian languages generally, have unusually large numbers of such words, such as aeāea (a small green fish), which is three syllables: ae.āe.a. Most long words involve reduplication, which is quite productive in Polynesian: ioio 'grooves', eaea 'breath', uaua 'tough' (all four syllables), auēuē 'crying' (five syllables, from uē (uwē) 'to weep'), uoa or uouoa 'false mullet' (sp. fish, three or five syllables).[citation needed]

See also[edit]

English phonology

Great Vowel Shift

Inherent vowel

List of phonetics topics

Mater lectionis

Scale of vowels

Table of vowels

Vowel coalescence

Words without vowels

Zero consonant

Notes[edit]

^ According to Peter 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]

References[edit]

^ Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996, p. 281.

^ "Vowel". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 12 April 2012.

^ Dictionary.com: vowel

^ Cruttenden, Alan (2014). Gimson's Pronunciation of English (Eighth ed.). Routledge. p. 27. ISBN 9781444183092.

^ Cruttenden, Alan (2014). Gimson's Pronunciation of English (Eighth ed.). Routledge. p. 53. ISBN 9781444183092.

^ Laver, John (1994) Principles of Phonetics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 269.

^ Crystal, David (2005) A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Maldern, MA/Oxford: Blackwell, p. 494.

^ Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. p. 323. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.

^ Ladefoged & Disner (2012) Vowels and Consonants, 3rd ed., p. 132.

^ IPA (1999) Handbook of the IPA, p. 12.

^ Ladefoged, Peter (2006) A Course in Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 189.

^ IPA (1999), p. 13.

^ John Esling (2005) "There Are No Back Vowels: The Laryngeal Articulator Model", The Canadian Journal of Linguistics 50: 13–44

^ Botma, Bert (8 December 2020). "Nasals and Nasalization". Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford. Retrieved 27 June 2017.

^ Ladefoged, Peter & Johnson, Keith. (2011). Tense and Lax Vowels. In A Course in Phonetics (6th ed., pp. 98–100). Boston, MA: Cengage.

^ Bessell, Nicola J. (1993). Towards a phonetic and phonological typology of post-velar articulation (Thesis). University of British Columbia.

^ 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. S2CID 146157247.

^ 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. S2CID 53532910.

^ 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.

^ Flemming, Edward and Stephanie Johnson (2007). "Rosa's roses: reduced vowels in American English" (PDF). Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 37: 83–96. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.536.1989. doi:10.1017/S0025100306002817. S2CID 145535175.

^ 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.

^ Bohn, Ocke-Schwen (2004). "How to organize a fairly large vowel inventory: the vowels of Fering (North Frisian)" (PDF). Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 34 (2): 161–173. doi:10.1017/S002510030400180X. S2CID 59404078.

^ Gordon, Matthew and Ayla Applebaum (2006). "Phonetic structures of Turkish Kabardian" (PDF). Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 36 (2): 159–186. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.233.1206. doi:10.1017/S0025100306002532. S2CID 6665600.

^ 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

^ In wyrm and myrrh, there is neither a vowel letter nor, in rhotic dialects, a vowel sound.

^ Values in open oral syllables Archived 2011-07-26 at the Wayback Machine

^ Audio recordings of selected words without vowels can be downloaded from "audio.doc". Archived from the original on 2009-03-20. Retrieved 2009-06-19..

^ Wolff, H. Ekkehard. "'Vocalogenesis' in (Central) Chadic languages" (PDF). Retrieved 2 December 2017.

Bibliography[edit]

Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 1999. Cambridge University ISBN 978-0-521-63751-0

Johnson, Keith, Acoustic & Auditory Phonetics, second edition, 2003. Blackwell ISBN 978-1-4051-0123-3

Korhonen, Mikko. Koltansaamen opas, 1973. Castreanum ISBN 978-951-45-0189-0

Ladefoged, Peter, A Course in Phonetics, fifth edition, 2006. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth ISBN 978-1-4130-2079-3

Ladefoged, Peter, Elements of Acoustic Phonetics, 1995. University of Chicago ISBN 978-0-226-46764-1

Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.

Ladefoged, Peter, Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages, 2000. Blackwell ISBN 978-0-631-21412-0.

Lindau, Mona. (1978). "Vowel features". Language. 54 (3): 541–563. doi:10.2307/412786. JSTOR 412786.

