[quote author=Bud link=board=spell;num=1029467082;start=0#14 date=09/24/02 at 04:01:40] . . .(Incidentally, did I put the hyphen in the right place when I wrote "non-Scrabble related?")
Depends on whom you talk to in this forum! :D I’d go for "non Scrabble-related" or "non-Scrabble-related" myself, but I don’t have my old grammar book here to fall back on for an opinion.
Your teachers may have been referring to the pronouncation of such words as ‘where’ and ‘when.’
Though spelled today with the ‘h’ after the initial letter, they were at one time spelled with the ‘h’ in the initial position. Their pronounciation still reflects this original spelling, and I suppose you could argue that ‘h’ is thus a semi-vowel.
<Your teachers may have been referring to the pronouncation of such words as ‘where’ and ‘when.’
Though spelled today with the ‘h’ after the initial letter, they were at one time spelled with the ‘h’ in the initial position. Their pronounciation still reflects this original spelling, and I suppose you could argue that ‘h’ is thus a semi-vowel.>
Actually, the <h> in words like <where> and <when> symbolises not a semi-vowel, but the initial aspiration with which these words were originally pronounced. I still remember my grammar school teacher trying to convince us that these Germanic interrogatives —the list was extended with <why> and <who/whom>—should be pronounced with initial aspiration. Of course no one did, herself included. As an example, take the modern Norwegian (bokmål) equivalent of <where>, which is spelled <hvor> (from Old Norse <hvar>) but nobody aspirates when they pronounce it, and the Swedish <var> has dropped the aspiration sign altogether. Interestingly enough, in Nynorsk, remnants of the ancient Germanic initial <kw> are retained, thus the word for <where> is <kvar>....
And I studied it as part of a diciton class, so we were taught to pronounce the h, although as a secondary pronunciation, the words were spelled without it.
[quote author=kalasin link=board=spell;num=1029467082;start=0#7 date=09/16/02 at 15:51:46]I have problems with words with no vowel/sounds because in Maori every syllable *has* to end in a vowel….......
Out of the subject, but interesting to learn. The Japanese do the same with one exception, they can end words with the letter n, and Finnish - at least the root of the noun - so they are able to tag on case endings (which they must since they lack prepositions).
[quote author=bmassey link=board=spell;num=1029467082;start=0#5 date=08/19/02 at 11:11:07]Maybe it is because I am from Canada, but we were taught the following rule when it came to vowels in English:
a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y
So I learnt we had 5 and a half vowels! ;)
I heard this often when I was a kid, but recently something bothers me about it. If "y" is "sometimes a vowel", what is it when it’s not? Are there any examples of a "non-vowellabic" y in an English word?
I’d say it is a consonant when it’s at the beginning of words (yes, year) or in the middle (sawyer, bayou). I’m not sure what it is when it’s at the end of words (hay, decoy), but I do think it is a consonant when something is added to these words, such as "haying".
There are loads of words in Welsh which to English eyes look as if they don’t have any vowels, the ones I can think of off the top of my head are:
cwrw = beer
bryn = hill
ystryd =street
ynys = island
mynydd = mountain
llyn = lake
ty = house
gwyn = white
dydd = day
In Welsh w and y are vowels, the welsh alphabet doesn’t have the letters
k, j, q, v, x or z
but it does have extra letters
Ch, Ll, Dd, Ff, Ng, Rh
I live in Wales. would be:
Dw i’n byw yng Nghymru.
Cymru is Welsh for Wales but the letter C mutates after the preposition yn + C = yng Ngh
Confusing but you get the hang of it eventually!
[quote author=Agoraphile link=board=spell;num=1029467082;start=0#9 date=09/17/02 at 18:36:23]
During the major troubles in the Balkans a few years ago, a wonderfully satirical news item made the email rounds. It announced that the U.S., because of the paucity of vowels in the various Balkan languages, was donating several planeloads of vowels . . .
Ha-ha-ha! What a ridiculous item! I haven’t heard anything sillier than this in a long time… Actually, Serbian has 5 vowels and 4 accents, so it can be deducted that when you multiply these two numbers you have 20 vowel pronunciations (not vowels!; although… some Italians say that thay have 7 vowels—opened O, closed O…)[everyone of them can have these four different accents].
[quote author=agatsu link=board=spell;num=1029467082;start=15#28 date=12/06/02 at 16:53:55]
I heard this often when I was a kid, but recently something bothers me about it. If "y" is "sometimes a vowel", what is it when it’s not? Are there any examples of a "non-vowellabic" y in an English word?
Well, one that begins with a y, like yellow, youth. The inintial sound is definitely consonantal.
In discussing terms like vowel (and consonant and semi-vowel or glide), it’s important to maintain the distinction between phonetics, in which, e g, vowel refers to a sound with a relatively open passage of air through the speech apparatus, on the one hand, and orthography, in which which the term refers to the script elements with which these sounds are represented, on the other. Thus the difference between krk as pronounced by bmassey (with a vowel sound, to his Slovak mother’s dismay) and her own pronounciation (without the vowel sound). Classical Hebrew, to take another example, is, I understand, written without (indicating the) vowels, but when it is read, the vowels (i e, sounds) are supplied. (Please correct me if I am wrong, Agoraphile !)