Stevens, Kenneth N. (1998). Acoustic phonetics. Current studies in linguistics (No. 30). Cambridge, MA: MIT. ISBN 978-0-262-19404-4.

Stevens, Kenneth N. (2000). "Toward a model for lexical access based on acoustic landmarks and distinctive features". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 111 (4): 1872–1891. Bibcode:2002ASAJ..111.1872S. doi:10.1121/1.1458026. PMID 12002871. S2CID 1811670.

Watt, D. and Tillotson, J. (2001). A spectrographic analysis of vowel fronting in Bradford English. English World-Wide 22:2, 269–302. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20120412023624/http://www.abdn.ac.uk/langling/resources/Watt-Tillotson2001.pdf

External links[edit]

Listen to this article (18 minutes)

This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 18 July 2005 (2005-07-18), and does not reflect subsequent edits.(Audio help · More spoken articles)

Look up vowel in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vowels.

IPA chart with MP3 sound files

IPA vowel chart with AIFF sound files

Materials for measuring and plotting vowel formants

Vowels and Consonants Archived 2005-07-03 at the Wayback Machine Online examples from Ladefoged's Vowels and Consonants, referenced above.

vteInternational Phonetic Alphabet (chart)IPA topicsIPA

International Phonetic Association

History of the alphabet

Extensions for disordered speech (extIPA)

Voice Quality Symbols (VoQS)

Journal of the IPA (JIPA)

Special topics

Cursive forms

Case variants

Obsolete and nonstandard symbols

Naming conventions

Sinological extensions

World Orthography

IPA chart for English dialects

Encodings

ASCII encodings

SAMPA

X-SAMPA

Kirshenbaum

TIPA

Phonetic symbols in Unicode

IPA number

IPA Braille

ConsonantsPulmonic consonants

Place →

Labial

Coronal

Dorsal

Laryngeal

Manner ↓

Bi­labial

Labio­dental

Linguo­labial

Dental

Alveolar

Post­alveolar

Retro­flex

Palatal

Velar

Uvular

Pharyn­geal/epi­glottal

Glottal

Nasal

m̥

m

ɱ̊

ɱ

n̼

n̥

n

ɳ̊

ɳ

ɲ̊

ɲ

ŋ̊

ŋ

ɴ̥

ɴ

Plosive

p

b

p̪

b̪

t̼

d̼

t

d

ʈ

ɖ

c

ɟ

k

ɡ

q

ɢ

ʡ

ʔ

Sibilant affricate

ts

dz

t̠ʃ

d̠ʒ

tʂ

dʐ

tɕ

dʑ

Non-sibilant affricate

pɸ

bβ

p̪f

b̪v

t̪θ

d̪ð

tɹ̝̊

dɹ̝

t̠ɹ̠̊˔

d̠ɹ̠˔

cç

ɟʝ

kx

ɡɣ

qχ

ɢʁ

ʡʜ

ʡʢ

ʔh

Sibilant fricative

s

z

ʃ

ʒ

ʂ

ʐ

ɕ

ʑ

Non-sibilant fricative

ɸ

β

f

v

θ̼

ð̼

θ

ð

θ̠

ð̠

ɹ̠̊˔

ɹ̠˔

ɻ̊˔

ɻ˔

ç

ʝ

x

ɣ

χ

ʁ

ħ

ʕ

h

ɦ

Approximant

ʋ

ɹ

ɻ

j

ɰ

ʔ̞

Tap/flap

ⱱ̟

ⱱ

ɾ̼

ɾ̥

ɾ

ɽ̊

ɽ

ɢ̆

ʡ̆

Trill

ʙ̥

ʙ

r̥

r

ɽ̊r̥

ɽr

ʀ̥

ʀ

ʜ

ʢ

Lateral affricate

tɬ

dɮ

tꞎ

d

c

ɟʎ̝

k

ɡʟ̝

Lateral fricative

ɬ

ɮ

ꞎ

ʎ̝

ʟ̝

Lateral approximant

l

ɭ

ʎ

ʟ

ʟ̠

Lateral tap/flap

ɺ̥

ɺ

̥

ʎ̆

ʟ̆

IPA help

 audio

full chart

template

Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced, to the left are voiceless. Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible.

Non-pulmonic consonants

BL

LD

D

A

PA

RF

P

V

U

EG

Ejective

Stop

pʼ

tʼ

ʈʼ

cʼ

kʼ

qʼ

ʡʼ

Affricate

p̪fʼ

t̪θʼ

tsʼ

t̠ʃʼ

tʂʼ

kxʼ

qχʼ

Fricative

ɸʼ

fʼ

θʼ

sʼ

ʃʼ

ʂʼ

ɕʼ

xʼ

χʼ

Lateral affricate

tɬʼ

cʼ

kʼ

qʼ

Lateral fricative

ɬʼ

Click(top: velar;bottom: uvular)

Tenuis

kʘqʘ

kǀqǀ

kǃqǃ

kq

kǂqǂ

Voiced

ɡʘɢʘ

ɡǀɢǀ

ɡǃɢǃ

ɡɢ

ɡǂɢǂ

Nasal

ŋʘɴʘ

ŋǀɴǀ

ŋǃɴǃ

ŋɴ

ŋǂɴǂ

ʞ 

Tenuis lateral

kǁqǁ

Voiced lateral

ɡǁɢǁ

Nasal lateral

ŋǁɴǁ

Implosive

Voiced

ɓ

ɗ

ᶑ

ʄ

ɠ

ʛ

Voiceless

ɓ̥

ɗ̥

ᶑ̊

ʄ̊

ɠ̊

ʛ̥

IPA help

 audio

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template

Co-articulated consonants

Nasal

n͡m

Labial–alveolar

ŋ͡m

Labial–velar

Plosive

t͡pd͡b

Labial–alveolar

k͡pɡ͡b

Labial–velar

q͡ʡ

Uvular–epiglottal

q͡p

Labial–uvular

Fricative/approximant

ɥ̊ɥ

Labial–palatal

ʍw

Labial–velar

ɧ

Sj-sound (variable)

Lateral approximant

ɫ

Velarized alveolar

Implosive

ɠ̊͜ɓ̥

ɠ͡ɓ

Labial–velar

Ejective

t͡pʼ

Labial–alveolar

IPA help

full chart

template

Other

Nasal labial–velar approximant [w̃]

Nasal palatal approximant [j̃]

Voiceless bidental fricative [h̪͆]

Voiceless bilabially post-trilled dental stop [t̪ʙ̥]

Voiceless nasal glottal approximant [h̃]

Vowels

Front

Central

Back

Close

i

y

ɨ

ʉ

ɯ

u

Near-close

ɪ

ʏ

ʊ

Close-mid

e

ø

ɘ

ɵ

ɤ

o

Mid

e̞

ø̞

ə

ɤ̞

o̞

Open-mid

ɛ

œ

ɜ

ɞ

ʌ

ɔ

Near-open

æ

ɐ

Open

a

ɶ

ä

ɑ

ɒ

IPA help

 audio

full chart

template

Legend: unrounded • rounded

vteArticulationArticulatory phonetics – Coarticulation – International Phonetic AlphabetPlaceLabial

Bilabial

Labiodental

Coronal

Linguolabial

Interdental

Dental

Denti-alveolar

Alveolar

Postalveolar

Palato-alveolar

Retroflex

Active place

Apical

Laminal

Subapical

Dorsal

Alveolo-palatal

Palatal

Velar

Uvular

Laryngeal

Pharyngeal/epiglottal

Glottal

Double articulation

Labial–coronal

Labial–palatal

Labial–velar

Labial–uvular

Coronal–velar

Uvular–epiglottal

Pathological

Velopharyngeal

Other

Bidental

MannerObstruent

Plosive

Affricate

Fricative

Sibilant

Sonorant

Nasal

Vowel

Approximant

Semivowel

Vibrant

Tap/flap

Trill

Liquid

Rhotic

Lateral

Occlusive

Continuant

Airstream

Egressive

Ingressive

Ejective

Implosive

Click

Pulmonic

Ejective

Percussive

Secondary articulation

Labialization

Rounding

Palatalization

Labio-palatalization

Velarization

Uvularization

Pharyngealization

Glottalization

Nasalization

Tongue shape

Sulcal

Domed

Voice

Voiceless

Aspirated

Tenuis

Voice onset time

Phonation

Modal

Breathy

Slack

Creaky

Stiff

Authority control databases National

Spain

France

BnF data

Germany

Israel

United States

Latvia

Japan

Czech Republic

Other

IdRef

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vowel&oldid=1209816142"

Categories: VowelsManner of articulationPhoneticsHidden categories: Pages using the Phonos extensionWebarchive template wayback linksArticles with short descriptionShort description matches WikidataArticles lacking in-text citations from November 2017All articles lacking in-text citationsPages with plain IPAArticles containing Latin-language textAll articles with unsourced statementsArticles with unsourced statements from April 2019Wikipedia articles needing clarification from April 2019Articles with unsourced statements from October 2015Articles with unsourced statements from May 2010Articles containing Serbo-Croatian-language textArticles containing Czech-language textPages with Czech IPAPages including recorded pronunciationsArticles containing Russian-language textArticles containing Kazakh-language textArticles containing Bella Coola-language textPages with Salishan languages IPAArticles containing Mandarin Chinese-language textArticles containing Miyako-language textArticles containing Finnish-language textArticles containing Hawaiian-language textArticles with unsourced statements from April 2022Articles with hAudio microformatsSpoken articlesCommons category link is on WikidataArticles with BNE identifiersArticles with BNF identifiersArticles with BNFdata identifiersArticles with GND identifiersArticles with J9U identifiersArticles with LCCN identifiersArticles with LNB identifiersArticles with NDL identifiersArticles with NKC identifiersArticles with SUDOC identifiers

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Vowel - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Beginning

1Monophthongs and diphthongs

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Vowel

129 languages

AfrikaansAlemannischالعربيةAragonésArmãneashtiArpetanAsturianuАварAzərbaycancaবাংলাBân-lâm-gúБеларускаяБеларуская (тарашкевіца)भोजपुरीBikol CentralБългарскиBoarischབོད་ཡིགBosanskiBrezhonegCatalàЧӑвашлаČeštinaChiShonaCymraegDanskDavvisámegiellaDeutschEestiΕλληνικάEnglishEspañolEsperantoEstremeñuEuskaraفارسیFrançaisFryskGàidhligGalego한국어Հայերենहिन्दीHrvatskiIdoBahasa IndonesiaIñupiatunÍslenskaItalianoעבריתJawaKapampanganქართულიҚазақшаKernowekKiswahiliKreyòl ayisyenKurdîКыргызчаLatinaLatviešuLëtzebuergeschLietuviųLigureLimburgsLingálaLingua Franca NovaLugandaLombardMagyarमैथिलीМакедонскиMalagasyമലയാളംमराठीBahasa MelayuМонголမြန်မာဘာသာNederlandsनेपाली日本語ߒߞߏNordfriiskNorsk bokmålNorsk nynorskOccitanOʻzbekcha / ўзбекчаਪੰਜਾਬੀپنجابیپښتوPolskiPortuguêsRomânăRuna SimiРусиньскыйРусскийᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤShqipSicilianuසිංහලسنڌيSlovenčinaSlovenščinaکوردیСрпски / srpskiSrpskohrvatski / српскохрватскиSundaSuomiSvenskaTagalogதமிழ்TaclḥitไทยТоҷикӣTürkçeTyapУкраїнськаاردوئۇيغۇرچە / UyghurcheVènetoTiếng ViệtVõroWalon文言Winaray吴语ייִדיש粵語中文

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From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A vowel is a particular kind of speech sound made by changing the shape of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above the tongue. In English it is important to know that there is a difference between a vowel sound and a [letter] in the [alphabet]. In English there are five vowel letters in the alphabet.

The sounds of American English are written with letters in the English alphabet, as either vowels or consonants. All English words are written with vowel letters in them.

These letters are vowels in English:

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes and Y.[1]

It is said that Y is "sometimes" a vowel, because the letter Y represents both vowel and consonant sounds. In the words cry, sky, fly, my and why, letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. In words like myth and synchronize, Y represents the vowel sound /ɪ/. In words like only, quickly, and folly, Y represents the vowel sound /i/.

It can also be a consonant sound called a glide 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 like such as cow, bow, or how. 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 words when, where, wet. In some languages, like Welsh, the letter W represents the vowel sound /ʊ/, like cwm (a kind of valley).

In written English the six vowel letters are used to represent the 13-15 vowel sounds (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 systems doesn't always help us figure out what the English sounds are. This can be confusing.

The rest of the letters of the alphabet are consonants:

B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, and Z.

Monophthongs and diphthongs[change | change source]

Simple vowels are called monophthongs. The letters, like /ɪ/, are the IPA letters for each vowel sound in English. (The IPA is the International 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 in police, feet, eat, and silly

/ɪ/ as in it, sit, kick, myth and bitter

/ɛ/ as in end, bet, less, and letter

/æ/ as in at, apple, fat, and matter

/u/ as in cool, tune, soup, and kung fu,

/ʊ/ as in cook, should, pudding, foot, and rook

/ʌ/ as in bus, blood, come, and up

/ə/ as in kingdom, photography, philosophy, ketchup, and hundred

/ɚ/ as in butter, collar, flavor, firm, and burst

/ɔ/ as in all, fought, hot, and bot

/ɑ/ as in father, walk, arm, heart, wasp, lager, envelope and aardvark

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 in ate, reign, vain, flavor, slay, and convey

/oʊ/ as in toe, row, go, boat, mode, and chateau

/aɪ/ as in eye, I, pie, cry, cypher, climb, lime, light, kayak, Thai, and height

/aʊ/ as in loud, house, cow, about, Daoism, and Macau

/oɪ/ as in boy, moist, and Freud

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 words cot and caught, while in other dialects these words are homophones. 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.

The study of speech sounds is called phonetics.

Related pages[change | change source]

Orthography

Dialect

Diphthong

References[change | change source]

↑ "Is It True "W" Can Be Used As A Vowel?". Dictionary.com. 8 December 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2023.

↑ Edward Fry (2004). "Phonics: A Large Phoneme-Grapheme Frequency Count Revised". Journal of Literacy Research. 36 (1): 85–98. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3601_5. S2CID 146226795.

↑ Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge. p237

Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vowel&oldid=9348484"

Category: Vowels

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Meaning of vowel in English

vowelnoun [ C ] uk

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/vaʊəl/ us

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/vaʊəl/

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B1 a speech sound produced by humans when the breath flows out through the mouth without being blocked by the teeth, tongue, or lips: A short vowel is a short sound as in the word "cup". A long vowel is a long sound as in the word "shoe". Compare

consonant

B1 a letter that represents a sound produced in this way: The vowels in English are a, e, i, o, and u.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Linguistics: phonology & phonetics

accommodation

alliterative

alveolar

apheresis

aphesis

assonance

diphthong

intrusive

labial

labialize

labiodental

mispronounce

plosive

postalveolar

postconsonantal

retroflex

rhotic

the International Phonetic Alphabet

unpronounceable

unrepeatable

See more results »

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Lettering & alphabets

(Definition of vowel from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

vowel | American Dictionary

vowelnoun [ C ] us

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/ˈvɑʊ·əl/

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writing a speech sound produced by human beings when the breath flows out through the mouth without being blocked by the teeth, tongue, or lips

writing A vowel is also a letter that represents a sound produced in this way: The vowels in English are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.

(Definition of vowel from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of vowel

vowel

The asymmetrical pattern, where high vowels follow nonhigh vowels, is worth additional discussion.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

His spellings give clear evidence of the variation in his own speech, with raised, unraised and even lowered equivalents of the short front vowels.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To adopt such an idea would simplify the teaching of the vowels to learners, since you could absorb these so-called diphthongs into the simple system.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They are words that have partial or complete reduplication of consonants and\or vowels and do not contain any consonant clusters.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Target syllables with short vowels represented 42 % of the total number of closed target syllables.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

If there was no identifiable release burst, the low amplitude cyclic pattern occurring between the stop's preceding and following vowels was measured.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

There were no differences in high-front, high-back, and mid-back vowels.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Superfluous vowels were ignored in this scoring system.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Production of full vowels represents feature number (1) but neither (2) nor (3).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Very frequently, these little words are attached as clitics to the preceding or following word, which makes them phonetically indistinguishable from epenthetic vowels.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Hence, we decided to categorize all instances of extra vowels at the end of a noun as ambiguous.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We refer mainly to vowels in monosyllabic words but extend the discussion to disyllabic words later on.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We, thus, leave open whether long and short vowels are represented differently at this earliest stage.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Target words containing short vowels and /l/ codas were produced as open syllables with diphthongs.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The younger talkers tended to produce vowels that showed the length contrast less clearly than the older talkers.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of vowel

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with vowel

vowel

These are words often used in combination with vowel.Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

front vowelMany readers will no doubt wonder if */x/ can also precede a front vowel.

From the Cambridge English Corpus  

lax vowelIn particular, the analysis cannot in itself explain why there is vowel insertion after stops following a lax vowel.

From the Cambridge English Corpus  

long vowelAs a result, the reduplicant contains a long vowel on the surface.

From the Cambridge English Corpus  

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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What is the pronunciation of vowel?

B1,B1

Translations of vowel

in Chinese (Traditional)

母音, 母音字母…

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元音, 元音字母…

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vocal, vocal [feminine, singular]…

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in Portuguese

vogal, vogal [feminine]…

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母音, 母音（ぼいん）…

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ünlü/sesli harf, ünlü, ünlüler…

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voyelle [feminine], voyelle…

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vocal…

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klinker…

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vokal, vokallyd…

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vokal, vokalljud…

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vokal…

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der Vokal, der Selbstlaut, Vokal-……

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vokal [masculine], vokal, vokal(lyd)…

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голосна буква, голосний звук…

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гласный звук…

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حَرْف مُتَحَرِّك…

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samohláska…

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huruf hidup, suara hidup…

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เสียงสระ, อักษรแทนเสียงสระ…

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nguyên âm, âm nguyên âm…

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samogłoska…

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모음…

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vocale…

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voudou

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back vowel

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What is a Vowel? Definition, Examples of English Vowels - Writing Explained

What is a Vowel? Definition, Examples of English Vowels - Writing Explained

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What is a Vowel? Definition, Examples of English Vowels

Home » The Writer’s Dictionary » What is a Vowel? Definition, Examples of English Vowels

Vowel definition: A vowel is a sound produced with a comparatively open configuration of the vocal tract. In everyday language, a vowel is a letter (sound) of the English alphabet that is not a consonant.

What is a Vowel?

A vowel is most often identified as a letter that is not a consonant. More specifically, a vowel is a sound that when paired with a consonant makes a syllable.

A vowel is any sound that a letter makes that is not a consonant sound.

What are the vowels? There are five English vowels,

A, E, I, O, U.

Sometimes, Y can also function as a vowel, but it is not considered a vowel in and of itself.

Examples in Words:

cat

“a” is a vowel in this word

street

“e” and “e” are vowels in this word

late

“a” and “e” are vowels in this word

Vowels and Consonants

Vowels and consonants are two different sounds. A consonant is most often identified as a letter that is not a vowel.

English consonants are: B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y (sometimes), Z.

Consonants and vowels do not make syllables on their own. A vowel paired with a consonant makes a syllable.

Example of consonants in words:

bin

“b” and “n” are the consonants in this word

stool

“s,” “t,” and “l” are the consonants in this word

chair

“c,” “h,” and “r” are the consonants in this word

Forming Syllables

A syllable is a unit of sound that creates meaning in language. Vowels alone do not make syllables. Instead, they pair with consonants to create what we know as syllables.

Syllables can have more than one letter. However, a syllable cannot have more than one sound.

Furthermore, syllables can have more than one vowel and more than one consonant. Still, a syllable cannot have more than one consonant or vowel sound.

Examples of syllables in words will help clarify this concept.

Examples:

tree

one syllable

two consonants “t” and “r” “w” and two vowels “e” and “e”

holy

two syllables

“ho”: one consonant “h” plus one vowel “o”

“ly”: one consonant “l” plus one vowel “y”

example

three syllables

“ex”: one vowel “e” plus one consonant “x”

“am”: one vowel “a” plus one consonant “m”

“ple” : two consonants “p” and “l” plus one vowel “e”

lake

one syllable

two consonants “l” “k” plus one two vowels “a” and “e”

Literary Devices That Use Vowels

The sound that vowels make is used to create a literary device called assonance. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds within nearby words.

Assonance is often used in poetry when writers use sound to create meaning.

It is important to note that assonance is not rhyme.

Example of Assonance:

the green tree bleeds its honeyed sap

the repetition of the long “e” sound in the words “green,” “tree,” and “bleeds” creates assonance

The following is an example of assonance from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells”

Hear the sledges with the bells—

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

In these lines, Poe use the short “e” sound to create assonance. Here is another look at the lines with the terms that create assonance underlined.

Hear the sledges with the bells—

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

Poe uses the words of this poem to reinforce the sound of the bells. He selects words specifically to sound as though the poem itself is making bell-like noises.

The assonance reinforces the melody of the bells themselves.

Consequently, writers should only use assonance when they understand its purpose. Like any literary device, assonance should connect to meaning and be used with intention.

Summary: What are Vowels?

Define vowel: the definition of vowel is a speech sound produced without blocking the breath channel; anything that is not a consonant.

In summary, a vowel is:

not a consonant

A, E, I, O, U, (and sometimes Y)

paired with a consonant to make a syllable

used to create the literary device assonance

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Vowel Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

Vowel Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

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vowel

noun

vow·​el

ˈvau̇(-ə)l 

1

: one of a class of speech sounds in the articulation of which the oral part of the breath channel is not blocked and is not constricted enough to cause audible friction

broadly

: the one most prominent sound in a syllable

2

: a letter or other symbol representing a vowel

—usually used in English of a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y

Examples of vowel in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The Clue: This word has more vowels than consonants.

.

.

.

—Erik Kain, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2024

Pepe even vocalizes vowel sounds like the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.

—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Feb. 2024

Buy some vowels and solve the puzzle for good news: Vanna White is back on Wheel of Fortune.

—Wesley Stenzel, EW.com, 9 Oct. 2023

How To Solve Today’s Wordle The Hint: The Clue: This word has far more consonants than vowels.

.

—Erik Kain, Forbes, 12 Feb. 2024

Sadly, though, French has changed my vowels and endo has changed my bowels.

—Kristina Kasparian, Longreads, 6 Feb. 2024

Today, one linguistic trend that’s synonymous with the state is the California vowel shift, which occurs when a person pronounces words differently by moving their vowels forward in their mouths.

—Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Jan. 2024

The strategy seems to make sense: Figure out the vowels, and the other letters will fall into place.

—Aatish Bhatia, New York Times, 17 Dec. 2023

The Clue: This word has more vowels than consonants.

—Erik Kain, Forbes, 10 Dec. 2023

See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'vowel.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Middle English, from Anglo-French vowele, from Latin vocalis — more at vocalic

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler

The first known use of vowel was

in the 14th century

See more words from the same century

Phrases Containing vowel

great vowel shift

vowel rhyme

vowel point

Articles Related to vowel

The Truth About 'Y': It's Mostly a Vowel

We need 'y' to be a consonant, but it acts more like a vowel.

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The most common vowel sound in English causes many spelling problems.

Dictionary Entries Near vowel

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vowel

vowel declension

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“Vowel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vowel. Accessed 12 Mar. 2024.

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Kids Definition

vowel

noun

vow·​el

ˈvau̇(-ə)l 

1

: a speech sound produced without obstruction or audible friction in the mouth

2

: a letter (as a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y) representing a vowel

More from Merriam-Webster on vowel

Nglish: Translation of vowel for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of vowel for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about vowel

Last Updated:

5 Mar 2024

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The 20 vowels sounds in English with examples

The 20 vowels sounds in English with examples

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English Pronunciation Academy

The Basics of English Pronunciation

The 20 vowels sounds in English with examples

The 20 vowels sounds in English with examples

Do want to learn more about the american english

sounds? You’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we discuss everything you need to know, starting

with the basics.

Contents

What are vowel sounds?

Categories of the vowel sounds

Why is vowel sounds hard to pronounce?

Short vowels in the IPA

Long vowels in the IPA

Diphthong vowels (double) in the IPA

What are vowel sounds?

English has fifteen vowel sounds represented by the letters a, e, i, o, and u. The letters y, w, and

gh are also commonly used in vowel sound-spellings. Vowel sounds are produced with a relatively open

vocal tract. Consonant sounds, in contrast, are created by pushing air through a small opening in the

vocal tract or by building up air in the vocal tract, then releasing it.

Categories of the vowel sounds

Vowel sounds are divided into the following three categories:

Long vowels (vowels that sound like the letter name)

Short vowels (the most common sound for a single vowel spelling)

Other vowels (the remaining vowel sounds)

The long vowel sounds are not pronounced for longer time than short vowel sounds!

It is important for ESL/ELL/EFL students to realize that the terms "long" and "short" are not

describing the length of time a vowel sound is said.

These archaic terms are still in popular use in American classrooms and online. They are used here to

give a name to a vowel sound so when the sound is discussed, the name and not the sound (which many

beginner students cannot yet hear correctly) is used.

If you are interested in knowing how to pronounce all vowels sound click here

At their simplest, short vowel sounds are usually spelled with a single letter, while long vowel and

other vowel sounds are generally spelled with combinations of letters. This should not be taken as a

strict rule when learning English pronunciation, however, as there are a large number of exceptions.

Why is vowel sounds hard to pronounce?

Many spelling patterns of English pronunciation have the possibility of two or more pronunciations

using that single spelling. For example, the letters 'e-a' have a different pronunciation in the words

team (long e /i/) and dead (short e /ɛ/). It is helpful to learn the common spellings for each vowel

sound along with knowing all the possible pronunciations for each spelling.

The English language also has a large number of words that are not pronounced the way their spelling

suggests. These are called non-phonetic words and must be memorized individually.

What are the English Vowel Sound IPA symbols (International Phonetic Alphabet)? English has 20 vowel

sounds.

Short vowels in the IPA are:

/ɪ/ – fit /fiːt/, pick /piːk/, difficult /ˈdɪ.fɪ.kəlt/

/e/ – pet /pet/, sent /sent/, attention /əˈten.ʃən/

/æ/ – pat /pæt/, flat /flæt/, family /ˈfæ.mə.li/

/ʌ/ – cut /kʌt/ jump /dʒʌmp/, cover /ˈkʌ.vər/

/ʊ/ – put /pʊt/, book /bʊk/, cushion /ˈkʊ.ʃən/

/ɒ/ – pot /pɒt/, dog /dɒg/, hospital /ˈhɒs.pɪ.təl/

/ə/ – about /əˈbaʊt/, system /ˈsɪs.təm/, complete /kəmˈpliːt/.

Long vowels in the IPA are:

/i:/ week /wi:k/, feet /fi:t/, media /ˈmiː.di.jə/

/ɑ:/ hard /ha:/, park /pa:k/, article /ɑː.tɪ.kəl/

/ɔ:/ fork /fɔ:k/, walk /wɔ:k/, August /ɔːˈɡʌst/

/ɜ:/ heard /hɜ:d/, word /wɜ:d/, surface /ˈsɜː.fɪs/

/u:/ boot /bu:t/, group /gru:p/, beautiful /ˈbjuː.tɪ.fəl/

Diphthong vowels (double) in the IPA

are:

/eɪ/ place /pleɪs/, late /leɪt/, dangerous /ˈdeɪn.dʒə.rəs/

/oʊ/ home /hoʊm/, phone /foʊn/, global /ˈɡloʊ.bəl/

/aʊ/ mouse /maʊs/, brown /braʊn/, accountant /əˈkaʊn.t̬ənt/

/ɪə/ clear /klɪə/, fear /fɪə/, career /kəˈrɪə/

/eə/ care /keə/, wear /weə/, declare /dɪˈkleə/

/ɔɪ/ boy /bɔɪ/, toy /tɔɪ/, enjoyable /ɪnˈdʒɔɪ.jə.bəl/

/aɪ/ find /faɪnd/, bite /baɪt/, tiger /ˈtaɪ.ɡə/

/ʊə/ tour /tʊə/, pure /pʊə/, mature /məˈtʃʊə/

How can I improve my English pronunciation for

free?

Being understood requires good pronunciation. Correct word pronunciation requires continual practice

and drills. You must be aware of word pronunciation and how to pronounce words correctly. Any English

student may master excellent pronunciation with some time, persistence, and probably some app

assistance.

For ESL students, pronunciation is a crucial ability to develop. The applications for testing

pronunciation and listening accuracy are listed below.

Do you find it difficult to pronounce English words correctly or to comprehend the phonetic alphabet's

symbols?

The collection of English pronunciation tools of the EnglishPhonetics below is for anyone

learning the language who want to practice their pronunciation at any time or place.

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To Phonetics Transcription (IPA) and American Pronunciation voice

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Contrasting Sounds or Minimal Pairs Examples

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therapy

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The 24 consonant sounds in English

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The Basics of English Pronunciation

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20 vowels sounds in English with examples

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